The Montgomery County Sheriffs' Association was on the phone the other night looking for money for their dependants, but I said no. Already I subscribe to the Maryland State Troopers and hope that their sticker on the car bumper may secure leniency if flagged down by one of "Maryland's Finest".
Why taxpayers should be asked to support local police forces is a mystery. But the way things are going the troopers may soon be flogging stock options. One of Wall Street's top-performing stocks has been Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which builds and runs prisons all over the country.
The second largest private prison company, Wackenhut Corrections, is reported to be under contract to operate prisons in England, Scotland and Australia. Will Ireland be next?
Unlike Boeing, which is laying off 48,000 workers because of falling demand for its aircraft, CCA is finding it hard to keep up with the demand for more prison space. The figures are scary.
There are almost two million people behind bars in the US, which is said to be more than even Russia and China. The strange thing is that while violent crime is falling the prison population is soaring - by up to 80,000 a year by one estimate.
The cause is tougher sentencing laws being passed by politicians who want to boast about being "tough on crime". The result is that mandatory sentences are being imposed for non-violent crimes which once might have earned a suspended sentence or treatment in a clinic for drug addiction.
Those states which cannot keep up with the growing prison population have been glad to turn to private companies like CCA to help them. Almost 30 of the 50 states now make use of private prisons, which house about 90,000 prisoners, mostly low-security. CCA co-founder Thomas Beasley told one interviewer that he promotes private prisons "like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers."
California is especially promising as a growth area. The CCA is building three prisons there, one in the Mojave desert, without even being asked. The other cofounder, Dr Crants, told the Wall Street Journal that "If you build it in the right place the prisoners will come."
An investigation into prisons by Atlantic Monthly claims that California has the biggest prison system in the western world and has more prisoners than France, Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands combined.
There is a lot of money to be made out of prisons. Wall Street brokers handle private prison company bond issues. Long-distance telephone networks compete to get prisoners' business.
There is a flourishing trade newspaper. Catalogues list equipment including padded cells in a "vast colour selection". A "body orifice security scanner" can take over one of the more disagreeable duties of prison officers.
Texas was one of the first states to encourage the privatisation of the prison service because of its severe over-crowding. But then there was a glut of prison "beds" and Texas began to rent them out to other states which had run out of space.
Under the "rent-a-cell" system, bed brokers can arrange for prisoners to be transferred from Hawaii to Texas for a daily fee of up to $60. Transporting prisoners from one state to another has also been privatised.
There have been serious cases of abuses in private prisons. A video recently broadcast on TV showed warders in a private prison in Texas kicking prisoners lying on the floor, firing at them with a stun gun and setting dogs on them.
In a private prison in Ohio there were two murders and 13 stabbings in less than a year. There have also been numerous escapes from private prisons.
Of course, there are also grave abuses in the state prisons. Human Rights Watch has reported that since Corcoran State Prison opened in California in 1988, 50 inmates, mostly unarmed, have been shot by guards and seven were killed.
Eight guards have been indicted for deliberately pitting unarmed inmates against each other in gladiator-style fights which the guards would then break up by firing their rifles.
Sexual abuse of male prisoners by other prisoners is tolerated and in some cases even tacitly encouraged by staff in prisons. Women prisoners are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse as their numbers in prison are growing. At 80,000, the number is a 12-fold increase since 1970.
But it is the number of black males in prison in the US, far outstripping their percentage of the population as a whole, which is especially worrying. About half of prison inmates are black although African-Americans amount to only 12 per cent of the population.
One out of every 14 black men is now in prison, which is 8.5 times the rate of imprisonment for white men. It is estimated that one in three of the next generation of black men will spend some time in prison if present trends continue.
Investors take note.