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Wonkette: Arizona Can't Function Without Forced Labor, Is That Bad?
See also
Arizona communities would 'collapse' without cheap prison labor, Corrections director says
https://democraticunderground.com/100216927561
https://www.wonkette.com/arizona-can-t-function-without-forced-labor-says-corrections-director
As much as we love to talk about how we have "abolished" slavery in these here United States, there is an exception to the 13th Amendment — involuntary servitude is still legal if it's being used as punishment for a crime. In Arizona, as in many states, prisoners are required to work 40 hours a week for at little as 10 cents an hour, unless their health does not allow it (which is a very big possibility considering a federal judge just found the state's prison healthcare system to be "plainly grossly inadequate" and "unconstitutional" ).
Giving testimony on Thursday before the state Legislature's Joint Legislative Budget Committee about "a Request For Proposal for a contract to run the Florence West prison," Arizona Department of Corrections Director David Shinn explained that many Arizona communities would "collapse" without prison labor. [snip]
According to the ACLU, "charging misdemeanors as felonies, throwing thousands of people behind bars instead of offering drug treatment or diversion services, and abusing prosecutorial power to secure guilty pleas are just some of the tactics used that have led to Arizona’s exceedingly high rate of incarceration."
These things are all connected. They have to pay the private prisons, they have to fill the private prisons, they have to provide slave labor and in order to do that, they have to send a lot of people to prison for a very long time. The first private prisons started in Texas in 1985 and prison populations have since skyrocketed. That's not a coincidence.
[graph showing the rise in incarceration rates from 1925 to 2000]
Giving testimony on Thursday before the state Legislature's Joint Legislative Budget Committee about "a Request For Proposal for a contract to run the Florence West prison," Arizona Department of Corrections Director David Shinn explained that many Arizona communities would "collapse" without prison labor. [snip]
According to the ACLU, "charging misdemeanors as felonies, throwing thousands of people behind bars instead of offering drug treatment or diversion services, and abusing prosecutorial power to secure guilty pleas are just some of the tactics used that have led to Arizona’s exceedingly high rate of incarceration."
These things are all connected. They have to pay the private prisons, they have to fill the private prisons, they have to provide slave labor and in order to do that, they have to send a lot of people to prison for a very long time. The first private prisons started in Texas in 1985 and prison populations have since skyrocketed. That's not a coincidence.
[graph showing the rise in incarceration rates from 1925 to 2000]
As usual, it's all about the money.
From the comments:
Bindersfulohostbodies • 17 minutes ago
Closing the unused private prison is too burdensome for the local communities that their forced labor supports, but it’s also too burdensome to take the taxpayer money saved by closing them, and placing inmates in the empty beds of the state-owned prisons that taxpayers already paid for, and using the saved tax dollars to support those local communities that lost their forced labor support structures. Got it.
Closing the unused private prison is too burdensome for the local communities that their forced labor supports, but it’s also too burdensome to take the taxpayer money saved by closing them, and placing inmates in the empty beds of the state-owned prisons that taxpayers already paid for, and using the saved tax dollars to support those local communities that lost their forced labor support structures. Got it.
alwayspunkindrublic • 44 minutes ago
Douglas A. Blackmon's "Slavery By Another Name" should be required reading in this fucking country. It details how, in the case of Black folks in the South, slavery simply reinvented itself, incentivizing the arrest of Black citizens for the most ludicrous and petty of offenses, so that they could be leased at a profit to private businesses for forced convict labor. This is just another shithook wrinkle in a story that's been going on since Emancipation.
Douglas A. Blackmon's "Slavery By Another Name" should be required reading in this fucking country. It details how, in the case of Black folks in the South, slavery simply reinvented itself, incentivizing the arrest of Black citizens for the most ludicrous and petty of offenses, so that they could be leased at a profit to private businesses for forced convict labor. This is just another shithook wrinkle in a story that's been going on since Emancipation.
2 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
So disturbing in so many ways. 