Prison Nation

[SocialistLez]

Recently on the Bill Moyers Journal they talk about the high rate of incarceration in this country.
It's an issue seldom talked about.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3233450

^ Websites like that sort of keep me up at night.
It also pisses the hell out of me.

We talk a lot about military industrial complex and sometimes the health industrial complex but what about the prison-industrial complex?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4beUC3-ckw

Wouldn't it be nice if some of our prisons were run this way?

[valerief]

1. Prisoners, the new slaves. nt

[SocialistLez]

2. In LA, prisoners pick cotton nt

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

7. really, not just figuratively ?

not being bitchy just finding it hard to believe.

[SocialistLez]

8. From the first link I posted

"Angola is a former slave plantation which still maintains a massive (18,000 acres) farming operation run wholly without machinery. Inmates- overwhelmingly black- still pick cotton by hand there, along with soybeans. They work the fields with hand tools just like in the "good old days." Some of the guards there are directly descended from the slave-drivers who worked there when it was a slave plantation. Inmates also maintain a large golf course for use by the staff."


Their source: http://www.counterpunch.org/flaherty06102008.html

The fact that in Louisiana, ONE out of every 45 people is in Prison is pretty scary...and depressing.

[daleanime]

10. One out of 45?

That's insane!:wtf: No wonder we going broke, but I do wonder what their being charged with? May have to poke around and see what I can find.

[SocialistLez]

11. Probably drug related stuff

The movie "American Violet" brings up a lot of questions.
Basically a Texas Sheriff (I think that was his title) was targeting blacks in his county/city and one woman decided to fight back.
I'd Netflix it if you have that. I got it through my local library. I know not everyone's public library offers DVDs and especially current DVDs at that.

[tiptoe]

13. .

[kenichol]

14. Woo woo timing

I swear that just today, I requested our local library buy American Violet. It had been recommended by anti-drug-war friends and then it was recommended at our local Racism Forum group. I had Netflix'ed it, loved it (and hated it...great movie) so I figured it was time for our library to have it. Our library is great about getting movies a patron requests. We just got The Vagina Monologues and V-Day that way.

[daleanime]

3. How much would it help our debt...

if we cut the number of prisoners in half?

[SocialistLez]

5. A lot

Think of all the private companies we pay to run prisons, provide food to prisons, the staff at the bureau of prisons,etc.

"Prisons cost taxpayers more than $32 billion a year. Every year that an inmate spends in prison costs $22,000. An individual sentenced to five years for a $300 theft costs the public more than $100,000. The cost of a life term averages $1.5 million.

States are spending more money on prisons than education. Over the course of the last 20 years, the amount of money spent on prisons was increased by 570% while that spent on elementary and secondary education was increased by only 33%. "

Source: http://www.heartsandminds.org/prisons/facts.htm

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

9. to be fair, i agree nonviolent crimes should not warrant prison terms

look at WHO WENT TO PRISON OVER THE BANKING COLLAPSE no one.
but the link you provided my last response was not on your original post as your subject link stated

it is not only cost of incarceration but cost of restarting ones life that needs to be taken into account We lost this issue when the right wing pushed mandatory minimums and took a lot discretion for the Judges.

Thank You, for all your efforts to reignite this issue

[SocialistLez]

12. The board I linked to

has a lot of people posting different articles from different websites.
Sorry if that was confusing.

[TheDebbieDee]

4. An 2008 article from TIME magazine stated that the US

has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners..........

Sending people to jail is a money-making industry for some.

[HillbillyBob]

6. Oh and try out being inprisoned for a minor crime

One that I did not even commit. It was a crime committed against me when a former roomie (not boyfriend ) that I took in to try to help.
I put him out when he slugged me because I would not give him the rent money I had put back for rent of course.

Broke in slammed a heavy cast aluminum skillet in my face then called the cops and said he was a visitor and I was trying to kill him..

Well all in all they held me for 8 months I should hve been out on no bail the next day, but was held in a for profit prison in Fla that got 1200$ or so a day for 'keeping' me, I was and am a full blown AIDs patient, I got 1 azt and 2 one a day vitamins and 2 green baloney sandwiches (which I could not eat) a day. Fortunately they were afraid of getting aids from me so I did not get more than pushed around. Another friend was held for 2 extra weeks on a dui charge. He was driving home from work at a bar he was a dj and did not drink on the job. He was getting sick and pulled in his drive way and just sat there for a few minutes gathering his strength and is long term hiv *24 yrs at that time. A cop pulls in behind him and drags him out of the car and smashes his face against the roof of the car hauls him in dazed and feverish. They held him for several weeks with me trying to get him out and I was threatened with arrest and holding for losin my patience because Bobby Brown and Witless Huston (broward county during all that BB shit) the florida pigs insist you respect them while they threaten you with beating and these assholes are not really cops they are Whackenhut(sic) pigs. They also withheld meds from him too. When I got out I had to be taken straight to ICU since prior to that I was being treated IV for Cytomegalovirus(2 4 hrs a day hooked up to an iv pump).
Our kountry is a police state and some states are way worse than others and border crossings are a nightmare. We got turned back at Canada when we were in Vermont, we wanted to go see Montreal and did not have passports you would think I had committed murder or political assassination the way I was treated. Hell we literally wanted to do a tourist thing and go to Montreal and find a nice french restaruant and the BAstard on the American side was so fuckinggodamrude asshole. At least the Canadians said Mr to me.