The realities of mass US incarceration

[madmusic]

In a few hours, I will be heading off to Boston to participate in a weekend workshop at Harvard Law School entitled "Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice." I will be talking about what I have called, in the title of my draft paper, "The Problem of Over-Punishment."

Fittingly, as I gear up for my trip, I found (thanks to this post at Corrections Community) a new intriguing Fact Sheet from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency that compares United States incarceration rates with those of other countries around the world. Here are highlights (or should I say lowlights) from the fact sheet:

* The US incarcerates the largest number of people in the world.
* The incarceration rate in the US is four times the world average.
* Some individual US states imprison up to six times as many people as do nations of comparable population.
* The US imprisons the most women in the world.
* Crime rates do not account for incarceration rates.
* The US has less than 5% of the world’s population but over 23% of the world's incarcerated people.

And we are supposedly a country founded on freedom? We may talk the talk about liberty, be we certainly do not walk the walk in the way we approach and apply our criminal justice system.

source: http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2006/11/the_realities_o.html

[blogslut]

1. Warehouses for the poor

And moneymakers for their creators = American prisons

[Kagemusha]

2. One of these is not like the others

"Crime rates do not account for incarceration rates." <-- This is, I presume, a subjective judgment derived from criminology. The others are surely incontrovertible statistical facts. This, however, which would seem to be the pivot of the entire argument of the fact sheet, is provided with none of the explanation which a proper argument (as opposed to a propagandist document) that seems warranted.

Just saying, because it's not like I'm a supporter of high rates of incarceration but, I wouldn't take this argument to other people in what I see as a misleading manner, as bullet point 5 of 6, hidden amongst a bodyguard of facts.

[madmusic]

4. They mean, I think, that spikes in incarceration rates

Do not mesh with the crime rate. Though the crime rate has plummeted, budgets for law enforcement rises every year and with it so do incarceration rates:

Q: How big is the criminal justice system?
A: Bigger than it has ever been, bigger than any comparable nation's

* The number of people locked up has quadrupled since 1980. There are 2 million people in prisons and jails nationwide. An additional 4.7 million people are on probation or parole. (See Dept of Justice 'Corrections' page for details)
* There are 11.5 million admissions to prison or jail annually. (FBI). Every year, more people are arrested than the entire combined populations of our 13 least populous states.
* America incarcerates five times as many people per capita as Canada and 7 times as many as most European democracies; the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, indicating we are not 'soft on crime.' (See World Prison Brief, International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College, London)
* America spends approximately 200 billion dollars a year on the criminal justice system, up from 12 billion in 1972. (Dept of Justice Current CJ Expenditures). Please keep in mind these underestimate the full cost of CJ because some costs like prison construction are counted as capital expenditures under a different budget from CJ.
* With 2.2 million people engaged in catching criminals and putting and keeping them behind bars, "corrections" has become one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, employing more people than the combined workforces of General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three biggest corporate employers in the country.

Q: Is our system so big because we have so much crime?
A: No.

* America's overall crime rates are similar to comparable nations. For the crime of assault, 2.2% of Americans are victimized each year, compared to 2.3% of Canadians and 2.8% of Australians. For car theft, the U.S. rate is 2.3%, Australia is at 2.7% and England is at 2.8%. (Interpol has an extensive collection of world crime stats)
* America is extraordinary only in its rate of homicide with guns - lethal violence. American gun homicide rates run twenty times the rate in comparable nations- causing Americans to live in fear that their counterparts in England and France do not share.

http://stopviolence.com/cj-knowledge.htm

[Kagemusha]

6. I know that's what they mean. But proving it takes more.

It is a matter of serious dispute among criminologists with masters degrees and doctorates and not something that should be reduced to a bullet point presented as an indisputable fact alongside five most certainly indisputable facts. I'm saying, it's massively dishonest to portray a disputable fact with indisputable facts in this manner. It's cheap trickery.

[madmusic]

7. Here are a couple of graphs:

Criminal Justice Expenditures (notice how flat the public defender line is):



Crime rate:




Incarceration rate:

The governor wants to launch a new era of prison construction, with two new prisons (9,000 beds) and 15,000 new spaces at existing prisons. The governor has already begun beating the drums for his plan, and the noise will only get louder. Listening to all the sound and fury, you might conclude that California's crime rates were going up or that the state was imprisoning too few people.

