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Private prisons hold over 100,000 people in the U.S. Some say they provide needed flexibility as corrections populations change and budgets shrink. But what really happens when punishment is about profit? 

Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program and author of Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration.

Prisons in the U.S. frequently use long-term solitary confinement, even though the evidence makes clear that solitary has devastating effects on prisoners’ mental and physical health.  Some authorities call long-term solitary nothing short of torture.  So what can we make of our prisons using solitary for people with significant disabilities?  If solitary devastates so-called normal prisoners, what does it do to those with severe physical or cognitive impairments? 

In the US, we incarcerate our fellow citizens at the highest rate in the world. And once they are in prison, we give the incarcerated not another thought. But one program works to help improve our imprisoned population, by teaching them college courses inside – along with college students, from the outside.