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.
The Prison Industry in the United States: Big
Business or a New Form of Slavery?
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.
---
Profiting
from another person's misery has been around, since the
beginning of civilizations. But isn't it about time, we stop
this practice and start respecting one another? It will never
happen! Never, as long as people can rationalize that it's
nothing but Business as Usual. I don't have much hope for our
human race, not at the moment when I see how those who
represent and lead us, work... TOO SAD, TOO BAD. Below
another sad tale of a long injustice perpetrated in the name
of GREED. thinkingblue
Private prisons and the
profit motive
Collier
Meyerson, @youngcollier
On Tuesday, the ACLU of Ohio released a timeline tracing
the decline of the country’s first privately- owned prison.
Ohio Governor John Kasich first proposed privatizing prisons
in March of 2011 as a way to climb out of an $8 billion
budget deficit. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and
Correction boasted $3 million in savings “for Ohio
taxpayers compared to similar state facilities.” However,
since being purchased for $72.7 million from the Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison
corporation in the United States, the prison has racked up
countless violations.
In an audit last October, the CCA was slapped with 47
violations including having smaller-than-state standard
housing units: “all housing units prove less than the
requirement of 25 feet of unencumbered space per occupant.”
Later that same year, the CCA failed yet another inspection.
And now, according to Think Progress, the CCA’s Lake Erie
prison “is reportedly overcrowded at 130% capacity, with
single-person cells holding 3 inmates each, according to
internal documents obtained by the ACLU.” Since the U.S.
leads the world in incarcerations with 2.2 million Americans
behind bars, it is no surprise that state budgets are being
overwhelmed by prison costs. But instead of trying to
legislate prison reform, Gov. Kasich decided to delegate
responsibility to private systems that have an incentive to
find ways to keep profits up.
The CCA is not shy about its goals, stating in the
company’s 2010 Annual Report: “We believe we have been
successful in increasing the number of residents in our care
and continue to pursue a number of initiatives intended to
further increase our occupancy and revenue.” DID
THEY REALLY SAY THAT?
The ACLU’s report on the failings of CCA’s Lake Erie
Prison highlights the need for an overhaul in the prison
system, not privatization of it. And there are ways. Last
month, Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, and
Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a Democrat, introduced the Justice
Safety Valve Act, a bill that would begin to alleviate the
problem of overcrowded prisons by altering mandatory minimum
sentences for non-violent drug offenses.
MORE HERE: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/12/private-prisons-and-the-profit-motive/#_=1365850361458&align=right&id=twitter-widget-2&lang=en&screen_name=allinwithchris&show_count=false&show_screen_name=true&size=m
---
Has Slavery Really Ended: A sad tale
regarding a slave auction.
Slave Auction,
1850
In early March 1859 an enormous slave action took place at
the Race Course three miles outside Savannah, Georgia. Four
hundred thirty-six slaves were to be put on the auction block
including men, women, children and infants. Word of the sale
had spread through the South for weeks, drawing potential
buyers from North and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia,
Alabama and Louisiana. All of Savannah's available hotel
rooms and any other lodging spaces were quickly appropriated
by the influx of visitors. In the days running up to the
auction, daily excursions were made from the city to the Race
Course to inspect, evaluate and determine an appropriate bid
for the human merchandise on display.
The sale's magnitude was the result of the break-up of an old
family estate that included two plantations. The majority of
the slaves had never been sold before. Most had spent their
entire lives on one of the two plantations included in the
sale. The rules of the auction stipulated that the slaves
would be sold as "families" - defined as a husband
and wife and any offspring. However, there was no guarantee
that this rule would be adhered to in all cases.
The sale gained such renown that it attracted the attention
of Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune, one of
America's most influential newspapers at the time. Greeley
was an abolitionist and staunchly opposed to slavery. He sent
a reporter to cover the auction in order to reveal to his
readers the barbarity inherent in one human being's ability
to own and sell another.
Preparation...
"The slaves remained at the race-course, some of them
for more than a week and all of them for four days before the
sale. They were brought in thus early that buyers who desired
to inspect them might enjoy that privilege, although none of
them were sold at private sale. For these preliminary days
their shed was constantly visited by speculators. The negroes
were examined with as little consideration as if they had
been brutes indeed; the buyers pulling their mouths open to
see their teeth, pinching their limbs to find how muscular
they were, walking them up and down to detect any signs of
lameness, making them stoop and bend in different ways that
they might be certain there was no concealed rupture or
wound; and in addition to all this treatment, asking them
scores of questions relative to their qualifications and
accomplishments.
