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Thursday, December 31, 2009

HoW CoMpAnIe$ MaKe MoNeY OfF PrI$OnEr$ - " ArBeIt MaChT FrEi " - OnLy In AmErIkA!!!

The Prison-Industrial Complex - Thursday, December 21, 2009

By Byron E. Price, associate professor, political science department, and interim director, Barbara Jordan Institute for Policy Research

Dr. Byron Price is a black scholar with a mission. His book, 'Merchandizing Prisoners' opens the door for a discussion on how the African American community is being financially pillaged by the prison industry. You may not know this, but private corporations earn money from inmate incarceration and have a direct financial incentive to house more. This is a problem, since unfocused profit maximization does not leave much room for prisoner rehabilitation. Dr. Price is one of the leading scholars in America, and he has taken it upon himself to help solve this problem.

According to National Union of Public and General Employees, "This book examines the steady growth of private, for-profit prison firms and the correctional-commercial complex that has developed tangentially with the private prison industry." It also details the strange bedfellows that have been brought together to expand this industry.

===snipped===>Texas Prison Bid'ness

Corporations such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the Geo Group (formerly Wakenhut), Avalon Correctional Services, Cornell Companies and Industry Property Management. CCA has a $2 billion market cap, followed by the Geo Group with a $922 million market cap. The money is made by contracting out the inmates' labor to Fortune 500 companies and, in some cases, they compete for public works contracts. CCA and the others are making money, and their stock trades on the stock exchange. Telecommunications industries pay prisons to put pay phones in prisons. Pay phones in prisons make $15,000 a day. Transportation companies and all sorts of cottage industries develop around the prison industry. UNICOR, or Federal Prison Industries, created by Congress, was one of the first prison industries established to exploit inmate labor. States also pay a per diem per inmate to private prison corporations.



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.

===snipped===> "And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don


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