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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPrisons are a cash cow
Rampant privatization is wreaking havoc on our society.
Case in point: whats happened over the past few decades with prison phone services.
It used to be that if you were incarcerated at, say, the state penitentiary or the local jail you could call your family collect for as little as $4 an hour.
But then, states began signing contracts with private phone companies like AT&T, who, in turn, began charging sky-high rates for phone calls between prisoners and their families.
A 15-minute phone call that used to cost just a few bucks soon started costing as much as $17, which is a lot to ask from people in jail and prison, who generally have little to no income or from their families, who often live in poverty.
Of course, while prisoners struggled to find a way to talk to their loved ones without breaking the bank, the phone companies got and have stayed very, very rich. The prison phone service industry now rakes in around $1.2 billion every year.
And its not just the phone companies that are getting rich off prisoners phone calls.
Thanks to so-called commissions that can account for as much as 94 percent of the cost of a call, prison phone contracts have become a major source of revenue for state and local governments all across the country."
*Luckily, though, the government is starting to take action against some of the worst excesses of the phone service-industrial complex."
*Law enforcement, though, is having none of it.
The National Sheriffs Association says that if the government cuts back on the kickbacks prisons get from prisoners phone calls, they could just stop providing phone call services altogether."
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/10/prisons_are_a_cash_cow_how_privatization_forged_an_incarceration_industrial_complex_partner/
msongs
(67,405 posts)And the war on drugs. And support of oppresive police departments. And support of poverty. And support of...
It's obvious whose side they are really on.
Skittles
(153,160 posts)Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)the moment a plausible scheme can be invented.
Initech
(100,072 posts)Initech
(100,072 posts)It was a thing of beauty: