06/01/2026
Recommended reading: what happens when human confinement becomes an industry?
The other day I watched footage from outside Delaney Hall in New Jersey as police directed protesters to a designated “First Amendment Zone.”
That phrase has been stuck in my head.
A designated First Amendment Zone.
As though constitutional rights exist only where law enforcement decides they may be exercised. That is not freedom. That is not what the First Amendment says.
And the more I learned about Delaney Hall, the more that phrase seemed to capture something much larger.
Because this isn’t just about a protest. It’s about a detention facility operated by a private corporation. It’s about detainees engaging in hunger strikes and labor strikes. It’s about a company that profits from incarcerating human beings.
Private detention creates a fundamental conflict of interest.
Delaney Hall is operated by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison and detention corporations in the United States.
A corporation exists to generate revenue. A detention facility generates revenue when people are detained.
The goal should be fewer people incarcerated. But the business model depends on keeping cells occupied.
Those are directly opposed to one another.
That is the uncomfortable question underneath all of this.
What happens when human confinement becomes an industry?
Because once confinement becomes a business model, care, staffing, food, medical treatment, and basic living conditions stop being purely human obligations.
They become expenses.
Across the country, detention capacity is expanding. New contracts are being awarded. New facilities are being opened. Billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing into detention, enforcement, surveillance, and incarceration infrastructure.
We already incarcerate more people than any other country on Earth.
And instead of moving away from systems of confinement, we continue investing in larger ones.
More detention beds. More contracts. More facilities.
That is not a correctional philosophy.
It is an economic model.
No corporation should profit from filling human cages.
And no society should ever build a business model around human captivity.
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I wrote more about this on Substack because this conversation matters.
