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April 13th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“Mass
incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a
fundamental fact of our country today – perhaps the fundamental
fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850… by Constitutional Attorney John W Whitehead
… In truth, there
are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system –
in prison, on probation, or on parole – than were in slavery
then. Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional
supervision’ in America – more than six million –
than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”
~
Adam Gopnik, “The Caging of America”
In an age when
freedom is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule, imprisoning
Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned
into a cash cow for big business.
At one time, the American penal
system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to
be put under lock and key in order to protect society.
Today, as
states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private corporations,
the flawed yet retributive American “system of justice”
is being replaced by an even more flawed and insidious form of mass
punishment based upon profit and expediency.
As author Adam
Gopnik reports for the New Yorker:
[A] growing
number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit
businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by
the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible
on the prisoners and the prisons.It’s hard to imagine any
greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the
interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good
of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having
as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.
Consider this…
despite the fact that violent crime in America has been on the decline,
the nation’s incarceration rate has tripled since 1980. Approximately
13 million people are introduced to American jails in any given
year.
Incredibly, more than six million people are under “correctional
supervision” in America, meaning that one in fifty Americans
are working their way through the prison system, either as inmates,
or while on parole or probation.
According to the Federal Bureau
of Prisons, the majority of those being held in federal prisons
are convicted of drug offenses – namely, marijuana. Presently,
one out of every 100 Americans is serving time behind bars.
Little wonder,
then, that public prisons are overcrowded. Yet while providing security,
housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is
a hardship for cash-strapped states, to profit-hungry corporations
such as Corrections Corp of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the leaders
in the partnership corrections industry, it’s a $70 billion
gold mine.
Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line,
CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering
to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to
the states.
In exchange, and here’s the kicker, the prisons
would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have
agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons
for at least 20 years.
The problem
with this scenario, as Roger Werholtz, former Kansas secretary of
corrections, recognizes is that while states may be tempted by the
quick infusion of cash, they “would be obligated to maintain
these (occupancy) rates and subtle pressure would be applied to
make sentencing laws more severe with a clear intent to drive up
the population.”
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what has
happened. Among the laws aimed at increasing the prison population
and growing the profit margins of special interest corporations
like CCA are three-strike laws (mandating sentences of 25 years
to life for multiple felony convictions) and “truth-in-sentencing”
legislation (mandating that those sentenced to prison serve most
or all of their time).
Yes, in
case you were wondering, part of the investment pitch for CCA and
its cohort GEO Group include the profits to be made in building
“kindler, gentler” minimum-security facilities designed
for detaining illegal immigrants, especially low-risk detainees
like women and children.
With immigration a persistent problem in
the southwestern states, especially, and more than 250 such detention
centers going up across the country, there is indeed money to be
made.
For example, GEO’s new facility in Karnes County, Texas,
boasts a “608-bed facility still smelling of fresh paint and
new carpet stretch[ing] across a 29-acre swath of farmland in rural
South Texas.
Rather than prison cells, jumpsuits, and barbed wire
fencing, detainees here will sleep in eight-bed dormitory-style
quarters, wearing more cozy attire like jeans and T-shirts.
The
facility’s high walls enclose lush green courtyards with volleyball
courts, an AstroTurfed soccer field, and basketball hoops, where
detainees are free to roam throughout the day.” All of this,
of course, comes at taxpayer expense.
“And this
is where it gets creepy,” observes reporter Joe Weisenthal
for Business Insider… “because as an investor you’re
pulling for scenarios where more people are put in jail.”
In
making its pitch to potential investors, CCA points out that private
prisons comprise a unique, recession-resistant investment opportunity,
with more than 90% of the market up for grabs, little competition,
high recidivism among prisoners, and the potential for “accelerated
growth in inmate populations following the recession.”
In other
words, caging humans for profit is a sure bet, because the U.S.
population is growing dramatically and the prison population will
grow proportionally as well, and more prisoners equal more profits.
In this way,
under the pretext of being tough on crime, state governments can
fatten their coffers and fill the jail cells of their corporate
benefactors.
However, while a flourishing privatized prison system
is a financial windfall for corporate investors, it bodes ill for
any measures aimed at reforming prisoners and reducing crime. CCA
understands this.
As it has warned investors, efforts to decriminalize
certain activities, such as drug use (principally possession of
marijuana), could cut into their profits. So too would measures
aimed at reducing the prison system’s disproportionately racist
impact on minorities, given that the incarceration rate for blacks
is seven times that of whites.
Immigrants are also heavily impacted,
with roughly 2.5 million people having been through the immigration
detention system since 2003.
As private prisons begin to dominate,
the many troubling characteristics of our so-called criminal justice
system today – racism, economic inequality, inadequate access
to legal representation, lack of due process, etc. – will only
become more acute.
Doubtless,
a system already riddled by corruption will inevitably become more
corrupt, as well. For example, consider the “kids for cash”
scandal which rocked Luzerne County, Penn., in 2009.
For ten years,
the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in
private prisons for juvenile offenders, paid two judges to jail
youths and send them to private prison facilities.
The judges, who
made over $2.6 million in the scam, had more than 5,000 kids come
through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty
crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant
buildings.
When the scheme finally came to light, one judge was
sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and the other received 28 years,
but not before thousands of young lives had been ruined.
In this way,
minor criminals, from drug users to petty thieves, are being handed
over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing
to protect society or prevent recidivism.
This is the culmination
of an inverted justice system which has come to characterize the
United States, a justice system based upon increasing the power
and wealth of the corporate-state.
No matter what
the politicians or corporate heads might say, prison privatization
is neither fiscally responsible nor in keeping with principles of
justice.
It simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits,
while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent
criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison
sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism.
This perverse notion of how prisons should be run, that they should
be full at all times, and full of minor criminals, is evil.
Constitutional Attorney John W Whitehead – April 12, 2012 – LewRockwell
Constitutional
attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send
him mail] is founder and president of The
Rutherford Institute. He is the author of The
Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).
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