Neither is true.

The fact is, California has a lot of good news on the subject of crime.

Crime rates -- measured in terms of crimes per 100,000 population -- have been consistently dropping since the early 1990s. Today, violent crimes have dropped to 1973 levels. Property crimes have dropped to 1967 levels.

Some of that decline is due to locking up violent, habitual criminals for more time. But the bulk of the decline is due to other factors: a greater commitment to community policing; a shrinking population in the crime-prone age group of 18- to 29-year-olds; a strong economy; the decline of the crack epidemic. Other states with much lower imprisonment rates than California also have seen declining crime rates.

So why is the governor calling for more prisons when crime has dramatically declined in California?

He says we need new prisons because California's population is increasing. But he's looking at the wrong numbers.

What he and the Legislature need to look at are California's state prison incarceration rates, which, like crime rates, are based on population.

In 1973, with a population of about 21 million, California had about 22,500 in state prisons -- an incarceration rate of about 100 per 100,000 population, a rate that remained about the same through the 1970s. Today, with a population of about 37 million, California has about 170,000 in state prisons -- an incarceration rate of more than 450 per 100,000.

http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/opinion/editorials/story/14287331p-15107054c.html

Adults Under State and Local Supervision



So it sure looks like the law enforcement expenditures keep rising while the crime rate keeps falling, and yet the incarceration rate climbs with the budget. That is not likely a coincidence.

[Kagemusha]

8. Well that's more like it.

It's still disputable fact but you're actually making a case. (And I find the prison industry to be loathsome and an inexcusable money pit... but that's um, not relevant to the issue of crime rate vs. justified incarceration, which is a narrow question that ignores cost)

[madmusic]

10. Probably no way to actually prove it, but...

You know what gets me most? The Public Defender line that looks like it doesn't even keep up with inflation. That sure makes it look like the goal is conviction rather than justice.

Another good one that more or less proves prison is not the only answer:

A fascinating report on "what works"

Thanks to this post at Corrections Sentencing, I came across http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-10-1201.pdf">this extraordinary new report from the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. The report is entitled "Evidence-Based Public Policy Options to Reduce Future Prison Construction, Criminal Justice Costs, and Crime Rates," and here is how it summarizes its work and findings:

We conducted a systematic review of all research evidence we could locate to identify what works, if anything, to reduce crime. We found and analyzed 571 rigorous comparison-group evaluations of adult corrections, juvenile corrections, and prevention programs, most of which were conducted in the United States. We then estimated the benefits and costs of many of these evidence-based options. Finally, we projected the degree to which alternative "portfolios" of these programs could affect future prison construction needs, criminal justice costs, and crime rates in Washington.

We find that some evidence-based programs can reduce crime, but others cannot. Per dollar of spending, several of the successful programs produce favorable returns on investment. Public policies incorporating these options can yield positive outcomes for Washington. We project the long-run effects of three example portfolios of evidence-based options: a "current level" option as well as "moderate" and "aggressive" implementation portfolios. We find that if Washington successfully implements a moderate-to-aggressive portfolio of evidence-based options, a significant level of future prison construction can be avoided, taxpayers can save about two billion dollars, and crime rates can be reduced.

Anyone seriously interested in "crime control" approach to sentencing and punishment has to check out this report and its many intriguing findings. Of particular interest is Exhibit 4 on page 9, which provides a detailed (and often suprising) account of the benefits and costs of various programs. That exhibit indictates, for examples, that family-oriented treatments of juvenile offenders are quite successful at reducing crime, while Scared Straight programming actually increases crime.

link: http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2006/11/a_fascinating_r.html

In sum, the Washington State study found that some "liberal" polices actually do cut crime and that the state could invest in them and avoid building new prisons. It also found that the "tough on crime" stance reaches a plateau and can't accomplish any more.

The study is a huge vindication for liberals not only in crime policy, but across the board. Hopefully, it will not be ignored in politics.

[Kagemusha]

11. Yeah, believe me, I have no patience for convictions over justice

I'm a big justice oriented guy... it's just hard to convince people that we need to convict less defendants. Of course the real point is, you want more of the right defendants convicted and less of the wrong defendants (like, innocent ones) acquitted but, people lose hope in the so-called justice system... and not for mysterious reasons.

It's a daunting job.

