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 Prison...a place for bad people or what ?

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Wisdom
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Wisdom


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PostSubject: Prison...a place for bad people or what ?   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeFri Jun 05, 2009 11:50 am

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Prison...a place for bad people or money for the government ?



U.S. prison industry: big business or a new form of slavery?

U.S. prison industry: 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. There are over 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 percent of the world’’s prison population but only 5 percent 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 1 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 and 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 percent 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 percent of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93 percent of paints and paintbrushes; 92 percent of stove assembly; 46 percent of body armor; 36 percent of home appliances; 30 percent of headphones, microphones and speakers; and 21 percent 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. 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. * 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. * More punishment of prisoners, so as to lengthen their sentences. 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 percent of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93 percent 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.

During the post-Civil War period, Jim Crow racial segregation laws were imposed on every state, with legal segregation in schools, housing, marriages and many other aspects of daily life. "Today, a new set of markedly racist laws is imposing slave labor and sweatshops on the criminal justice system, now known as the prison industry complex," comments the Left Business Observer. Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’’s, Revlon, Macy’’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generated by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions."

At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month. Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

Oregon state Rep. Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that "there won’’t be any transportation costs; we’’re offering you competitive prison labor (here)." Private prisons The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s under the governments of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. but reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton’’s program for cutting the cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Department’’s contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates. Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75 percent. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, "The secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners." The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, they get 30 days added - which means more profits for CCA.

According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons. Importing and exporting inmates Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state’’s governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.

After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 - ending court supervision and decisions - caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering "rent-a-cell" services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner. Statistics Ninety-seven percent of 125,000 federal inmates have been convicted of non-violent crimes. It is believed that more than half of the 623,000 inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they are accused of. Of these, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of the one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses. Sixteen percent of the country’’s 2 million prisoners suffer from mental illness.
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PostSubject: Re: Prison...a place for bad people or what ?   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeFri Jun 05, 2009 9:03 pm

great post
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Uratsukudoji
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PostSubject: well done   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeThu Jul 09, 2009 1:16 pm

I admire greatly the amount of information you have put together here.
It is as you clearly state a industry and a facist one in my opinion.
We went from andy griffith to robo cop in a very short amount of time.
There discovering new technology everyday to create more tax.
theres a camera on every redlight and in every redlight district.
I mean they even have tools for checking the tint on your car windows.
micro rf id tagging of all people like some sort wildlife preserve file,stamp,index and a tracking device in every cell phone.
yeah I think your spot on and you clearly prove your well researched case to me.
Of course your preaching to the choir here I been aware of this control matrix since I was a boy.
really the way I have come to see it is yeah there all these people chained to the floor being used for slave labor but we outside the prisons are still being forced into a sortive lock down system of what is normal what your supposed to do.

Sincerely thanks and I would ask you have you ever heard of a man named Jordan Maxwell?
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Vana
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PostSubject: Re: Prison...a place for bad people or what ?   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeSat Jul 11, 2009 3:23 am

Thank-you. I have wanted to write something like this myself. Some of the same troubling information has come to my attention also. I might add, that the numbers for the 'prison-industrial complex' are look to be quite similar in the mental-health complex too; big numbers for non-voluntary committal.

My MO for philosophy is that first-person testimony is very important. So if time allows me to get on this project in the future, I would distribute this essay to convicts etc to get their reaction.
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Uratsukudoji
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PostSubject: Re: Prison...a place for bad people or what ?   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeSat Jul 11, 2009 4:09 pm

Vana wrote:
I might add, that the numbers for the 'prison-industrial complex' are look to be quite similar in the mental-health complex too; big numbers for non-voluntary committal.
I always wionder how many people in mental institutions are just having a sort of shamanic experiance I wonder if in anciet times they might be higley regarded as some sort of soothsayer instead of locked away in a cell.
the rain man comes to mind.
I think it more our ignorance than our lack of knowledge that allows for this many peope to be literally stored in a cell at low cost and used to create more cell for more people.
This is like the borg from star trek in the baby stages of its evolution this alot more dire than most people realize but i remain hopeful because people are starting to realize this.

