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

[Joanne98]

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

According to reports by human rights organizations, these are the factors that increase the profit potential for those who invest in the prison industry complex:

. Jailing persons convicted of non-violent crimes, and long prison sentences for possession of microscopic quantities of illegal drugs. Federal law stipulates five years’ imprisonment without possibility of parole for possession of 5 grams of crack or 3.5 ounces of heroin, and 10 years for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack. A sentence of 5 years for cocaine powder requires possession of 500 grams - 100 times more than the quantity of rock cocaine for the same sentence. Most of those who use cocaine powder are white, middle-class or rich people, while mostly Blacks and Latinos use rock cocaine. In Texas, a person may be sentenced for up to two years’ imprisonment for possessing 4 ounces of marijuana. Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson Rockefeller anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.

The passage in 13 states of the “three strikes” laws (life in prison after being convicted of three felonies), made it necessary to build 20 new federal prisons. One of the most disturbing cases resulting from this measure was that of a prisoner who for stealing a car and two bicycles received three 25-year sentences.
More punishment of prisoners, so as to lengthen their sentences.
Longer sentences.
The passage of laws that require minimum sentencing, without regard for circumstances.
A large expansion of work by prisoners creating profits that motivate the incarceration of more people for longer periods of time.
HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES

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. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else’s land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery - which were almost never proven - and were then “hired out” for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of “hired-out” miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.

http://digitizedrevolution.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/vicky-pelaez-the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/

This is a repeat but with the prison breakout in Afganistan making the news, I thought I'd post it again...

[kenny blankenship]

1. I have to recommend this not because it has commendable answers

but because it raises disturbing questions.

[SparkyMac]

12. Exactly !

Right after the Civil War, many Southern states started using chain-gain labor as a source of income. They would rent the prisoners out to what ever business paid the most. It was just like slavery -- only cheaper.

I'm reminded of the old refrain --

"What goes around, comes around".

[appal_jack]

38. OK, here's one cynical answer...

The prison industry is now a lobbying entity, and will not give up its power without a struggle. I believe that even with a struggle, we activists could hardly hope for better than a detente.

That said, I will never compromise in my belief that the US must quit imprisoning so many people for such ridiculous reasons. Other than violence (of any sort) and thievery, I can think of few reasons to lock someone in a box. The victimless crimes (drugs, vagrancy, prostitution {though not, in my mind, pimpery}), deserve medical and public health responses, where they warrant a state response at all. Achieving such a change in America in our lifetimes is almost unimaginable, but entirely worth pursuing.

Perhaps then some of the existing prisons can be re-purposed for other things. Whether seed banks or safe deposit boxes for the world's elites, there has to be some security function they can serve that does not oppress quite so much. Or perhaps the US can take prisoners from other countries, alleviating some of our national debt by contracting to take the world's worst and most violent prisoners from around the world (this is the cynical part).

-app

[varkam]

2. K&R. The United States is very good at locking people up.

The United States, however, is not so good at rehabilitating offenders. Perhaps there's a reason for that.

[bluesmail]

9. They make good mercenaries... n/t

[MedleyMisty]

3. When I read about the Holocaust

I often think about how that was the ideal workforce for corporations. Arbeit macht frei.

Although in Man's Search For Meaning Frankl does talk about how a foreman said that the regular laborers did a lot more work in less time and had to be reminded that people who are starved and in terrible mental condition are not exactly at their most productive.

So I guess prison labor is a bit of a compromise - still imprisoned, but they get paid a pittance and are not constantly threatened with death and get more food and shelter and health care than they did in the camps. And it has the added bonus that vindictive authoritarian populations will think it's cool and be all right with it so no PR problems.

[Mister Ed]

11. I once read "Inside the Third Reich", the memoirs of Albert Speer

Speer was Hitler's Minister of Armaments and Defense. He had plenty of time to work on his memoirs during his twenty years in Spandau Prison, where he was sent after being convicted at Nuremberg of using slave labor in Germany's defense industry.

