The US has a commercial prison system. It is run as a business, in private hands, and it offers cheap labour. It is actually the biggest manufacturer in the country. We always think it is highly dishonest to lament the poor chances of ex convicts on the job market, seeing that the prison system is taking so many easy and even high tech jobs.
This commercial prison system leads to distortions in convictions. Several cases of jail sentences for super minor offences (school pranks) even leading to suicides have been in the news. The issue is that prisons can use prisoners, and like to incarcerate the easy ones, non-threatening workers. The US is experiencing a renaissance of the slave era, or has done so for decades now. Meanwhile real criminals are left to their own devices, creating a super psychotic atmosphere in some prisoners. After all, who is to look after gangbangers that think nothing of stabbing someone or worse.
We see that minor online offences are now getting serious jail time attached to them. So sharing a password becomes a federal crime. In the UK, where they need cheap workers because of the detachment from the EU and lack of exportable gas (and possibly the slumping financial services), 10 year prison sentences are introduced for onlin piracy. This is insane unless you see why you want a young person stealing a movie to go to prison.
“Leave an old washing machine in your front yard, miss too many days of school or catch a fish during the wrong season, and you could end up in jail.” (source)
In a bad crime forstering economy, invest in prisons!
The copyright industry will shake hands with the commercial prison system, and these big money industries will lobby everywhere to achieve the same punisment for these victimless crimes. TTIP will introduce it in the EU if accepted, and apparently the UK is more willing to allow wanton exploitation of its young and disadvantaged.
This all ends in the most idiotic minor offences clearing individuals out of society to work as super low wage worker in a prison somewhere, until they get stabbed to death by a real criminal inmate. It makes no sense to do this unless you see that we are still all competing over the same resources on a global market, mainly to generate cashflow for banks and oil companies. Billions are flowing through these prison systems, including a lot of tax breaks and subsidies, and this keeps them operating like they do, it keeps them corrupting the justice system and cooperating to increase sentences for simple acts like sharing music.