In the United States there are five thousand prisons and one and a half million prisoners. The prison system already costs thirty billion dollars per year to maintain and will escalate as stiffer sentences and tougher treatment are being demanded for criminals. Some estimate that half of all Americans will be incarcerated by the year 2050. This hard-hitting film shows that building and maintaining prisons has become an industry. Private companies are running them for profit often at the expense of any amenities such as recreation and rehabilitation services. In rural communities, prisons are welcomed for providing jobs and markets for a variety of goods needed in prison. In a high security prison in Oklahoma, death-row prisoners are kept for years in bunker-like cells for 23 hours a day. The warden is proud of his tough and mean system, which is condemned by human rights groups. In Phoenix the toughest sheriff in the West feeds his inmates on thirty cents a day and works them in chain gangs. He boasts that he has the cheapest run jail in America. Alvin Brunstein of the ACLU and Marc Mauer, criminologist, challenge the theory that tougher prisons deter crime.