In other words, he was convicted of doing the same thing that's being done by the businesses described in the OP above.

[malaise]

4. Good post

Both n/t

[1776Forever]

5. 60 Minutes should do a piece on this - They may have in the past but it should be done again!

We need to know where this money is going. If it is going to house the prisoners or someones pocket. Good post!

[intaglio]

6. An excellent film on this subject

Is "The Shawshank Redemption"

If it is halfway right the problem has been going on since the 60's

[L. Coyote]

7. Both, plus voter suppression in the South.

An investigation of who profited from prison construction is also in order.

[Joanne98]

10. True.. Felonies are a great way to suppress the black vote..

I truly think the right came up with this plan right after the voting rights act.

[L. Coyote]

18. Charging liberals with felonies is a great way to suppress Dem votes.

They came up with this before Nixon's enemies list.
The War on Drugs is actually Nixon's culture war waged by the right against the left.

I an enlightened state, drug abuse would be in the medical domain.
But, we live in a police state instead.

[Trillo]

8. Sad, isn't it.

Barney Frank's bill to legalize marijuana at the Federal level would probably put a dent in some of the Prison Industrial Complex cash flows, but would there be something else created to take it's place?

[Echo In Light]

13. How creepy is it that this sick shit is a "growth indestroy" in this country?

Elites gotta find a way of dealing with that pesky "surplus" populace.

[windoe]

14. For simple minds that think in black & white,

with me or against me, evil and good, predator and prey, incarceration is a simple solution to a lot of complex social challenges. Many people have been programmed into a short attention span mentality so that simple solutions become attractive to them too.
Sex? Just don't do it. Drugs? All of them are bad, you go to jail. If you look guilty, you are guilty. Except of course if you have good connections, and are of means, then these rules don't apply, but this is rarely up for discussion.

The prison industrial complex has a paradigm that requires that people close themselves off to people in pain, people having trouble adjusting to life, since their solution is to throw them away, out of sight out of mind, in the hopes that by ignoring them the problems will go away too. These people who are in pain become the untouchables, undesirables, and are not included in society.

Instead of being a cure for the ills of society, violence, addiction, mental instability and sexual predation and perversion are enabled to continue, (We have an addicted mentally ill commander in chief. ) while we continue avoiding the work that is required to address these challenges. This work requires that we instead open ourselves up to people who are in pain and foster compassion and include these people in society (if possible) instead of throwing them away.

The prison industrial complex is a logical result of having sociopaths running the country, who do not value human life, are ruthless and cold enough to even think of having inmates replace corporate jobs on the outside with slave labor.

[duhneece]

15. Many organizations are working on this/these issues

Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition...and MY small community's Otero County (NM) Substance Abuse Awareness Coalition supported the US Congress's Second Chance and our state's efforts to provide treatment instead of incarceration. We really, really need to fund a diverse group of treatment option entities for non-violent drug offenders.

Addicts have a brain disease and many prisoners, like my son, dealt in small amounts to support his drug habit. When he slipped, used again and was imprisoned, I felt it so unfair to imprison him for a relapse. Sort of like putting someone in prison when their cancer came back after a remission. Addicts share the ability to be in denial with diabetics, folks with MS, every other chronic disease process you can imagine.

HBO had a great documentary called "Addiction: Why can't they just stop" or something like that-may I suggest you see it, and all the full interviews, if you can.

[Greyhound]

16. K & R.

Once again I have to ask, where's the fucking outrage? How do we believe that things will ever get better in this country when the population not only allows this kind of obscenity, but actually approves of it?

[Echo In Light]

17. Silence = consent

[flashl]

19. Slavery under the guise of business is America's enduring legacy.

The only change, over the years, is slavery's mode, name, business necessity, and public need for the 'common' good.

