Who Benefits from the Criminalization of Poverty?

We live in a time where it is not only possible—but increasingly profitable—to criminalize poverty. And we need to ask, not as a theoretical exercise, but as a matter of urgency: Who benefits when basic survival becomes a crime?

Step One: Build the Incentives

Let’s start with the American prison system. It’s no secret that the U.S. incarcerates more people than any country on Earth. While private prisons house only a fraction of the population (about 8%), they’re just the visible tip of a much larger, much more insidious iceberg. Behind them is an entire economy of profit-seekers: prison food contractors, telecom companies charging $1 a minute for calls, healthcare providers delivering substandard care at premium prices, and logistics firms that treat inmates like cargo. Then there’s prison labor—a legal form of slavery under the 13th Amendment—that creates products for both government and corporations at pennies per hour.

It’s not a conspiracy; it’s a business model.

The deeper you dig, the clearer it gets: there are financial incentives at every level to keep incarceration numbers high. More inmates means more contracts, more overtime for guards, more federal grants for policing and surveillance technology, and more jobs in otherwise economically stagnant rural communities.

Step Two: Criminalize Poverty

Now pair that with a systemic assault on the poor. Cities across the U.S. have passed laws criminalizing homelessness—anti-camping ordinances, bans on sleeping in cars, sit/lie laws that make it illegal to rest on sidewalks. Some of these were struck down in court, but the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision to let cities penalize people for sleeping outside (even when there’s no shelter available) opened the floodgates.

The timing isn’t coincidental. Housing prices are exploding, driven by investor speculation, AirBnB-ification, and chronic underbuilding. Meanwhile, wages haven’t kept pace. More people are falling through the cracks, and the official response is to criminalize their existence.

It’s a perfect storm: manufactured scarcity meets punitive enforcement.

Step Three: Blame the Victim

At the same time, inflation—partly driven by tariffs, poor Federal Reserve policy, and unchecked corporate price hikes—is squeezing every last dollar out of working-class families. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to legally exist unless you own assets. If you fall behind on court fees, child support, parking tickets, or even library fines in some jurisdictions, the state can revoke your license or throw you in jail.

This isn’t a bug. It’s a feature of a system that treats poverty as a moral failure and wealth as virtue. The deeper into poverty you sink, the more punitive the system becomes.

The Mechanics of Control

This goes beyond prisons. Modern carceral systems are diffuse: ankle bracelets, electronic monitoring, predictive policing algorithms, automated surveillance, and probation regimes now manage millions of Americans who are technically not in jail, but have virtually no freedom.

And it’s growing. Police departments buy military-grade equipment. Cities invest in AI-based surveillance. Governments fund software that scans faces, predicts behavior, and recommends arrests.

This is incarceration by other means.

So Who Benefits?

Follow the money. Here’s a breakdown:

• Private prison corporations like CoreCivic and GEO Group, obviously.
• Telecom companies like Securus that charge inmates exorbitant rates to call home.
• Municipal governments that rely on fines and court fees as revenue streams.
• Surveillance and software firms that sell behavioral analytics and facial recognition tools.
• Property developers who profit from gentrification after encampments are cleared.
• Rural economies propped up by prison jobs.
• Politicians who run on “tough on crime” platforms, deflecting attention from economic failures.

It’s a whole ecosystem. And like any well-oiled machine, it doesn’t need a master planner—it just needs inertia and a lack of resistance.

Who Pays the Price?

Everyone else. Not just the unhoused or the poor, but anyone without assets. Anyone vulnerable to a single crisis—job loss, health scare, eviction. The carceral state is metastasizing, and it’s not just targeting criminals. It’s targeting the inconvenient, the unprofitable, the ones who don’t fit into the narrative of growth and productivity.

We are seeing the gradual construction of a system in which failure to keep up with inflation is grounds for incarceration.

Final Thought

This isn’t just a critique. It’s a warning. If we allow economic policy, law enforcement, and corporate interests to align without oversight, we are walking into a future where freedom is conditional on wealth. Where inequality is enforced not by accident, but by design.

Ask yourself: when survival is illegal, and jail is profitable—what kind of society are we building?