The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?

[Virgil]

http://www.infowars.com/?p=743
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http://www.infowars.com/images/slavery-tracks.jpg
Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of “hiring out prisoners” was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition.

Vicky Pelaez
Global Research
El Diario-La Prensa, New York
March 10, 2008


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.”

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

CRIME GOES DOWN, JAIL POPULATION GOES UP

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[Advaita Eyes]

of us, and non-news to others.

That's why the only candidate who is worth a progressive's support is someone who doesn't skirt addressing this atrocity.

AE

[Virgil]

http://counterpunch.org/blader03102008.html
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March 10, 2008
One in Every 100 Adult Americans...
Why "Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its Sheen

By R.F. Blader

Unlike those wily, deviant, and dangerous criminals depicted on popular forensics and crime dramas, recent evidence indicates that many of the 2.3 million Americans currently in criminal custody are just a bunch of desperate people who have lost their way.

Not much editorializing is needed to highlight the gravity of America’s prison situation: a recently published Pew Center on the States study highlights the fact that “more than one in 100 adult Americans is in jail or prison.” Our prison population is the largest in the world (China is second) and we’re imprisoning people at a rate of about 8 – 10 times more than our European counterparts. Citing the Pew study, the Washington Post notes:

“Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.”

A Pew study of Arizona prisons last year similarly substantiates increasing incarceration of women, stating,

“The number of women admitted to Arizona state prisons (most often on drug-related charges) has increased 60 percent in the last 6 years, which is twice the rate of increase of male admissions.”

Incarcerating people who commit crimes finds a theoretical justification in modern rational choice theory, which posits that punishing people fairly and regularly will not only affect individual retribution, thereby engendering social fairness, but will also deter would-be criminals. In other words, knowing the fate of offenders, people will choose to behave in a law-abiding manner. By publicizing the likely, unsavory consequences of certain activities, society, it is thought, reduces crime.

The authors of the Pew study make clear their intention to challenge our overdependence on prisons as a productive means of social control. Susan Urahn, the Pew Center’s director, told the New York Times, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”

While the publicity around the Pew study highlights the economic burden of mass imprisonment, the press is favoring a “balanced” discussion of whether or not an enormous prison population is socially sensible.

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[sweetheart]

The beloved 13th: 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.

And then the question is who is most able to enslave and break all dissent to its
programmes of social engineering for global political control?

It was a mistake to put any exception in to the 13th amendment - now 3 million
people are driven through the loophole without a question.