There are alot of conspiracies on Prison labor being used to profit, from what I have learned from talking to people who run them that they actually lose money for the state no matter what they use the prisoners for. The real profits in the prison industry is when Privatized Prisons are contracted out to the States (either a US state, or a State as in a nation). Private Corporations have a profit motive to reduce costs and usually can do it much better than a government can as Government employees are Unionized and rarely profit motivated. Not taking a side one way or another due to my ignorance of how it all works, but profits in the prison industry only reward a privatized prison, not the government itself.

Who knows, what I heard might be all wrong.