Day 11: Prison, Inc.

The PA system sprang to life today at 4:00AM. Our orders from the commissary were here and we were being called down to retrieve them.

The prison store is outsourced, like so many of the essential services. The company buys generic and/or expired versions of products and sells them at above what the retail price would be (if they were real and non-expired). Nothing creates a high margin like a [literally!] captive customer base, so the store service provider doesn't have to bother matching prices with, say, Wal-Mart. As you can see on their site, their core business is imprisonment. Please peruse the site, as the cartoon animal characters in alternating guard/convict garb are quite entertaining (Penitentiary Penguin is definitely my favorite). I think they are missing a big opportunity by not selling these as stuffed animals so inmates can give them to their children on visiting day.

Some of the incidentals have exclusive contracts so you have no choice in what to buy, like this gem of a toothbrush.

The prison food is managed by a different service provider. As bad as the prison store is, the food service provider makes the store look like a Bloomingdale's. I've already mentioned the feet-flavor to some items, which is really nice, but not as nice as the various goos served on different days, usually with breakfast. Today happens to be yellow-goo day; there's a white-goo day and a gray-goo day, too. The food-services company was acquired by a Private Equity group so it is no longer publicly traded, but they did over $10B in sales in 2006 (what remained in the public record indicated prisons weren't their exclusive business).

Lastly, the health care is also outsourced. Millions of working Americans are without adequate care, but we get it in prison (most people - including prisoners - ought to have adequate care). This company is also privately-owned and regional, so I am not going to disclose many details.

It is too bad all of the companies involved in the business of imprisonment are privately owned; I can't imagine a more certain profitable investment than a balanced mutual fund of prison businesses. With the USA having the highest per capita rate of imprisonment in the world, it is safe to be Long on tyranny and suffering.