Slavery's New Face
Private prisons are the new form of slavery in America. Gone are the days when blacks are forced to work for nothing against their will, as we welcome the days when... blacks are forced to work for nothing against their will. See the problem? Those who have invested in the prison industry have hit a gold mine. Think about it, all of their employees are full-time, you never have to worry about them calling out with some lame excuse, you only have to pay them 25 cents an hour, and what if they don’t want to work, you ask? They are locked up in isolation cells. I know my fellow college students probably think isolation is better than having a roommate, but isolation makes people go crazy. Imagine having zero contact with human life day after day after day. Just sitting in a room by your lonesome. That’s a major fear of every jail inmate, so they have extra incentive to get to work on time and do no wrong.
Here are a few statistics for you courtesy of Vicky Peleaz of globalresearch.ca.
- There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal, and private prisons
- The United States has locked up more people than any other country.
- The United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population but only 5% of the world’s people
- The United States' jail population grew from less than 300,000 in 1972 to 2 million by the year 2000.
According to California Prison Focus, "No other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens". These facts are absolutely ridiculous. We’re supposed to live in the land of the free, but ¼ of our citizens are imprisoned. What type of sense does that make? This is modern-day slavery. Americans are always looking for a way to make easy money, so what our prison stats look like is an opportunity to do so. 10 years ago, there were only 5 private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates, and now there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. Not to say that the private prison owners are racist because I do not know any personally, but let's just let the facts speak for themselves:
- No minority owns a private prison
- The majority of the inmates are minorities (even though “minorities” are the “MINORITY” in the United States)
- Inmates work damn near for free for companies that produce clothes that we all have on our backs
Something is wrong here.
After seeing the staggering statistics about how many Americans are incarcerated, one might think that America is full of bad people. When I walk around during my everyday life, I do not see a world full of bad people, and I think most feel the same. So why are all of these Americans locked up? According to drugwarfacts.org, there were 196,574 sentenced prisoners under federal jurisdiction on Dec. 31, 2012. Only 11,688 of the prisoners were locked up for violent offenses. So no, the people walking around on the streets don’t look violent because most of them aren’t! In fact, the majority of prisoners (99,426) are locked up for drug offenses. When we hear the word drug, we instantly imagine guns and gangsters when, in fact, that is not true. A lot of people are behind bars for smoking harmless “drugs,” such as marijuana. 72,519 prisoners are locked up for public offenses, one-third of them being immigration offenses. Thankfully, policymakers are starting to wise up and notice this horrible trend of overpopulated prisons full of non-violent offenders. This is seen by marijuana becoming decriminalized and even legal in some states. I applaud the policymakers for seeing the error in their ways, but it’s far too late. Some people have spent the majority of their lives behind bars for what? Making a little extra change by selling a harmless drug? Smoking something recreational for stress relief? That’s crazy. Alcohol does far more damage than marijuana to one’s body, yet alcohol is heavily promoted by America. Who is to say what is ok and what is not to something that is only harming the person that is using it? In my opinion, legislatures know who is using drugs the most (minorities), and this is their way of getting them incarcerated.
The Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) and The GEO Group Inc. (GEO) are the two largest prison companies. They receive nearly 3 billion dollars a year and make their money by charging the state per bed in the facility. This video goes in-depth on how the private prison industry works and shows the corruption behind it.
How can we stop the private prison industry from thriving? We first must start to look at why it has been such a success for these companies. Private prisons came about when prisons became overcrowded. The government ensued, paying these companies to run prisons. The obvious solution: The United States needs to build more prisons under its own sanctions. This is possible because the incarceration rate in the U.S. has drastically dropped this past decade due to the decriminalization of certain laws. This only stops it in the United States, though. Private prisons would simply expand further into the United Kingdom, Australia, and other foreign countries where prisons are overcrowded. So, is there a way to truly kill this issue, or are we just turning it into a global issue?
It costs an average of $47,000 to incarcerate an inmate in the United States. Let me repeat that, $47,000! The average tuition for a full college experience (staying on campus, meal plan, etc.) costs $40,000. That’s right, it's cheaper for someone to get educated than it is to be incarcerated, yet there are way more prisoners than college students. What type of message is the United States sending to the world? Instead of locking its citizens up, why not put them in a program to help change their ways and get them an education? I just used the "full college experience" as an example, but someone could easily attend a community college for $3,000 a year. The government would save so much money if they would just change their ways, and they know this, but they still won’t! And why won’t they? Because they know that knowledge is power. They would rather oppress their people than educate them. That’s an unwritten principle that our country was built on. Native Americans, oppressed; African-Americans, oppressed; all minorities in the United States due to our justice system, oppressed. This pattern must stop.
The private prison industry is indicative of slavery.
Minorities are:
- Going to jail for non-violent offenses
- Working for little to nothing
- Being abused in these private prisons due to a lack of security
Even after getting released from jail, the life of an ex-convict isn’t much of a life. It is extremely hard for them to find jobs because no one wants someone who’s been to jail working for them. Their credit is usually bad, which makes it hard for them to buy a home or car. Because private prisons do a horrible job at rehabilitation, once released, ex-cons tend to go back to doing whatever criminal activity they got arrested for because that is all they know. In the small picture, private prisons must cease to exist, and the government must be the one that ends it by making bigger, safer prisons that can accommodate all the prisoners. In the big picture, non-violent crimes need to continue to be decriminalized, and education needs to take the forefront in America. If education was more affordable, maybe people would not feel the need to fall into a life of crime. The culture in America needs to change, and that change has to start from the top down. The government has to make the decision that higher education is never a financial issue. Until our country makes this decision to change its culture, we’re all just one mistake away from slavery.
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