[madmusic]

12. Maybe you are in the system...

Maybe even a prosecutor. No need to say as you have the right to that privacy if you wish. What I love about this site is we can talk to just about everyone and get different points of view.

There is another factor too, and that is the length of sentences. Like the crack mandatory sentences where the defendant gets 100 times as much time as someone with coke would, though the amount is the same. Or the irrational Three Strikes laws that went over the top. Though I think we need less laws in some cases, we definitely need less severe laws if the crimes are not severe. These injustices drive up the incarceration rates. And if public defender's offices are understaffed and underfunded, the prosecution can run right over them. So its not really about letting the guilty go free, but it's more about fairer sentences in proportion to the crimes.

Maybe there should be a law against sound bite slogans like "Three Strikes And You're Out."

[Kagemusha]

13. Ahaha, no, I'm not in the legal profession at all.

I'm sure had life worked out differently that I could have been but, I'm a professional translator, a linguist, if you will. I love words meaning things (which Rush Limbaugh loves to say, too bad he doesn't mean it..) and the big, over-arching laws being respected rather than constantly chipped away at (which seems to be the whole long-term vision of Bush/Cheney conservatism applied to law). I'm like Glenn Greenwald, except I turned shortly after the 2000 elections when I saw what these people had turned into with the recount fiasco and mini-riots at polling places.

The thing is, just rational objective observation from the real court cases I've seen shows me that however much I want to be on the side of prosecutors, a lot of them are glory hounds going to court with thin cases hoping to appeal to the prejudices of the jury rather than the power of reason and law. (And sadly, many win this bet.) Actually getting convictions of the genuinely guilty is far from a sure thing. If the prosecutor wasn't paid to believe in his or her own cases, the prosecutor probably would have reasonable doubt in a lot of instances, but, mirroring the defense attorneys, prosecutors make themselves believe that the defendant must be guilty and prosecutes a case as well as possible based on this ASSUMPTION. Whether this will result in the conviction of a genuinely guilty man is up to luck and statistics. You hope it will, but you have to "trust the system" to catch mistakes, even while being a part of that system attempting to get a conviction, damn the mistakes. It is a very scary thing to watch from the side. It makes me happy to not have ever been a prosecutor and makes me never want to aspire to be one.

And that's why I'm really leery of grandstanding and 3 strikes laws and any system where you are taking choice away from a judge. That's because, as falliable as judges can be, they are at least somewhat more objective than prosecutors, who have a job to do and who are doing it with the same sort of near-blind devotion that they have learned to expect and envy from defense attorneys who'll defend the worst scum without batting an eye.

[madmusic]

14. Indeed. They both have a job to do. And that's fine.

The judge is supposed to be an impartial referee. The culture war ruined that in many ways because now the judges must pass some litmus test. Conservative enough? Liberal enough? What happened to impartial? Another thing that really gets me is all the newly discovered innocent people who rotted away for years, and once the DA's office discovers there was a mistake, they fight tooth and nail to keep the person locked up. They need "finality" to maintain respect for the system. What if a defendant used that excuse? "I killed the person, Your Honor, because I needed finality in the argument."

But both sides will say a jury is a crap shoot. And both sides may actually believe their argument, either guilty or innocent. But the vast, vast majority of convictions are by plea bargaining, over 95%, and the severe sentences almost guarantee a guilty plea, innocent or not. It's a big gamble when offered a 5 year deal compared to 40 years if the person exercises his/her right to trial by jury and is found guilty. Guilty or innocent, that is a big gamble. Sometimes it is an option between 25 or 50 years and people still plead guilty. Granted, they probably are, but many have been recently released due to false confessions. Some need to please authority or do not really understand the charges they pleaded guilty to.

What's more, all the rules have been shifting in the favor of the prosecution, and habeas corpus is thinner and thinner here in the U.S.:

In California, the prison industry is the fastest growing industry around. In fact, if you want to talk about pure political muscle, there is no lobby quite as strong as the prison lobby. Consider what the prison guard's union has helped to accomplish in the last 20 years. They have increased tenfold the number of inmates in prison, they have increased exponentially the number of prisons, they have backed numerous draconian laws to ensure that more and more people go to prison for longer and longer for doing less and less.

Plenty of you have seen me write about people facing absurd amounts of time for relatively minor offenses, based in part on things they did when they were 16 years old, or things that happened 25 years ago. Now they face life for possession of a rock of cocaine.

