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That’s Why It’s Called The Prison Industry Ok. This shouldn’t really take that much time. Let’s, just for the sake of argument, say that you make little plastic things that hold pairs of socks together. And, as the only little-plastic-things-that-hold-pairs-of-socks-together maker around, you make a pretty good living. Now, what the one thing you need in order to stay in business? Plastic? Nope, you could find something else to make them with. You need socks. Without socks, who needs little plastic things that hold pairs of socks together? Naturally, you will do anything to promote the cause of socks and almost anything to stop causes that are anti-sock. Now, and again, this is just a hypothetical; you are the head of a private company that manages prisons. What’s the one thing you need to run your business? Prisoners. So, being the head of a private company that runs prisons, would you be terribly interested in rehabilitation of prisoners? Logically, the answer is no. As they lock more criminals away, more prisons will be needed and the richer you’ll be. A recently study by Columbia University found that drug and alcohol abuse and addiction played a part in the crimes committed by 80% of the 1.7 million men and women now behind bars in the United States. This means that 1.3 million men and women got trashed and committed a crime. 340,000 did not get trashed and still committed a crime. Criminals who are clean and sober. Here’s another interesting fact: The inmate population of the US is not included in the unemployment equation. Time to tie it together. Let’s say prisons focused on actual rehabilitation, for addiction and criminal activity, and got a 30% success rate. This would put about 400,000 inmates back into, what the unemployment formula calls, “the civilian population”. How easy do you think it would be to get a job if you had a criminal record? You’d be unemployed. Unemployment figures would rise. Prison population would decrease. Prison profits would decrease and who wants that? Prison is no longer a place you go when you’ve been bad. It is no longer a place you go where people want you to do better. It is a place you go to support the economy. Crime pays, just not for the criminals. “Microsoft uses convicts to ship Windows software. Honda pays $2 an hour to prison labor in Ohio who do jobs that UAW members once did for $20 an hour. In Georgia a recycling plant replaced 50 sorters with prisoners.” “Over the past 20 years expenditures on crime control have increased twice as fast as military spending.” The U.S. incarceration rate is now 672 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents. Be very careful out there. |