[EFerrari]

27. "Slavery by Another Name" segment on BookTv this weekend

details how black people were re-enslaved in the south via fake criminal charges after the Civil War. It didn't slow down at all until 1941. FDR ordered the Justice Department to prosecute these cases because he didn't want the Japanese to be able to propagandized people of color.

And, "re-enslaved" is not an exaggeration. Must see teevee.

[flashl]

37. Interesting. Wonder if author is the same writer of a WSJ Drummond Coal article with same title?

[EFerrari]

41. His name is Blackmon.

[flashl]

51. OK, he is the source for Alexander Cockburn's article in WSJ. nt

[mntleo2]

47. Deleted

[lonestarnot]

20. Another example of too big to stop!

[hfojvt]

21. according to one of the people involved in it

prisoners here get paid minimum wage. However, I did not find out if that was Federal minimum wage ($5.85) or state minimum wage ($2.25). Even if it is federal, that is about half of typical pay for factory workers. It's low pay, but it's not slavery.

The work they do with animals sounds like it is very beneficial to both the animals and the inmates. I think work itself is beneficial to otherwise bored and idle healthy people. What I object to would be ridiculously low pay and also long sentances for victimless crimes.

[Tutonic]

32. Not Paid Minimum Wage

That is not correct for all fifty states. The law does not require that the prisoner's be paid minimum wage. In fact, many of the newer prison facilities charge the prisoner's for room and board. The Congress is fully aware of this and has done nothing to prevent "cruel and unusual treatment" of many non-violent offenders. And yes, they are overwhelmingly black and hispanic. Separate and unequal.

[hfojvt]

40. not for all states, but true for some perhaps

the 25 cents an hour is probably not true for all states either. Paying for room and board does not seem cruel since those of us on the outside are working for our own support.

Every so often I like to google "Prison Industrial complex" and read some of the essays and stats, but it's hard to get any politician to risk the 'soft on crime' label, especially in this red state.

[NYC_SKP]

22. Is an "undocumented" workforce not another modern form of slavery?

I know it's a topic for another thread, but I've often wondered.

I'm skeptical whenever both parties support "something" (NAFTA), or fail to act, and while the left and the right give different reasons for not enacting serious and effective immigration reform, all businesses benefit. Consumers think they benefit, too. My sister has a housekeeper and gardener who work for "next to nothing" (and I hate that). Like free trade, we enjoy low Walmart prices on the front end but fail to see the bigger picture and the long term consequences.

Undocumented workers do not enjoy the protections that other workers do while working for less than a living wage. They are afforded just enough support to keep them working, health care through emergency rooms for example, all at the expense of ordinary citizens, and all to the benefit of business owners and corporations.

If you said that they do jobs that ordinary Americans won't do, you'd be wrong.

I'm not looking for an argument here, I'm just saying that, like the prison industry, this seems like another form of modern slavery.

[flashl]

23. Yes it is and it is constantly exposed.

The large 'undocumented' workforce are in every sector, i.e. meatpacking/chicken plants, agriculture, construction/mining/service industries, sex, etc.

Additionally, jails/prisons mask minorities high unemployment rates.

[psychmommy]

24. it is cheaper to employ folks behind bars than on the street.

this takes jobs away it is in-country outsourcing. these private prisons aren't everywhere in nj prisons are county, state or federally run. they do work but nothing to the extent of private prisons.people do speak out about man/mins and sentencing discrepancies-they happen to be black and alot folks aren't listening. just recently there was a small win when crack offenders will now be sentenced like powder coke offenders. crack dealing was a federal offense and folks were doing ridiculously long sentences like decades. there are women in prison that didn't deal drugs but, may have lived with offenders, who got decade long sentences. while the dealer helped out authorities and reduced their sentences. it is some real sad stuff going on out there. man/mins take sentencing discretion from the judge

[Romulox]

25. The War on Drugs has strong bipartisan support, which means things will not change

We will continue to incarcerate a larger portion of our population than any other nation on the face of the planet so long as the Chinese will continue to loan us enough money to build for-profit prisons...