The prison union has done more than that, though. They have also leaned on politicians to ensure that only district attorneys are appointed as judges. In the administrations of Governors Duekmeijian and Wilson (16 years total from 1982-1998), and even Gray Davis, judges were overwhelming chosen from the District Attorney's office. Thus, the judiciary is filled with law enforcement, with an agenda of putting away as many people as possible, no matter how much we have to subvert the laws to do it.

In 1986, bankrolled by business interests, three members of the California Supreme Court were removed from office. The reason that got everyone upset - they were battered relentlessly for being opposed to the death penalty and reversing so many death sentences. Mind you, in the 18 years since then, only 5 people have been executed in California, so it doesn't look like they played that much of a role, and exactly how much better off are we now that 5 people (out of a death row approaching 700) have been executed? But, the irony is that the crime issue was only a pretext (sort of like focusing on weapons of mass destruction), the real moneyed interests behind that recall (actually it was a vote against their confirmation) were business interests that were trying to make California a less pleasant place to sue from.

Regardless of who wanted them out more, both sides succeeded with the recall, and ensured that California's judiciary would become much more responsive to the two right wing lobbies in California - Crime and business.

The effect on Criminal law has been dramatic. Through the tyranny of a doctrine known as "harmless error," the California Courts have managed to uphold a startlingly high amount of death senteces, no matter how flawed (the Federal Courts of Appeal in the 9th Circuit has been reversing these rulings an equally startling rate recently). The main thrust of every opinion is this: sure he didn't get a fair trial, and his statement shouldn't have come in as evidence, and the DA shouldn't have been able to bring out the fact that he likes pornography, and the police did do an illegal search, and the defense lawyer was prevented from cross-examining the witnesses, and wholesale hearsay was allowed in without a proper ability to confront it, but hey, we know he's guilty, and those errors were harmless, now let's kill him already.

Courts of Appeal do the same thing, upholding verdicts that are clearly wrong as a matter of fact and law just to ensure that people do not get out of jail. Then they don't publish their decisions, so they never really have to be scrutinized. Or the Supreme Court will depublish (literally wipe it's precedential value off the books as if it never happened, although the decision itself still stands).

a little more: http://publicdefenderdude.blogspot.com/2004/05/in-california-prison-industry-is.html

Granted, he's a public defender and may be a little biased, but he's sure not doing it for the money or the prestige. And he's seen the changes.

So I agree. The power shift to the prosecution and away from judges pretty much destroys the adversarial system. At least when judges had the power of a referee, the prosecution could not go too far out of line, and neither could the defense, on the average. There were and always will be bizarre exceptions, and the Right took advantage of those, called them the norm, and used them for the excuse to remove the impartial judges from the equation.

[Kagemusha]

15. Yeah, the habeas corpus thing is a big, big deal

Removing it smacks of placing the whole country under martial law. If prosecutors don't even have to make a case in front of a judge, the fundamental nature of the system is changed. That's why it's better tho have it even with the worst prosecutors and judges. The chances of abuse without it are statistically high to the point of certainty and that's even without conscious malice...

Preaching to the choir there though.

[madmusic]

29. "Preaching to the choir there though."

That's good news. Frankly, I suspected that and you said as much, and maybe it wasn't quite fair to take advantage of the conversation to get more info out there to others, but I really did enjoy your viewpoint, and really do appreciate you challenging me to dig for more. Come to think of it, didn't you do that before?

[hootinholler]

23. WOW

Look at this:


Now corelate it with actual improvement of the economy in which the lower and middle classes operated during the Clinton Presidency.

I think it speaks volumes.

-Hoot

[madmusic]

33. California Rethugs claim it's the Three Strikes Law

Even though states without a Three Strikes Law saw their crime rate drop too.

[hootinholler]

35. What happened in '99?

That's a sharp turn in the graph.

