The prison biz....The new slavery

[baddbob]

Brought to you by your friendly local politicians

Reagan and Bush I and II were in in this.

But so were (and are) Mr. "I didn't inhale" and Mr. "Yeah, I did a little blow" (that would be Clinton and Obama).

The take away quote:

"If this isn't the best definition of sickness in a society I can't tell you what is. "

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[conk]

Can't see the video, but guess it's about the privatizing of prisons, making them profit centers. "Feed the goons on $.50 a day".

We have more prisoners per capita than most other countries combined. And rehabilitation? A joke! The recidivism rate could drop by 90% if only prisoners were taught a skill and met regularly with counselors. If only the administrators actually cared! Most are not dangerous criminals, simply drug offenders. There are STILL men in Texas prisons for possession of a pot SEED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CdnSirian]

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?40782-48-US-States-offered-Prison-Buyout&p=429520#post429520

Lots more info here if this topic interests you.

[Mark]

Per the US Constitution by way of the 13th Amendment:


Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

And so after legal and overt slavery ended, the prison industrial complex was born, centered in the deep South. Recently freed slaves were returned to slavery through enforcement of what were known as the Black Codes, a set of formal and informal laws that employed curfews, vagrancy and other exuses as violations designed to bulk up the convict-lease programs the new prisons implemented to put black men and other poor and disenfranchised into the system as slave labor. Alongside the cooptation of the 14th amendment by the corporations, making them legal persons, but which was originally designed to uphold citizenship for blacks, the corporatization of imprisonment and de jure slavery for the entire US population both behind bars or not, was instituted. Simultaneous industrialization and mechanization of labor made the agricultural workforce obsolete, so their repurposing proceeded apace with mass migration of the blacks from the hinterlands into the cities north west and further east to find jobs in factories, which also saw the spread of the prison industrial complex across the country as it was a model that worked, and that was approved ostensibly by the constitution.

So this is nothing new. It is the logical continuation of an inhumane system. One that some populations in the US have been aware of and fighting for a century and more.

[Cidersomerset]

The perception of US jails has always been bad from a UK perspective hard labour meaning hard labour especially in the southern
states and many films have portrayed this , with the chain gangs , death Row , corruption, things seemed to be getting better.
But this is turning the clock back. The problem is America is a total contradiction , The land of the free & The land of not so free !

Hollywood has made a fortune off the subject.......The Birdman of Alcatraz, Shoreshank redeption, The Greenmile,Bruebaker
Cool hand luke and many more !

Sure dangerous prisoners should be locked up and used to do some labour for incentives & society,but something is wrong with
society when so many are locked up.The city gang culture also glamourised by hollywood and organised crime and easy
access to firearms does not help the mix, even though guns are part of the culture since day one, when the first settlers arrived
from Europe 200years before the revolution.....America is portrayed as the land
of dreams. for many it is a nightmare ! and things will probably get worse in this recession..

We also lock up more than we should .

Lightning- Long John (Old song by a chain gang)

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[RMorgan]

Hey folks,

Actually, slavery was never abolished; It just received a brand new makeup.

What the slave masters did was to calculate the maintenance cost per slave; Then they "freed" them and started paying half of the calculated cost as salary.

Slavery is much easier to control when it is disguised as freedom. Besides, the slave masters cut their costs in half and increased their profits by selling to the new free men whatever they used to give them for free before (food, cloths, tools, shelter, etc...).

Also, they kindly offered credit to them with interests that were nearly impossible to pay, making them slaves again, but unofficially.

It was a smart move. Evil, but smart.

Raf.

[MargueriteBee]

If all you can afford is food, clothing and shelter, that's slave wages.

[modwiz]

Hey folks,

Actually, slavery was never abolished; It just received a brand new makeup.

What the slave masters did was to calculate the maintenance cost per slave; Then they "freed" them and started paying half of the calculated cost as salary.

Slavery is much easier to control when it is disguised as freedom. Besides, the slave masters cut their costs in half and increased their profits by selling to the new free men whatever they used to give them for free before (food, cloths, tools, shelter, etc...).

Also, they kindly offered credit to them with interests that were nearly impossible to pay, making them slaves again, but unofficially.

It was a smart move. Evil, but smart.

Raf.

This is exactly what "they" did, Raf. The Guinness guys would scream, "Brilliant". Can't say the same thing about the slaves.

It is wake up time and not time wake up to take more drugs either.

[kaon]

I recall the concept a few years back, and thought that privatizing the prison system was a good idea. My first thought was that taxpayer money would be saved because everyone knows that private business are superior and generally more efficient then government businesses.

However, as I delved into the subject a little further, I began to see the light. It became clear that every corporation's motive is to make money for themselves and their shareholders. Just as mentioned in the video, the prison population continued to grow, and it became evident that there were a high number of inmates in prison for petty crimes such as possession of small amounts of narcotics. This was in largely in part due to the Ronald Reagan era war on drugs. Now, I am not saying that the privatization of prisons and the war on drugs were holding hands, but one seemed to have made the other.

Then my objection became that no corporation has the right to lock up the population. I couldn't rent a room in my house to keep a prisoner for the State can I?
I also object to using prisoners to earn more profit as laborers. While I don't believe that imprisoning a criminal is slavery, using them for profit is.

That being said, it's unfortunate that jails and prisons are necessary in our society, but they are.