There are lot of ways to measure the integrity and or
goodness of a person. One way that
always seems interesting is how does a person treat his or her enemies. Do you treat them hatefully and reduce them
to racist caricatures or do you treat them as equals who are simply
irreconcilably different. I can only
hope I’m with the later not the former.
I know I’m often grumpy, stubborn and entirely judgmental. Fortunately I have been taught how to
distance myself from a situation to look back rationally with a clear and level
head to make decisions on a person or persons.
I also try to constantly revise this decision and not, simply, stay with
my initial reaction or sentiment.
I breach this subject because I think it is worthwhile to
look at how our country treats its ‘enemies’ or ‘undesirables’. Specifically our overwhelmingly large prison
population. If America is to be judged
in this manner the country does not look so good. By not look so good I mean something a might
bit past Draconian.
Let me throw some statistics at your incredulous face. I encourage you to check these out and prove
me wrong.
“The United State has the highest prison population rate in
the world.”* This means we imprison more
people on average than any of the axis of evil type places. Or any of those scary places out there who
doesn’t love freedom as much as us. Because
we love freedom so much. Yeah, that last
sentence reads different with the whole we incarcerate a lot of people
knowledge.
“Annual state spending on corrections tops $51 billion and states spend on
average two and a half times more per prisoner than per public school
pupil.* … Federal spending on prisons totaled $6.6 billion in
fiscal year 2012.*” So we spend a
whole lot of money on the corrections industry and it is an industry. I use this term because a lot of it is
privatized. How much so? We just ask the Corrections Corporation of
America or CCA (http://www.cca.com/). It’s like Omnicorp but with less murder... I
think. I shit you not. The website even has a cheesy eighties
feeling video package. Robocop reminded us of corporate greed running
amok in law enforcement during the eighties and how that might not be such a
good thing and now we have this. Of
course Verhoeven is half insane admitted Robocop was essentially the American version
of Jesus ( He walked on water, died and came back et cetera, the American part came
with the whole lot of violence and explosions) so I’m not sure what level of advice
we should take from him.
Privatization is not always a good thing. Why, you might ask? Because privatization means they are running
things for profit. And correction and
crime should not be a profit industry.
There isn’t profit without criminals.
So there is an incentive for crime or more specifically an incentive for
people to be jailed. What do I mean by
this?
Let’s talk about Lousianna when we talk about how scary
these things are. I mention this state because
they are the worlds prison capital**.
This shit chills me to the core.
If we are such a great and
wonderful nation why aren’t we acting like it?
Why are so many citizens in jail?
And why is the preponderance of these individuals poor and of non Caucasian
ethnic backgrounds? Obviously racism in
this case is essential setup to justify this unfair incarceration. The racism is encouraged because jailing
people make more money. And its harder
to jail people who have good money to fight bogus charges. And minorities tend to have less money due to
things like, you know, racism.
So in Louisiana where there are for profit prison guess who
are part of the prison entrepreneurs? If
you said county sheriffs you are either as or more cynical than I am or read
the same articles. I wonder if it’s a bad
thing for law enforcement to make money off of prisoner count. What with “Each inmate is worth $24.39 a day”**
you could make a few dollars.
So how can there be meaningful reform and lowering of crime
when it is financially encouraged to have more people imprisoned? Well it kind of can’t. But you can just create crime. Or well you know you could bring people up on
false charges and make it hard to fight back.
Or get in the way of legal reform to change drug laws. Drug laws are reasonably important as about
half of our prisoners are there for nonviolent drug related crime. So if we made drug legal we’d have our prison
population overnight? Well… yeah. Here some more stats on violent and violent
crimes as represented by percentage of prisoners***:
Drugs 50.7%
Public-order 35.0%,
Violent 7.9%
Property 5.8%
Other 0.7%
I guess that means that crime that isn’t violent or with an immediate victim is the vast majority of those imprisoned. And what do I mean by immediate victim. Selling drugs doesn’t steal or take away from others. It might not be good but it’s not theft and it’s certainly not violent.
But do we really imprison or punish those who shouldn’t be
for money. Yes, yes we do. Wrongful imprisonment laws only flex for
those who can turn over on others. So
the lowest links or unfortunates get screwed.
As per usual. What this means is
if I get caught involved with drugs and I roll over on my supplier I get a
wrist slap but if I’m an unsuspecting Texas grandmother who has used a mule
without knowledge I get sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of
parole (and it’s my first offense) because I have no juicy knowledge to lead to
a higher up. I only wish I was
kidding.****
So we aren’t in a state of reform. We want criminals. IT makes some of these no so nice guys a
whole slew of money. But at least its
not dangerous… I’m not even going to finish that. I’m just going to pretend
that during Katrina that whole disaster the country had not long ago that
exposed some of the festering racism, classism and hate we still harbored as
nation was only partially reported. It’s
not like 600 or so prisoners might be elft to die while officers fled the
scene. Shit…*****
And we wonder why other countries think low of us. If these is how we treat our own citizens how
do we treat others. Oh yeah, Abu Ghraib.
I can only hope that America does not continue down this
road of privatizations and making money off of legal loopholes and ruining
lives. Because maybe the prison for six
months didn’t mentally scar you but the whole being a felon might ruin the rest
for your life. Because it super easy to
find job nowadays with a clean record, especially a good one. But money will always compete with basic
human compassion and kindness.
Damn it America, I wish I knew how to quit you.
Ben
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Thanks for posting. You are awesome!