-Hoot

[indepat]

3. It's what the extreme RW wants: in fact, most of our worst societal ills stem from what the RW

wants because they have set the nation's priorities, its agenda, since WWII for Dems have generally been scared they'd shit their pant if called soft on communism, soft on national defense, soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on you name it. Add opposition to a realistic minimum wage, opposition to national health care, wholly irresponsible fiscal and tax policies which much further concentrate the wealth among a relatively very few while leaving the Federal government with unservicable debt, welfare for only the wealthy and large corporations, erosion of the safety net, a multi-trillion dollar raid on the mythical lock box and the government's coming inability/willingness to service its debt/meet its obligations, a la Social Security and we have a country that's a RW heaven. And tens of millions of our citizenry love it. :shrug:

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Stupidest Nation On Earth

We are the home of the dumb, the land of the stupid.

We have been buying tax cuts and lock em up for 35 years as the solution to all of our problems. The tax cuts never seem to make it all the way to the middle class that votes for them, and all that locking up and frying doesn't appear to make us any safer, but we go out and vote for it over and over and over again. We, collectively, have STUPID stamped on our foreheads, and KICK ME taped to our butts, and our rulers know it and laugh at us as they rob us blind and scare us into ever more of the same.

Trust me, I know stupid when I see it, and all I see across this land is stupid piled upon stupid.

[porphyrian]

9. This DEFINITELY needs kicking. - n/t

[upi402]

16. k/r n/t

[hfojvt]

17. THIS is why I thought our Republican turned Democrat AG candidate

was a DINO with all his "tough on crime" and "keep you safe" rhetoric.

[sweetheart]

18. Its the final solution

Just lock away all the people who disagree and dispose of them in gas chambers,
it is always been the solution of the new american nazi prison state, where
everything is a crime; where you don't put your hand in the fire because it'll
burn, but because your mother will smack you because it'll cost her a fine.
Then everyone learns that fire doesn't burn, it smacks... and with learning
like that, the new idiot nation waddles in to history with the sloth, mammoth
and brontosaurus.

[Celebration]

19. Incarceration......

Where I live, the crime is terrible. I hate it that conditions are such in society and in families that people turn to crime. But when they do, they should be locked up for the safety of the rest of us. We spend way too many resources on the war against drugs. Let's keep the right people behind bars-- violent criminals. Unfortunately there are many of them walking the streets and getting out on bail from overcrowded prisons in my area.

[Zodiak]

20. Giving this thread a kick

A lot of what is being said on this thread is terribly true and something we must fight to reverse if we are ever going to regain our status as a great nation. A proto-fascist prison state doesn't make for a good reputation.

[mcg]

21. Race, Prison and the Drug Laws

Race, Prison and the Drug Laws
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/racepris.htm

Of the 265,100 state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses in 2002, 126,000 (47.53%) were black, 61,700 (23.27%) were Hispanic, and 64,500 (24.33%) were white. ...

[niallmac]

25. Thank you. Drug laws and minorities are a cornerstone of our

prison system. I have no graphs, literature references or stats but
having worked in a prison for a year I got the impression that
drug laws are in large part an excuse to house those we feel
uncomfortable dealing with as community members.





Edited for awkwardness and it's still awkward

[Jcrowley]

22. k & R n/t

[Octafish]

24. It costs as much to keep a prisoner jailed as it does to send someone to Harvard.

Even the Red Chinese get it. In a radio interview, one school administrator indicated they can spend money on building schools or building prisons.

OTOFH: With all the new prison camp construction, Halliburton sees things differently. They'd like to expand incarceration to include all enemies of their State, like liberals and progressives and Democrats.

We live in interesting times.

Knock 'em out at the conference, madmusic!

[madmusic]

30. Sorry for the confusion...

That's not me going to the conference and those are quotes from his blog. But I hope he knocked 'em out!

As a side note, Alberto, our upstanding Attorney General who wrote some of the torture and secret prison memos, assembled crime victims and asked them for their support though the media. He is, of course, against sentencing reform. In essence, he is saying that reform would hamper the government's ability to extort confessions and corporation out of people, because they might be more likely - heaven forbid! - to exercise their right to a jury trial. I cut and past his comments into a previous thread about a month ago or less. Isn't it strange that we have to call it "reform"?

[Nikia]

26. It helps keep the unemployment rate down

Prisioners are not in the labor force. Prision guards are and are employed.

[mcg]

28. and they could instead do public works projects like FDR did,

it would be beneficial instead of destructive. People who do drugs in moderation don't need to be bothered, people who have a really problem with drugs need treatment, not imprisonment. Some could be put to work on public works projects and paid, community service would help them, make them feel better about their lives. They could help communities or do work to help protect our environment. A real war on drug abuse would deal with the causes and treatment of drug abuse.