All these humiliations were submitted to without a murmur and
in some instances with good-natured cheerfulness - where the
slave liked the appearance of the proposed buyer, and fancied
that he might prove a kind 'mas'r.'
The following curiously sad scene is the type of a score of
others that were there enacted:
'Elisha,' chattel No. 5 in the catalogue, had taken a fancy
to a benevolent looking middle-aged gentleman, who was
inspecting the stock, and thus used his powers of persuasion
to induce the benevolent man to purchase him, with his wife,
boy and girl, Molly, Israel and Sevanda, chattels Nos. 6, 7
and 8. The earnestness with which the poor fellow pressed his
suit, knowing, as he did, that perhaps the happiness of his
whole life depended on his success, was interesting, and the
arguments he used were most pathetic. He made no appeal to
the feelings of the buyer; he rested no hope on his charity
and kindness, but only strove to show how well worth his
dollars were the bone and blood he was entreating him to buy.
'Look at me, Mas'r; am prime rice planter; sho' you won't
find a better man den me; no better on de whole plantation;
not a bit old yet; do mo' work den ever; do carpenter work,
too, little; better buy me, Mas'r; I'se be good sarvant,
Mas'r. Molly, too, my wife, Sa, fus rate rice hand; mos as
good as me. Stan' out yer, Molly, and let the gen'lm'n see.'
Molly advances, with her hands crossed on her bosom, and
makes a quick short curtsy, and stands mute, looking
appealingly in the benevolent man's face. But Elisha talks
all the faster.
'Show mas'r yer arm Molly - good arm dat mas'r - she do a
heap of work mo' with dat arm yet. Let good mas'r see yer
teeth Molly - see dat mas'r, teeth all reg'lar, all good -
she'm young gal yet. Come out yer Israel, walk aroun' an' let
the gen'lm'n see how spry you be.'
Then, pointing to the three-year-old girl who stood with her
chubby hand to her mouth, holding on to her mother's dress,
and uncertain what to make of the strange scene.
'Little Vardy's on'y a chile yet; make prime gal by-and-by.
Better buy us mas'r, we'm fus' rate bargain" - and so
on. But the benevolent gentleman found where he could drive a
closer bargain, and so bought somebody else..."
The Sale...
"The buyers, who were present to the number of about two
hundred, clustered around the platform; while the Negroes,
who were not likely to be immediately wanted, gathered into
sad groups in the background to watch the progress of the
selling in which they were so sorrowfully interested. The
wind howled outside, and through the open side of the
building the driving rain came pouring in; the bar down
stairs ceased for a short time its brisk trade; the buyers
lit fresh cigars, got ready their catalogues and pencils, and
the first lot of human chattels are led upon the stand, not
by a white man, but by a sleek mulatto, himself a slave, and
who seems to regard the selling of his brethren, in which he
so glibly assists, as a capital joke. It had been announced
that the Negroes would be sold in "families," that
is to say; a man would not be parted from his wife, or a
mother from a very young child. There is perhaps as much
policy as humanity in this arrangement, for thereby many aged
and unserviceable people are disposed of, who otherwise would
not find a ready sale...
...The expression on the faces of all who stepped on the
block was always the same, and told of more anguish than it
is in the power of words to express. Blighted homes, crushed
hopes and broken hearts was (sic) the sad story to be read in
all the anxious faces. Some of them regarded the sale with
perfect indifference, never making a motion save to turn from
one side to the other at the word of the dapper Mr. Bryan,
that all the crowd might have a fair view of their
proportions, and then, when the sale was accomplished,
stepping down from the block without caring to cast even a
look at the buyer, who now held all their happiness in his
hands. Others, again, strained their eyes with eager glances
from one buyer to another as the bidding went on, trying with
earnest attention to follow the rapid voice of the
auctioneer. Sometimes, two persons only would be bidding for
the same chattel, all the others having resigned the contest,
and then the poor creature on the block, conceiving an
instantaneous preference for one of the buyers over the
other, would regard the rivalry with the intensest (sic)
interest, the expression of his face changing with every bid,
settling into a half smile of joy if the favorite buyer
persevered unto the end and secured the property, and
settling down into a look of hopeless despair if the other
won the victory... MORE HERE:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/slaveauction.htm
