why do we build so many prisons?

Always we compensate men towards the horizon, for frontiersmen will be compensated from the understanding between the state and the first explorers were established. Where are the opportunities now? In the prisons. The railroads opened up new economies, real estate speculation and business and every other opportunity that comes with civilization. And prisons are fulfilling the same function. Every activity of daily living, all the commodities on the market (and off the market) must be had among the millions of prisoners. Any why do we lock up so many? We Americans are trained in the arts of tolerance. We are trained to absorb the other. We give them tattooes, records, their own alternative histories, conjugal visits, illegal drugs and all our social services and utopias of control are in prisons. We invent and accept folklore, hollywood culturally commodifies the criminal lifestyle. The criminals must be legitimate, a worthy adversary one worthy of the expenditure of billions of dollars. We commodify everything that comes out of the prisons from fashion (sagging pants) to music to social science research. Captive populations, continual experiments in surveillance and control, and calculations of the minimal level of humane treatment that can be transferred to policy to do with a welfare state, to apply minimal intervention and maximum control.