NEW YORK, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- An advocacy group "dedicated to dismantling the prison industry" last week unveiled an interactive database of over 4,000 corporations profiting from the U.S. carceral system, the world's most populous, according to the non-profit Common Dreams.
The Prison Industry Corporate Database, published by New York-based Worth Rises, includes publicly traded and privately held corporations spanning 12 sectors: architecture and construction, operations and management, personnel, programs and labor, equipment, data and information systems, telecom, financial services, food and commissary, healthcare, transportation, and community corrections.
"Despite earning tens of billions of dollars each year, the public knows little about the prison industry and those that profit from it," Worth Rises executive director Bianca Tylek said in a statement.
"This is not about any one corporation -- and it's not about private prisons or prison labor -- but the thousands of corporations that profit off the caging of millions of people in our prisons and jails across the U.S.," noted the executive director.
"We are releasing the Prison Industry Corporate Database to help people understand the vastness of the prison industry and the financial incentives it has to expand incarceration rather than protect public safety, so that together we can build the solutions needed to dismantle it," Tylek added. ■