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MrScorpio

(73,630 posts)
Sat Mar 30, 2013, 07:28 PM Mar 2013

Prison profit CREATES a demand for more prisoners… Damn Skippy!



The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?

Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?

“The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being “an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289


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Prison profit CREATES a demand for more prisoners… Damn Skippy! (Original Post) MrScorpio Mar 2013 OP
Econ 101. MH1 Mar 2013 #1
Cold Truth, Sir The Magistrate Mar 2013 #2
Spot on! burrowowl Mar 2013 #12
you are correct, sir. nt awoke_in_2003 Apr 2013 #16
crime pays big spanone Mar 2013 #3
This is shameful. SalviaBlue Mar 2013 #4
There is Newest Reality Mar 2013 #5
No surprise. Lady Freedom Returns Mar 2013 #6
Pie yow! MrScorpio Mar 2013 #7
Put simply malaise Mar 2013 #8
I'd like to rec this a million times. excellent article Voice for Peace Mar 2013 #9
I predict one day the jailers will be the jailees. Voice for Peace Mar 2013 #10
Reagan. moondust Mar 2013 #11
K&R woo me with science Mar 2013 #13
It's a negative morality feedback loop. hay rick Mar 2013 #14
Message auto-removed bezrodny Mar 2013 #15

The Magistrate

(95,244 posts)
2. Cold Truth, Sir
Sat Mar 30, 2013, 07:30 PM
Mar 2013

We are seeing the re-establishment of hereditary aristocracy at one extreme, and re-establishment of chattel slavery at the other.

Newest Reality

(12,712 posts)
5. There is
Sat Mar 30, 2013, 07:37 PM
Mar 2013

profit in them thar convicts!

And the thing is, the more profits and contracts with occupancy rates, (90%) with states, the more draconian the laws and the stiffer the sentencing.

Nobody but the wealthy will be immune to this. When you or your kids get sucked into the system without trying, see how that goes.

There should be a major movement to reverse and stop this trend, but it is worldwide. This is Prison Planet and the future has bars.

Lady Freedom Returns

(14,120 posts)
6. No surprise.
Sat Mar 30, 2013, 07:51 PM
Mar 2013

And they will have plenty of prisoners thanks to cities placing laws to make it harder on homeless.

And what a great idea ( )! Take desperate people that has been kicked around and place them with harden criminals to teach them how to be real criminals.

A scarier world, brought to you by Corporate America!

moondust

(19,972 posts)
11. Reagan.
Sat Mar 30, 2013, 08:44 PM
Mar 2013
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter responded with programs that were essentially a continuation of their predecessors. Shortly after Ronald Reagan became President in 1981 he delivered a speech on the topic. Reagan announced, “We’re taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts; we’re running up a battle flag.[77]” For his first five years in office, Reagan slowly strengthened drug enforcement by creating mandatory minimum sentencing and forfeiture of cash and real estate for drug offenses, policies far more detrimental to poor blacks than any other sector affected by the new laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#History

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