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42 Crime & Delinquency 3 (1996)

handle is hein.journals/cadq42 and id is 1 raw text is: Profit and Penality: An Analysis of the Corrections-Commercial Complex J. Robert Lilly Mathieu Deflem The economics of imprisonment has been examined in a plethora of theoretical and empirical studies. As intriguing, stimulating, and policy-changing as these have been, they generally have not been connected to social contexts broader than prison over- crowding, legal issues, and conservative ideology. This article attempts to respond to this lack of attention by offering a descriptive analysis of one neglected topic ofpenality. It examines some of the business-related aspects of the American penal system and concludes that because that system operates largely by purchasing goods and services, the connections among crime, punishment, and business must be considered. INTRODUCTION In recent years, the economics of imprisonment in the United States and Britain has been examined in a plethora of theoretical and empirical studies, generated in large measure by prison overcrowding and the privatization ideology of former President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as well as their successors. These studies have been scholarly and administrative in orientation and have focused primarily on identifying the contemporary initiatives and developments of privatizing prisons, including the legal and social consequences of privatization for state-controlled corrections (see, for example, Bowditch and Everett 1987; Dilulio 1988a, 1988b; Logan 1990; Matthews 1989; McDonald 1990). Other discussions have addressed the historical development of the privatization of J. ROBERT LILLY: Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Northern Kentucky University. MATHIEU DEFLEM: Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado. The authors thank Francis T. Cullen, Mike Nellis, Dick Hobbs, Gary T. Marx, Richard A. Ball, and the Editor of Crime & Delinquency for helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. All correspondence should be sent to J. Robert Lilly. CRIME & DELINQUENCY, Vol. 42 No. 1, January 1996 3-20 @ 1996 Sage Publications, Inc. 3 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.