In the song, Kanye West refers to a problem that is becoming recognized as one of major importance to America's working families focused on fairness and civil rights—the growth of the private prison industry and the extreme lengths that the corporations that dominate the industry will go to pad their own profit margins, regardless of the effect that it has on families and communities across the nation.

Today, the AFL-CIO came out strongly in favor of reforms to the U.S. prison system that would have significant benefits to communities, people of color, correctional employees and inmates who are trying to reform their lives and rejoin society. In particular, the federation criticized the privatized prison industry that, in the name of bigger corporate profits, mistreats workers, creates inhumane conditions for prisoners and incentivizes the incarceration of more and more of America's citizens in order to make the wealthiest Americans more profits.