Vanita Gupta

Director of the ACLU's Center for Justice

For 30 years, CCA's profits have grown because more people are behind bars. For CCA, the fact that America incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world isn't a human tragedy -- it's something they celebrate, because it makes them rich.

Jim Wallis

Christian leader for social change; Author, 'On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good'

Mass incarceration in our country is a problem, one that too often serves to line the pockets of for-profit prisons while tearing families apart and targeting people of color disproportionately.

John W. Whitehead

Attorney, President of The Rutherford Institute, and author of A Government of Wolves (due out in April 2013)

Under this increasingly popular system of truancy enforcement, instead of giving students detention or some other in-school punishment for "unauthorized" absences, schools are now opting to fine parents and force them, or their kids, to serve jail time.

David Macaray

Labor columnist, playwright and author

If we're not the "most evil" country in the world -- i.e., the country with the greatest number of evil people in it -- then we Americans are doing something terribly wrong, because we have the greatest number of people incarcerated in our prisons.

David Macaray

Labor columnist, playwright and author

If we are NOT the "most evil" country in the world -- i.e., the country with the greatest number of evil people residing in it -- then we're doing something terribly wrong when it comes to jurisprudence, because we have the greatest number (1.6 million) of incarcerated people.

Dr. Niaz Kasravi

Director, NAACP Criminal Justice Program

There are more African Americans in prison today than there were African Americans enslaved in 1850. Black History Month should celebrate the struggle for freedom, not for-profit prisons and mass incarceration.

David Shapiro

Staff Attorney, ACLU National Prison Project

Many states have finally taken serious steps to reduce mass imprisonment, but new long-term contracts for full prisons would hamper those efforts. That would be bad news for the nation, but good news for Corrections Corporation of America.

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg

Blogger

The private prison industry has devoted time and money to ensuring that crime legislation benefits their financial interests. They have donated millions to political candidates and parties, as well as helped pass more punitive sentencing laws.

John Merrow

Education Correspondent, PBS NewsHour; Author, 'The Influence of Teachers'

Who have been the primary beneficiaries of "school reform?" Duh, the for-profit companies! While consultants and think tanks have done OK, the real money has been in testing and textbooks and technology and construction.

Colleen Murphy-Dunning

Director, Urban Resources Initiative

Our country, a promised land of opportunity, needs a national green jobs program that targets ex-offenders.

Donna Red Wing

Executive director, One Iowa

Yesterday, Florida senators delayed their vote to sell a part of its state correctional system to the highest bidder. Sixteen thousand inmates would have become 'product' for the prison profiteers in this corporate take-over.