SCCF is one of four Tennessee prisons currently operated by for-profit contractor CoreCivic, the second-largest private prison operator in the country. For every person it incarcerates, the company makes around $90 per day.
Australia spends the equivalent of over $5 on food per prisoner per day. Canada spends over $6. In the US, especially in the South, many prisons spend under $2. And increasingly outsource operations to private contractors promising to find ways to keep us alive for less. CoreCivic did not respond to Filter‘s inquiry about nutrition standards or food expenditures.
Better nutrition and free degrees would help a lot of these people. It’s not uncommon for youths to fall to doing unsavory things because they don’t have the structure or drive to pursue better but given the chance to they would flourish.
My younger brother was lost and didn’t know what to do after high-school, he joined the air force a couple years after graduating and that helped give his life the structure that he needed. He has his shit together and by his account is living a happy life. He’s a hydrolics engineer now and about to finish his second contract and leave the air force.
I’m not saying people need to join the armed forces because fuck that, but people need a chance to find that structure that can help them. Be it with free higher education after high school or in prison if they went down that road and don’t have anything else going on for the after they graduate.