[cascadiance]

48. Check out the documentary "Damage Done". Even cops now want to stop this war!

http://www.conceptafilm.com/damage_done.htm

A lot of those on the front lines see the avenues for corruption, and abuse of our prison system that the war on drugs has become. I think it was on Link TV a while back. Not sure if it's coming back or not.

[halliburtonsux]

26. K&R. n/t

[OwnedByFerrets]

28. The question is....

what can be done about it?



www.wearableartnow.com

[followthemoney]

29. Capitalism requires a strong central government...

to prevent it from being encumbered by demands made of it by the society which it is imposed upon.

The people of America are not intrinsically wicked, but America does have the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the industrially developed world. How else to suppress the unemployed of a city like Detroit ravaged by the anarchy of capitalism?

[Raksha]

30. Incarceration should never, EVER be privatized for exactly this reason.

Nobody should be allowed to profit from it. That's the whole root of the problem, and if the profit motive were removed our prison population would shrink dramatically.

[Catherine Vincent]

31. "mostly Black and Hispanic"

Yep. And the racists bloggers/websites out there love to point that out when they talk about statistics.

[defendandprotect]

33. Another very, very serious issue --- 2.5 MILLION in our jails!!!

[defendandprotect]

34. ...and the Drug War is hooked into this -- corruption at all levels!!!

[Joe Chi Minh]

35. Joe Bageant's two latest items tie in very well with this - adding ever more

nightmarish dimensions, and then what seems to be an extraordinarily well-informed and insightful overview by an attorney.

Here they are:

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/06/old-dogs-and-ha.html

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/06/jury-nullificat.html

Kafka couldn't even IMAGINE the half of it.

[Cleita]

36. I see them working, clearing and pruning brush along the roadsides in my county.

Every now and then one escapes. I keep meaning to protest about this to the County Board of Supervisors. I don't think they get minimum wage and there are probably free people out there who would like to have the job. It is the county that puts them to work and that is the government. I don't believe they should be doing it unless they are paying the prisoners the same amount of money that they would have to pay anyone else.

[cascadiance]

39. People should check out this book "Slavery By Another Name"

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/index.php?section=1



Mark Thompson of Sirius's "Make It Plain" show on Sirius Left talked to the author a month or so ago, and it was really an enlightening discussion on how slavery even continued in stealth mode after the Civil War in the south and was done through things like prison labor, etc. all the way through to World War II. At that time two things served to really scale it back. First the GI Bill offered new opportunities to black families trapped into this system so that they could get government jobs with benefits to send them to school, etc. and be able to move outside the south after they got back too. Secondly he cites the advent of newer farm technology that allowed owners of farms to use farm machinery instead of "cheap slave labor" to cheaply harvest food, etc. which before "required" slave labor for them to do that and keep their costs down.

But he notes that there have been other stealth efforts into "slave labor" even up to around the 70's or 80's.

With this history, it does seem like one can expect there are elements in Corporate Amerika that want to revive this practice as the OP suggests!

[Joanne98]

43. Bookmarked! Thanx

[Phred42]

42. Just ANOTHER industry that should NOT be Privatized

[cascadiance]

44. Shouldn't even be called an "industry". "Institution" would be more appropriate...

to keep the Korporate bums from legitimizing their nefarious goals!

[Phred42]

45. I bow to your clearity

:applause:

[Joe Chi Minh]

46. The egregious significance of the tax avoidance dimension of this

business (literally), it seems, should not be underestimated.

ALL taxation should be on the basis of income alone. NO FLAT TAXES AT. ALL. All other forms of tax, including such items as parking meters, should ba abolished. A single income tax would have the sovereign, dual merits of being both the most just, and the most sensible/logical, as well as the further merit - not to be sneezed at by any means - of making it much, much easier to hold the politicians to account for its uses and abuses.

