“Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises have spent years exposing the immoral profiteering by companies feasting at the trough of incarceration. Now, in one brilliant, accessible volume, The Prison Industry, they call out the evildoers—naming names, revealing their schemes and bottom lines, while sharing ideas on how to fight back. This is an indispensable volume for anyone ready to tackle the carceral dragon in our midst.”
The Prison Industry:
How It Works and Who Profits
A meticulous exposé of who profits from incarceration, culminating in a compelling case for abolition
Based on years of research by Worth Rises—best known for campaigns that have revolutionized prison telecom and made prison and jail communication free in cities and states around the country—The Prison Industry maps the range of ways in which private corporations, often with their government partners, make money off incarceration. It further details the gross extraction of wealth from incarcerated people and their families, who have been brutalized by overpolicing, mass incarceration, and mass surveillance.
Chapters on labor, telecom, healthcare, community corrections, and more explore the origin story of privatization for each sector and how much money is in it for the corporations involved. Stretching far beyond private prisons to look at all the sectors that benefit from incarceration, the authors illuminate the methods used to extract resources from public coffers and communities, which corporations are most active and how they partner with governments, and the harms these profit-based approaches to justice cause people, families, and communities.
Ultimately, The Prison Industry makes a compelling case for dismantling the prison industry and prison abolition more broadly. It serves as a tool for the tearing down of our wholly oppressive carceral system—the ashes of which we can use to create a better world built on care, not cages.
Order Your Copy
The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits is available at most major book retailers, including Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Copies are also available at select bookstores across the U.S. All proceeds from the book go to support Worth Rises.
Bulk Orders
Educators, organizations, foundations, and others interested in bulk orders, should fill out this form. After receiving your order, a representative from The New Press will reach out. Orders of 10 copies or more, may be eligible for discounts. Please reach out to Nico MacDonald, nmacdonald@worthrises.org, with any questions.
What People Are Saying
“Many know that corporate interests corrupt the contemporary American prison system, but Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises take an extra step to detail exactly how these interests manifest. With powerful narratives and meticulous analysis, The Prison Industry is an essential read for anyone committed to challenging how American prisons operate and dismantling the industry of oppression that sustains them.”
— Reginald Dwayne Betts, founder of Freedom Reads and author of Felon: Poems
“This is an essential resource for those working to dismantle the prison industrial complex and anyone who wants to understand the profiteering at the heart of mass incarceration.”
— Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing
“The Prison Industry is an essential resource for anyone who cares about the human impacts of criminalization. Packed with concise information, charts, resources, and personal narratives, it is not afraid to name names as it calls out the cruelty of corporations and state actors in every aspect of the prison industry. This book is simultaneously an encyclopedia of corporate greed, an exposé of the cruelty of incarceration, and a clarion call for change.”
— Jocelyn Simonson, professor of law, Brooklyn Law School, and author of Radical Acts of Justice
“This is an essential book. Worth Rises is a small organization, but it has done profound work to help us all understand the scope of the profiteering and corruption that determines nearly every decision in the prison industry. And it is leading the fights against the commercialization of marginalized people’s bodies and families. Everyone should read this.”
— Alec Karakatsanis, civil rights lawyer, social justice advocate, and author of Usual Cruelty and Copaganda
“Bianca Tylek, in both her work and her book, has done more to lift the veil on the evil connection between money and the carceral system than anyone. If you want to understand how money drives policy and harms families caught in the maw of the system, read The Prison Industry.”
— Vincent Schiraldi, corrections official, scholar, and advocate
“With the election of would-be authoritarian politicians, the stock prices of companies across the carceral state consistently soar. Bianca Tylek peels back the curtain on the U.S. prison industry. She shows how it extracts so much from the incarcerated and their families, leaving devastation in its wake. Her cross-sectoral analysis of the companies that benefit is simultaneously a blueprint for dismantling it.”
— Zachary Norris, co-founder of Restore Oakland
Discussion Guide
This discussion guide provides a starting point for educators, students, and other groups looking to engage in thoughtful reflection and dialogue about the content presented in The Prison Industry: How It Work and Who Profits. The guide offers critical questions for each sector chapter about what got us to this moment in history as well as how we might envision a new, more liberatory society. Many of the question posed do not have black or white, or in some cases even right or wrong answers, but rather challenge readers to think critically about the world we live and want to live in.
This guide is designed for ages 12 and up.
Book events
Coming Soon!
About the Authors
Bianca Tylek is the Founder and Executive Director of Worth Rises and one of the nation’s leading experts on the prison industry. As a leader in the national prison phone justice movement, Bianca has increased the regulation of the prison telecom industry and passed numerous pieces of federal, state, and local legislation to make prison and jail communication free, revolutionizing the prison telecom market. She has also blocked corporate mergers, influenced investor divestment, and forced the resignation of predatory corporate executives from the board of cultural institutions, bringing the prison telecom industry to its knees. And that’s just her work in prison telecom. Bianca has also blocked financing for prison construction, challenged the malicious bankruptcies of prison healthcare providers, and pressured corporations to stop facilitating death penalty executions. Her novel strategies have wreaked havoc on the prison industry, and her work has been covered on the TED stage as well as the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, and more. Bianca lives in New York City.
Worth Rises is a national non-profit organization working to dismantle the prison industry and end the exploitation of incarcerated people and their loved ones. We envision a society in which no entity or individual relies on human caging or control for their wealth, operation, or livelihood. Our strategies fit into three main verticals: Our narrative work sets the foundation for all our work by revealing the prison industry’s influence over our carceral system. Our policy work then undermines the prison industry’s business model by changing the policy landscape within which it operates. Finally, our corporate accountability work brings it home by attacking the prison industry’s viability.
“Many people are not familiar with the prison industry and few know the extent of its greed. This invisibility has protected the industry and its exploitative practices. It’s important that we expose it so that we can change it.”
— Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of Worth Rises