But then that's not what this fake 'war on drugs' is about.

[madmusic]

31. That's a great idea...

An FDR-like labor force/treatment program, with pay. Much better than prison. Plus, there are the recent threads on the damage done to their children when a parent goes to prison. That too will cost us in the long run.

No program can every be perfect, and the FDR-like program would not be an exception. The Right would be looking for any excuse to shut it down, and they are bound to find one. Maybe some violence or something, then they will blow that up into a moral panic and condemn the whole program.

We need to be ahead of the game on that and make it clear it will not be perfect. We need to make it clear there would be risks, maybe even rare risks to public safety, but everything worthwhile has its risks.

Head 'em off at the pass.

EDIT: typo, again! Time to make the typing type bigger.

[mcg]

36. Some safeguards are needed...

If someone is so whacked out on drugs (including alcohol, e.g. Cheney being drunk while duck hunting) that they pose a threat then some measures are needed, possibly confinement. This is unfortunately sometimes a judgement call and can easily be abused.

Some people are simply messed up on drugs, they get thrown in jail and get hardened. Not good for them, not good for society.

Perhaps the U.S. should look at how other countries deal with drug problems and take some advice from them.

[ArmchairMeme]

27. Feature of a Stupid Country

Incarceration for profit! Jails and prisons are big business just like Exxon and Haliburton etc. Money, money, money.

Very sad that the lives of so many are so devalued.

[MiniMe]

32. A lot of other countries would just kill them instead of incarcerating them

But the article does bring out valid points. That is just my devil's advocate response, peace.

[madmusic]

34. That's true...

But not all of them do in the comparison countries, so even if we were to control for countries that do have a very high execution rate, like China for example, we still have the highest incarceration rate. The http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2006nov_factsheet_incarceration.pdf">Fact Sheet from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency is short and to the point (PDF) and explains it better. Check out the comparison to countries and individual states in the United States. It will blow your mind. Check the comparison between Poland and California for example.

California: 246,317
Poland : 86,820

[MiniMe]

37. Thats interesting, thanks

I do think that it is probably hard to get accurate statistics from some of the countries listed, like Russia, China, and Pakistan for example. Still, those are NOT the countries we should to be comparing our stats to, just like we shouldn't be 53rd in the world in freedom of the press.

[madmusic]

38. 53rd? Could that be a coincidence?

Maybe the submission of the press is an important factor. Sometimes it seems like reporters are "embedded" with the police like reporters were in Iraq. That can subdue reporting due to empathy with them, not to mention their dependence for security.

[thingfisher]

39. De-criminalization of marijuana would go a long way

toward reducing the prison population.

[AikidoSoul]

40. SLAVE LABOR... THAT'S THE REASON FOR SO MANY PRISONERS

MadMusic.....ArmchairMeme hinted at something that nobody else latched onto. The U.S. prisons are providing a HUGE NUMBER of workers to industry for SLAVE LABOR payment. All of the articles I've read on this state that the average prison worker workds long hours and is paid BETWEEN 35 CENTS AND 67 CENTS AN HOUR!!!

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/091406LB.shtml

If you think prison inmates only make license plates, you're behind the times.

As a child Ayana Cole dreamed of becoming a world class fashion designer. Today she is among hundreds of inmates crowded in an Oregon prison factory cranking out designer jeans. For her labor she is paid 45 cents an hour. At a chic Beverly Hills boutique some of the beaded creations carry a $350 price tag. In fact the jeans labeled "Prison Blues" - proved so popular last year that prison factories couldn't keep up with demand.

At a San Diego private-run prison factory Donovan Thomas earns 21 cents an hour manufacturing office equipment used in some of LA's plushest office towers. In Chino Gary's prison sewn T-shirts are a fashion hit.

Hundreds of prison generated products end up attached to trendy and nationally known labels like No Fear, Lee Jeans, Trinidad Tees, and other well known US companies. After deductions, many prisoners like Cole and Thomas earn about $60 for an entire month of nine-hour days. In short, hiring out prisoners has become big business. And it's booming.

At CMT Blues housed at the Maximum Security Richard J. Donovan State Correctional Facility outside San Diego, the highly prized jobs pay minimum wage. Less than half goes into the inmates' pockets. The rest is siphoned off to reimburse the state for the cost of their incarceration and to a victim restitution fund.

