This is the current, standard model of the crime/population ratio but today, we are facing less than standard conditions, leading to an even greater problem within the judicial system. Not only is the human rights issue and the legal enslavement of people at the forefront, the financial burden on Federal government becomes enormous.
To compensate for the decrease of federal dollars
going to the care of prisoners and to sate the requirements for more space by a
growing police state, the Department of Corrections began to look elsewhere for
financing of in its endeavors to continue the incarceration of so many of our people.
It would of course, make too much sense for our government to reform sentencing and fix our broken judicial system. In lieu of otherwise, reasonable solutions, the D.O.C., operating within the insanity of our corrupt political system, has opened up the market to for-profit based companies to invest in it.
Joel explains this relationship:
"An example (of corporate run prisons) is General Electric Government Services, a subsidiary of General Electric Company, which took over RCA Service Company two years ago. General Electric Government Services now runs the Weaversville Intensive Treatment Unit, a juvenile institution in Pennsylvania established by RCA Service Company in 1975.
Responding to Pennsylvania's urgent request for a high-security juvenile facility, RCA converted an empty state-owned building into a correction center in just ten days and positioned its staff to run the operation. In addition to the Weaversville Center, General Electric Government Services runs the Evaluation and Treatment Center in Rhode Island and the Bensalem Youth Development Center in Pennsylvania. Another significant development is the growth of joint venture agreements between local firms and national corporations."
So now, not only is General Electric one of the largest weapons manufacturer s in the U.S. and seemingly tax exempt from Federal rolls, they are now investing heavily in the private prison industry. (One cannot help but see the philosophical parallel to the imprisonment of our Nation in our current prison of National debt and the decreasing personal, financial security as its corporate controllers attack education and worker representation.)
U.S. Corrections Corporation, a private company headquartered in Louisville to date, runs over 60 prisons in about 20 U.S. states plus Washington, DC. CCA has contracts with federal, state, and local governments to run the prisons. The company owns most of the facilities and provides rehabilitation services for inmates. Begun in 1983, it is the largest prison corporation in the U.S. Only the federal government and three states have larger prison systems. The company trades on the New York Stock Exchange with the symbol CXW. In 2006, revenue was $1.3 billion with profits of $105 million.
With numbers like these, it is no mystery why the soulless machine of Capitalism would attach itself to this new form of human usury. How many people have to be imprisoned to satisfy this insatiable machine? In this age of degrading social morals and political ethics, one would easily be led to believe this form of prisoner slavery is a new one but it is not. In 1893, Fredrick Douglas wrote of this system being in place and using the black culture as the largest contributor to it.
Today, the system has not changed much. Still, the ratio of black inmates to the rest of the prison population is imbalanced and prisoners are still working for the man. One could justifiably argue that it teaches work ethic, responsibility and serves as payment on their debt to society but when this debt payment becomes the profit of the corporate interest; the means do not justify the ends especially considering how many "free men" are out of work right now.
To this author, the symbolic poignancy of this reality confirms the growing opinion that the corporatists want the American worker to be as slave labor by way of China's efficient model. In the same way that NAFTA effectively lowered farm worker's pay scale in America and Mexico, this new prison labor system is allowing jobs normally held by freemen to be given to this growing, slave labor market.
With the abolition of Union representation and the ongoing "attraction" of business into individual States, the issue of labor costs and tax breaks working in concert, have come to the forefront in the political game of American industry reclamation. With prisons providing workers and States, tax breaks through defunding social programs, even our private lives have become prisons of their own. The jailers have taken the form of CEOs and Governor's paid for by them. The main difference though, is this prison often does not provide "three hots and a cot".
Instead of reducing Federal and State sentencing mandates and increasing funding to help our citizens cope with an increasingly stressful social environment through outreach programs, those who are supposed to be representing and protecting our freedoms have made concessions to corporations in order to increase the number of prisons in our country and their associated free labor pool.
Does this remind anyone of any time in the History of our Nation when labor was used to the benefit of the Landowners and not the labor force? If it doesn't, you may want to pick up a history book and read about pre-Civil War days when decades of slavery created a great deal of wealth for a few while imprisoning an entire people. Maybe then you will realize the damaging course this nation has embarked upon. They say history is cyclical and no where is this more horrifying than in our present Incarceration Nation.
This article was originally written for an interview with New Dissident Radio's Lakota Phillips on Breaking Taboo.
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