As it is, your penal system is being suborned by the robber barons of the right, to satisfy their fathomless avarice, lust for power and plain sadism. Narcissistic psychopaths. http://uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/abb2282c-badb-464e-a08f-5bc8e63b1fd9

It is clearly also being used to keep the income tax on the richest individuals and the largest corporations at a minium. Obama and the Democrats (worthy of the name) will have some work on their hands, sorting that lot out.

In the UK, we have our North Sea oil, yet we would, I believe be paying more than practically anyone else in the world for petrol - most of it, ironically (at least, until recently), by way of a petrol tax.

Drivers pay a road tax on their vehicles, yet, like the petrol tax, it is appropriated to fund all sorts of other public services (and abuses, no doubt) - while the roads are in a shocking state of disrepair, particularly in Scotland.

We are having major problems with our politicians in the UK, trying to rein in their money-grubbing, the worst of all being the members of the European parliament, but in truth our Parliament at Westminster is characterised by wholesale degeneracy.

Here is what Lord Acton observed concerning the effects of a destitute populace, as can be clearly seen in British society today: capitalism run amok:

"Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality."

[mntleo2]

49. Welfare Reform as well promotes slavery

...basically by saying parenting and women's work is "doing nothing," they force women into the labor force working for nothing with no hope of escape since getting even a GED is verboten and going to work within three months of giving birth is forced. They do not care if a woman can even provide enough for her family, how she gets to work, or if she has childcare. As a matter of fact in Bowling For Columbine, the 6 year old kid that accidentally shot to death a schoolmate was being left at home alone while his mother, a Welfare DEFormed worker, was working 2 jobs because 1 job did not provide enough. Nobody was watching the kid, and he got into his uncle's arsenal and took the gun to school where his school mate was accidentally killed. 6 freaking years old!

But hey, there were a lot of PROGRESSIVES applauding this crap and now they are all veclept because industry is taking over our lives and won't support Family Medical Leave. As I told MomsRising who is organizing Family Medical Leave, "How the HELL do you expect industry or the government to pay people in order to take care of their families, when it has been codified into law that family work is "doing nothing," did you actually think when they pass laws it *only* applies to one segment of society, "just" poor women????? Maybe you should work on that first since it IS a law that denigrates this work ..." But of course they do not listen and are all confused as to why they are not being heard in spite of the awesome statistics they can provide. Get this the ONLY work that is considered "contributing" is corporate work!

Debtor's prison is next because, thanks to the likes of DEMOCRATS like Joe Biden we no longer can declare bankruptcy even if 70% of those are because of medical bills. Oh yeah they will MAKE you all work McJobs and silence meant consent, applause urged it on ...applause from PROGRESSIVES as much as Rethugs while those of us trying to stop it shook our heads in disbelief at the stooopidity. I am thinking of starting some claases on how to feed your kids on $3.57 a day (what food stamps allow).

In other word, thats to Welfare DEFormed, corporations are the *only* entities who "contribute" and you don't when you volunteer for the fire department, are on the PTA board, are the scout troop leader, feed the poor in your church/mosque/kindergarten or do anything that is not advancing corporate profits...

So all you nice progressive people who applauded this, don't be all surprised because many who are on this board applauded its inception. I was there trying to raise your consciences while you believed the "welfare queen" myth that even Reagan confessed was a damn lie. Sadly, even though a few of us tried to stop it, YOU are next ...

My 2 cents ...

A Bitter Cat In Seattle ...

[nankerphelge]

50. Yet another example of why government functions should never be "privatized"

Creative lawyers need to start filing some lawsuits about this issue. Money is doled out per prisoner - profit motives are not acceptable when it comes to peoples' liberty.

[Uncle Joe]

52. They're lobbyists have only one overriding motivation, more draconian laws.

More people in prison means more profit, "The land of the free" is rapidly becoming a tragic joke.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne, too late to recommend.