The California Department of Corrections and CMT Blues owner Pierre Sleiman say they are providing inmates with job skills, a work ethic and income. In addition, he says prisoners offer the ultimate in a flexible and dependable work force. "If I lay them off for a week," said Sleiman, referring to his workers, "I don't have to worry about someone else coming and saying, 'Come work for me.'"

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, health or worker's comp insurance, vacation or comp time. All of their workers are full time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if prisoners refuse to work, they are moved to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges. Most importantly, they lose "good time" credit that reduces their sentence.

Today, there are over 2 million people incarcerated in the US, more than any other industrialized country. They are disproportionately African-American and Latino. The nation's prison industry now employees nearly three quarters of a million people, more than any Fortune 500 corporation, other than General Motors. Mushrooming construction has turned the industry into the main employer in scores of depressed cities and towns. A host of firms are profiting from private prisons, prison labor and services like transportation, farming and manufacturing.

Critics argue that inmate labor is both a potential human rights abuse and a threat to workers outside prison walls claiming, inmates have no bargaining power, are easily exploited and once released are frequently barred from gainful employment because of a felony conviction.

In one California lawsuit, for example, two prisoners have sued both their employer and the prison, saying they were put in solitary confinement after refusing to labor in unsafe working conditions. In a nutshell John Fleckner of Operation Prison Reform labels the growing trend "capitalist punishment - slavery re-envisioned."

The prison industry is not a new phenomenon, writes Fleckner. He says mixing the profit motive with punishment only invites abuse reminiscent of one of the ugliest chapters in US history. "Under a regime where more bodies equal more profits prisons take one big step closer to their historical ancestor, the slave pen."

In fact, prison labor has its roots in slavery. Following reconstruction, former Confederate Democrats instituted "convict leasing." Black inmates, mostly freed slaves convicted of petty theft, were rented out to do everything from picking cotton to building railroads. In Mississippi, a huge farm, resembling a slave plantation replaced convict leasing. The infamous Parchman Farm was not closed until 1972, when inmates brought suit against the abusive conditions in federal court.

Prison analysts say contract prison labor is poised to become one of America's most important growth industries. Many of these prisoners are serving time for non-violent crimes. With the use of tough-on-crime mandatory sentencing laws, the prison population is bursting at the seams. Some experts believe that the number of people locked up in the US could double in the next 10 years. According to Prison Watch, the expansion of the number of prisoners will not only increase the pool of prison labor available for commercial profit, but also will help pay the costs of incarceration.

"The main goal of prison work programs is to provide "a positive outlet to help inmates productively use their time and energies. Another goal is to instill good work habits, including appropriate job behavior and time management, according to the Joint Venture Program of the California Department of Corrections. The program is responsible for contracting out convict labor to governments, businesses and non-profit organizations.

Federal law prohibits domestic commerce in prison-made goods unless inmates are paid "prevailing wages" but because the law doesn't apply to exports, prison officials routinely market to foreign customers.

In California the prisons themselves are their own best customers. The California Department of Corrections purchases about half of what the prisons make, choosing from an online Prison Industry Authority catalog.

Prisoners now manufacture everything from blue jeans, to auto parts, to electronics and furniture. Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for doing the same work an auto worker would get paid $20 to $30 an hour to do. Konica has used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour. Toys 'R' Us once used prisoners to restock shelves, and Microsoft to pack and ship software. Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons competes so successfully with apparel made in Latin America and Asia that it is exported to other countries.

In most states prisoners receive little of the money they earn working either for state-run or private sector corrections firms such as the Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) and Wackenhut. The labor prisoners perform is often considerably cheaper than in the outside world. Case in point, Texas-based Lockhart Technologies closed its Austin plant and fired some 150 workers who constructed circuit boards because it could relocate those jobs to a Wackenhut-run prison where detainees did the work for minimum wage... (snip)

or here:


http://www.alternet.org/story/17042/

http://www.counterpunch.org/ross11022006.html (scroll down to story)

:mad:
:mad:
:mad:
:mad:
:mad:

[nofurylike]

41. absolutely!! "fastest growing growth industry..." absolutely!! the

other fastest growing growth industry is providing human guinea pigs for medical and psychiatric research.



aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee........!!!