Private Prisons Threaten To Sue States Unless They Get More Inmates For Free Labor

[Judi Lynn]

Private Prisons Threaten To Sue States Unless They Get More Inmates For Free Labor
Published: August 27, 2015

Freedom is apparently bad for business. That’s the message from the private prison industry which is threatening to sue states if they don’t start locking more people up. The private prison companies, well-known for profiting off of incarceration and crime, is now saying that the state’s they have contracted with aren’t keeping up their end of the bargain. The private prisons rely on a certain number of inmates for free and virtually-free slave labor.

That labor is used for a variety of trades, including making uniforms for popular restaurants like McDonalds and Applebee’s. But if the private prisons don’t have enough inmates locked up then production goes down correlative with the decrease in free labor (i.e. slavery).

It comes as a surprise to many Americans, but slavery was never actually abolished in the United States. That’s not a metaphor, it’s a matter of careful reading of the 13th amendment to the Constitution. That amendment – often lauded for abolishing slavery – actually makes an exception for prisons. Slavery is still completely legal as “punishment for a crime.”

USA Today explains the following:

Ratified at the end of the Civil War, the amendment abolished slavery, with one critical exception: Slavery and involuntary servitude actually remain lawful “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” In other words, according to this so-called punishment clause, if you get pulled over with the wrong controlled substance in your trunk, there’s nothing in the 13th Amendment to ensure you can’t be considered a slave of the state.

The punishment clause was taken directly from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and reflected the belief of the time that hard work was essential to prisoners’ moral rehabilitation. But the language was also ambiguous enough to be grossly abused. Soon, the clause was being used to reinstitute slavery under another guise.

More:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Private_Prisons_Threaten_To_Sue_States_Unless_They_Get_More_Inmates_For_Free_Labor/45911/0/38/38/Y/M.html

[Live and Learn]

1. This is a disgusting practice and one nobody should support. nt

[emsimon33]

2. Prisons should never have been rivatized

p

[LuvNewcastle]

3. It's called the minimum wage for a reason.

If you work, you should at least be making that much. I would be willing to let prisoners take a pay cut for a reduced sentence, if the offense was non-violent. But there would have to be a definite rate set up that determines how much time for how many hours of work.

A lot of prisons are self-supporting now. They grow and cook their own food, do cleanup work and other jobs. I think only those inmates should work. I don't like factories setting up shop in prisons; it just seems sleazy to me.

[Ilsa]

4. We need to end this. Privatization has to stop.

It's immoral. I think we can get clergy on board, also, and I don't mean just African American clergy, if that's what anyone was thinking. This problem also affects non-black families who have siblings with drug abuse issues.

Privatizing doesn't save money. It costs more in the long run with lives ruined as they are sacrificed to fill prison quotas.

[UCmeNdc]

5. Modern Slavery

Isn't this how those ship captains used to man their ships in the 1800's?

Leading to the term Shanghaied?

[Scuba]

6. K&R

Thanks Judi Lynn!

[annabanana]

7. Didn't slave and prisoner labor used to be illegal?

(once upon a time in America)

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

8. "The private prisons rely on a certain number of inmates for free and virtually-free slave labor."

And slavery is the right word too. The New Jim Crow is alive and well in the U.S.

[packman]

9. Bargain with the devil

"That’s the message from the private prison industry which is threatening to sue states if they don’t start locking more people up. The private prison companies, well-known for profiting off of incarceration and crime, is now saying that the state’s they have contracted with aren’t keeping up their end of the bargain. The private prisons rely on a certain number of inmates for free and virtually-free slave labor. "

What a pact - was it done during a Blood Moon with the slaying of a pig and drinking blood. The state and prison industry bargaining over the lives of people.
Wonder where they will get the bodies from to fill the prisons? Want to bet it won't be in white, suburban neighborhoods.

[Tsiyu]

15. Private prison profiteers, owners, investors (many in Congress) are EVIL

Each and every one wears the face of whatever grotesque, bloodthirsty, malevolent demon you might muster. They are sick, twisted humans who would rather invent crimes to profit off of human sweat and despair, who would rather destroy families, bank accounts, jobs, futures, educations, than create decent jobs, opportunities, health care, or education.

They would rather spread doom and darkness and separate babies from their parents than bring light or help build healthy communities. They pretend to know what "wholesome" is ------when their skin is stuffed with venom.

They don't have enough of everything yet, even though they damned near have it all. They are putrid filth whose graves, if they survive the instantaneous wrath of the masses, will be spit upon for eternity.

They have sold out humanity for their many pieces of silver, and "good, clean middle class" American voters let them get way with it.

Thanks, Congress. Thanks Private Prison enablers. May you and the ones you fellate find endings 15 million times as evil as the conditions you've created for humanity in your time.

[Uncle Joe]

10. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Judi Lynn.

[colsohlibgal]

11. Of Course They Are

So much here and in the world is just so messed up now. We shouldn't have private prisons to begin with.

I always have wanted to visit Paris but not now, the hordes of people trying to escape the crazies in the Middle East are just overrunning Europe - we can thank Doofus Dubya for destabilizing it all.

Then because the terrorist NRA and other gun nuts will not allow any kind of serious gun control our mass shootings persist including shooting newscasters on air now.

Climate change is causing lots of problems, it will only get worse but the crazy party AKA the republicans, refuse to acknowledge it.

A large part of the USA and the world needs to regain sanity.

[truedelphi]

12. Children from poor families are now being sent off to prison

Between the ages of five and seven years of age!

What used to land a kid in the principal's office is now resulting in kids not only being imprisoned, but being encased in restraining outfits that enclose the entire body, with no eye holes and only a small hole for the nose and mouth.

With shackles also!

Harry Bellafonte and others have been working on this issue.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

13. Not trying to be snarky...

...but if you're being serious, can you provide some credible links where we might be able to confirm some of this.

Thanks in advance.

[Doctor_J]

14. here's a link to a starting point

http://www.colorlines.com/articles/another-6-yr-old-handcuffs-harry-belafonte-child-incarceration

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

17. Our country has gone...

... absolutely nuts--a six year old taken away in cuffs.

[truedelphi]

16. Your not being snarky is being noted.

I understand.

The first time that a friend on FB sent me a photo of a youngster in this new restraining gear suit, I thought the link would lead back to "The Onion" or some other satirical board.

But the link led back to a site that was documenting a lot of these events.

I found it very perplexing. Local school boards have decided (for whatever reason) not to intervene in disciplining children, and so the cops are called in to handle what used to be in-school matters.

When I was growing up, back in the early 1960's, one of my grammar school classmates attempted to start a fire in the school basement at a time when all nine hundred of us were there at the school. I think he was suspended for a week, with counseling and other means of stopping his bad behavior employed full tilt until he got himself under control. (This was in a blue collar neighborhood.)

Schools don't go that route these days. In any event, thank Goddess for people like Harry Bellafonte.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

18. Thank you for your response. Parents should be...

...marching into the Principal's office demanding answers over this.

Subjecting youngsters to this kind of trauma should be generating
lawsuits too. I'm sure there are professionals who would testify to
the lasting psychological damage this could do to a child.

Our Police State is really getting way out of control.