Prisons

The Real Intent of the American Prison System by D. Chasse Gunter – Olympia SDS

The American justice system has strayed from its apparent intent of both rehabilitating offenders and preventing crime. Instead, it’s a system that specializes in creating criminals and arresting more of them longer for the purpose of generating revenue. The American Prison system has its roots in slavery. In 1865, after the Civil War, prisons started hiring our prisoners for private use, thus continuing America’s proud tradition of slavery. Slavery is alive today.

The American Justice system has become a thriving business. The prison industry now makes up 4% of the workforce in the United States. That is 4% of the workforce in the United States who can’t receive any benefits, strike, start or join a union, receive no vacations or comp time, and work full time with no brakes. They are paid as little as 17 cents an hour and as much as 2 dollars an hour on the high end. Almost all assemble line jobs, once dependent on third world country labor, have been imported to prisons. The prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, bullet-proof vests, ammunition belts, tents, bags, dog tags, and canteens, and 93% of paints and paint brushes, 92% of stove assembly, 46% of all body armor, 36% of home appliances, and 30% of all headphones and speakers . Prison labor makes up 98% of the equipment assembly market. Since the increased legalization of private contracting of prisoner labor, corporations responsible have seen a significant profit jump of 392 million dollars to 1.31 billion dollars in just 14 years.

Fear of punishment is ineffective for preventing crime. A criminal can only be prosecuted after a crime has been committed. It isn’t logical to assume that punishment will deter other criminals from offending and no significant evidence has shown it has. The prison population has more than tripled since 1985, while the amount of crimes reported has stayed around 12 million. Most of the United States still practices capital punishment, yet has a murder rate three times higher Europe, that has mostly abolished the death penalty. Prisons don’t make us any safer. This is a common misconception. Violent crime only makes up 4.6% of the people arrested in the U.S and out of the victims; only 20% even required medical attention . Also, the dent made by the American Justice System is extremely ineffective on the grand scale of things, because 80% of the violent crimes reported are never solved and an estimated 50% of violent crimes fail to be reported.

Incarceration fails to rehabilitate criminals and instead creates them. Criminal behavior escalates in an all criminal environment, especially when they are all locked up in over-filled inhumane cages and told what to do all day. And although 95% of criminals are away for nonviolent charges, the most ruthless people in prison usually set the bar for everyone else. Assault, rape, and riots wouldn’t spring up among the same group of people in a free environment, in the same way incarceration leads nonviolent people to assume the position. The system locks people up for a set amount of time and releases them into society angrier and more violent than before hand. The probation system operates under the notion of “keeping tabs” on criminals, but in actuality, lands a good deal of people back in jail for minor parole violations. There are 4.6 million people who just have to violate their probation to land a stay in prison. It’s much easier to break probation than to break the law.

Some people could argue that Americas booming prison industry stimulates the economy. That’s true if your name happens to be IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Texas Instruments, TWA, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Revlon, Macy’s, Wireless, Dell, or any of the many corporations that have a hand in the industry. Huge corporations maintain high profits, funded with 60 billion dollars of our tax money. Cheaper labor doesn’t mean cheaper products either. When companies find cheaper production methods, they make more money because they don’t lower the cost of the product.

Thanks to the inadequacies of the American Justice system, the United States now has the largest prison population in the world and growing. 2.2 million People are currently deprived from breathing free air in an apparently free country. While the U.S. only has 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prison population. We also pay 20 billion dollars more for prisons than we do public schools, which I wouldn’t say is my top priority. And the fact that prisons are on the steady increase and school budgets are on the decrease doesn’t look too bright either. The American Justice System is over due for review. We have a successful revolving door prison system. Once caught up in the system, it’s much harder to get out, and its build to do so. The consistent supply of new people in jail promises more and more money for prison contractors and a consistent supply of violent new criminals released onto our streets.