Food. Phone calls. Medical care. Transport. Even in public prisons, “piecemeal privatization” is transforming incarceration in America.

An Oklahoma rehab center puts defendants to grueling, dangerous work in a chicken processing plant. They receive neither pay nor treatment for their addictions.

On the scandal of our teeming prisons.

The prison-industrial complex is not only a set of interest groups and institutions. It is also a state of mind. The lure of big money is corrupting the nation's criminal-justice system, replacing notions of public service with a drive for higher profits. The eagerness of elected officials to pass "tough-on-crime" legislation — combined with their unwillingness to disclose the true costs of these laws — has encouraged all sorts of financial improprieties. The inner workings of the prison-industrial complex can be observed in the state of New York, where the prison boom started, transforming the economy of an entire region; in Texas and Tennessee, where private prison companies have thrived; and in California, where the correctional trends of the past two decades have converged and reached extremes.