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But CCA, to borrow a trope from journalism, buried the "lede" in the governors' letter. The real head-snapping revelation appeared in the third-to-last paragraph: in exchange for buying a state's prison, CCA required that the state prison agency ensure that the prison remained at least 90% full. Translation: We'll buy your prisons and keep 'em orderly and clean, so as long you keep the prisoners coming in.

The justice ministry said judges were ready to work around the clock to implement the pardon because they have to visit each of more than 30 prisons and assess every prisoner who may qualify for release.

Supporters of the amnesty say it will reduce prison overcrowding.

"Traditional prison," writes Graeme Wood in this month's Atlantic, "has become more or less synonymous with failed prison." One radical solution: scale back traditional prisons in favor of sophisticated monitoring devices.

"When everything is illegal, everyone is a criminal." The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—more even than China or Russia. Prof. Daniel J. D'Amico explains that as of 2010 more than 1.6 million people were serving jail sentences in America. Professor D'Amico suggests that "prisons are not what we think about when we think of America, and they shouldn't have to be." According to D'Amico, a free country should not have 1.6 million people in prison, and a fiscally responsible country cannot afford to. As Prof.

Christopher White, a Brownsville, TN prisoner, escaped from his government cage! Squeezing through prison bars, busting through plexiglass, and crossing razor-wire.... only to be re-captured after hitchhiking! So close to freedom, dude. So, so close....

Crime is going down in America, but more Americans than ever are in prison—and more and more money is being spent and made, turning this country into a giant armed camp. Here are some key points about the private prison industry:

In the last decade, New York drastically reduced its prison population and at the same time experienced a huge drop in crime. Indiana, on the other hand, drastically increased its prison population — and consequently the burden to taxpayers — while seeing a much smaller drop in crime than the national average.

Incarceration in America is a failure by almost any measure. But what if the prisons could be turned inside out, with convicts released into society under constant electronic surveillance? Radical though it may seem, early experiments suggest that such a science-fiction scenario might cut crime, reduce costs, and even prove more just.

Americans make up just 5 percent of the world's population but account for 25 percent of the population behind bars. Why? Because prisons are a big business and the WAR on Drugs, CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria says. The total number of Americans under correctional supervision (prison, parole, etc.) is 7.1 million, more than the entire state of Massachusetts. Prisons are a big business. Most are privately run, have powerful lobbyists and have bought most state politicians.