I think its very convienient how many people are jail for many years for posseing a plant.
I think its little strange these drugs come from countries that we help fight guerila warfare in.
I think its its a crime against humanity when children die over cocain farmer wars.
I think its pretty silly we have gang warfare in usa over drug dealing territory.
Plant like cannabis were always used by people for medicine and cocain is still used in hospitals.
I dont think anyone has the right to tell another person you cant have this plant or that for what ever use medicinal,shamanic,ritualistic,religous or hedonistic it doesnt matter its our.
There wouldnt be any drug dealers if there werent prohibition.
There wouldnt be cocain wars well anywhere and people of columbia could better thier lives and not have there children blown up by land mines.
There would far less people in jail therfore far less jails and we could save alot broken up families.
The ilegel allure of hedonistic drug use would likley fade in a pretyy short time.
The problem has many faces I think it has tentecals but who is in control what is to blame??????
We are.
all we have to do is step away from this like dropping an unwanted piece of luggage.
I am currently involved in researching communal living and permacultur farming combined with micro-energy genration and artful use of land and building with natural materials.
We dont have to live in the control matrix we dont have to do anything careless chancers agree law is.
well sorry if thats seems a little deep or off the wall but the general normal conversation topics you would get out of me Shocked
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Vana
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PostSubject: Re: Prison...a place for bad people or what ?   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeSun Jul 12, 2009 4:15 am

What you say is very sound, especially,

Quote :
all we have to do is step away from this like dropping an unwanted piece of luggage.
This is the view I have also arrived at.

Head for the hills.

No one can win fighting the police, prison, etc. Avoidance. Or in healthier terms: non-violent resistance.

I did some google stalking on the OP, discovered who I think is the author, and investigated that a bit. Then I ended up here, http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/ , a few PMs and my anger with this changed into deep sadness as I chatted a bit with some of the others who suffer in this: for every man in prison, there is a woman, children, mothers and friends who are destroyed in the process too.
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Uratsukudoji
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PostSubject: nelson rockefeller   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeSat Jul 18, 2009 1:35 am

Nelson Rockefeller just like the old saying "the apple doesnt fall to far from the tree"

wisdom wrote:
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


This particular family has been destroying the freedom of america for quite some time now I cant understand how people are so ignorant to this we even name things after them as if they were doing something good for us.

There might be a good rockefeller out there but I never heard of one yet.

Oh and of course there will be the thought in peoples minds "well you are just a drug addict and want drugs legal" no really thats just one brick in the wall of this massive slow ongoing effort to enslave mankind.

They are even trying to make home schooling your children ilegal and there trying to pass it into law in the middle of the night in the cap and trade bill.
The reason for this is far more sinister than many people might think it all has to do with indoctrination into the system and the destruction of free thinking people. They want every child stuck with a vaccine that contains mercury that are now being linked to autisim and any child showing the least sign of rebellion will be urged into taking redilin wich destroy certain functions of the brain on permenately.
There kiling our humanity what makes people free thinking and creative.
well ill leave you with a song.
DON HENLEY

Inside Job

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Vana
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PostSubject: Re: Prison...a place for bad people or what ?   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitimeSat Jul 18, 2009 11:53 am

Prison...a place for bad people or what ? A4736486612b

The thing runs on money, labor, resource, desire, and fear. Deny all these to the enemy. But who's the terrorist?

Let's be direct about this, you are. Let's give you a name: American.

On the outside: Do not buy American products. Do not pay tax to an American government. Do not work for an American company. Do not serve the American Army. These things are all a matter of choice. They are non-violent. The Americans can try to force us to buy their water, their food, cotton, labor, and so on; in fact we are almost compelled if we live in an American occupied city: there is nowhere to sit or sleep, nothing to eat or drink, that is not American owned and the purchaseand of which further fuels the system. We need to be vigilant, most people have forgotten about rain barrels, cisterns, any horticultural knowledge, few retain even cooking skills, sewing, basic carpentry. We can live without the Americans but the solution is not ready-made, it is not going to be convenient. (But it is going to be a lot fresher, healthier, free-er...)

On the inside: Do not be afraid of Americans. No not covet material things. The Americans want you to be afraid, because they are afraid. They are afraid for losing their material possessions, and their lives. The Americans control almost the whole physical world. They control all the land, all the water, trees, animals and bodies; and they do this with massive irresistible force. The Americans can and will use everything you have against you. They will take your money, your land, and your children. The Americans will eradicate your father and your brother with Oxygenated-Poly-Vortex Bombs. They will hold you in shackles, humiliate you, torture you, and you can not die. The internal strength that we need to overcome the Americans is not small. If we hate the Americans and fight them, we become them, we must renounce all the fear and all the desire that the Americans are and have implanted -- that we have taken into -- our hearts our minds.
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PostSubject: Re: Prison...a place for bad people or what ?   Prison...a place for bad people or what ? Icon_minitime

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