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"Violent" Crime... http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703120170mar12,1,1921178.story?coll=chi&ctrack=1&cset=true In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it 'a signal to black folks.'
There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.
And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.
The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.
Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation. In 1985 one out of every 320 Americans were in jail. In 1995 one out of every 167 Americans were in jail. Between1980 and 1994, the number of people in federal and state prisons increased 221%. Today, 2 million Americans are in prison. 1.2 million are African-American men. While there is debate over their underlying causes, these staggering statistics are generally thought to result from rigid drug laws, mandatory minimum sentences and increasingly tough legislation— such as California’s "three strikes" law. One fact remains undisputed: prisons have become big business. ------------------- Big name corporations compete with each other to underwrite prison construction with private, tax-exempt bonds and without voter approval. More and more states across the country are implementing mandatory labor for inmates, necessitating partnerships with outside industry.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prison Partners In the tiny town of Lockhart, Texas a private prison run by Wakenhut (a for-profit private corporation) does business with a company called LTI. In this partnership the prisoners assemble circuit boards bound for hi-tech corporations. For LTI, moving manufacturing to the Lockhart prison was a no-brainer. There they found a captive workforce that did not require benefits or vacation pay, major tax incentives and a brand new assembly plant rented for only a symbolic fee. As a result, LTI’s plant in Austin, Texas was shut down and 150 people lost their jobs. In Michigan, through a similar arrangement, the majority of Brill Manufacturing Company’s workforce lost their jobs to state prison inmates. http://www.itvs.org/shift/prison.html--According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, since 1990 the incarceration of youth in adult jails has increased 208%. On any given day, more than 7,000 young people are held in adult jails. -- Increasing numbers of young people have been placed in adult jails where they are at risk of assault, abuse, and death. Currently, 40 states permit or require that youth charged as adults be placed pre-trial in an adult jail, and in some states they may be required to serve their entire sentence in an adult jail. According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, since 1990 the incarceration of youth in adult jails has increased 208%. http://www.campaign4youthjustice.org/Downloads/NEWS/JPI014Consequences_Summary.pdf America's Prisoner's As Corporate Workforce If you book a flight on TWA, you'll likely be talking to a prisoner at a California correctional facility that the airline uses for its reservations service. Microsoft has used Washington State prisoners to pack and ship Windows software. AT&T has used prisoners for telemarketing; Honda, for manufacturing parts; and even Toys "R" Us, for cleaning and stocking shelves for the next day's customers.------------------------------------- Companies that use prison labor create islands of time in which, in terms of labor relations at least, it's still the late nineteenth century. Prison employers pay no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no payroll or Social Security taxes, no workers' compensation, no vacation time, sick leave, or overtime. In fact, to the extent that prisoners have "benefits" like health insurance, the state picks up the tab.http://www.postcarbon.org/node/2244A Report on the Injustice System in the USA Written by: Pauline (a contributing writer to IPFG’s Publication; Payaam Fadaee) Published in Payame Fadaee, Spring edition 2002 http://www.siahkal.com/english/on%20prison.htmThe US ruling class has established the largest forced labour sweatshop system in the world. There are now approximately 2 million inmates in US prisons compared to 1 million in 1994. These prisoners have become a source of billions of dollars in profits. In fact, the US has imprisoned a half million more people than in China which has 5 times the population. California alone has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world. It has more prisoners than France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and Holland combined while these countries have 11 times the population of California. According to official figures, Iran incarcerates 220 citizens per 100,000, compared to US figures of 727. Overall, the total "criminal justice" system in the US, including those in prison, on parole and on probation, is approaching 6,000,000. In the last 20 years, 1000 new prisons have been built; yet they hold double their capacity. Prisoners, 75% of who are either Black or Hispanic, are forced to work for 20 cents an hour, some even as low as 75 cents a day. They produce everything from eyewear and furniture to vehicle parts and computer software. This has lead to thousands of layoffs and the lowering of the overall wage scale of the entire working class. At Soledad Prison in California, prisoners produce work-shirts exported to Asia as well as El Salvadoran license plates more cheaply than in El Salvador, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. A May/99 report in the Wall Street Journal summarized that while “more expensive private-sector workers may lose their jobs to prison labour, assigning work to the most cost-efficient producer is good for the economy.” The February/00 Wall Street Journal reported “Prisoners are excluded from employment calculation. And since most inmates are economically disadvantaged and unskilled, jailing so many people has effectively taken a big block of the nation's least-employable citizens out of the equation.” Federal Prison Industries (FPI) whose trade name is UNICOR exports prisoner-made products as well as selling them to all federal agencies as required by federal law. FPI manufactures over 150 different products in 99 factories in 64 prisons (with 19 new ones on the way) in 30 states. It is the federal government's 35th largest contractor, just behind IBM and is exempt from any federal workplace regulations. FPI's prison workforce produces 98% of the entire US market for equipment assembly services, 93% of paint and artist brushes, 92% of all kitchen assembly services, 46% of all personal armour, 36% of all household furnishings and 30% of all headset/microphone/speakers, etc. RW. Feb/00 FPI consistently advertises for companies "interested in leasing a ready-to-run prison industry" especially following congressional testimony in 1996 that reported a "pent-up demand for prison labour." Meanwhile, shareholders profiting from prison labour consistently lobby for the legislation of longer prison sentences in order to expand their workforce. At least 37 states have legalized the contracting out of prison labour to private corporations that have already set up operations inside state prisons. Prisons' business clients include: IBM, Boeing, Motorola Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instruments, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom, Revlon, Macys, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores California, with the third largest penal system in the world after China and the US as a whole, spends more on prisons than on the entire educational system. In recent years, California's university and college system cut back 8,000 employees while its Department of Corrections added 26,000. CA has built 19 prisons vs. 1 university in the past 10 years. The state spends up to $60,000 per year to incarcerate a young person, while only spending $8,000 per year to educate the same youth.The Prison Industrial Complex in America: Investment in Slavery by Venerable Kobutsu Malone, Osho The United States Constitution Permits Prison Slavery and Involuntary Servitude The secure housing, minimal support, minimal medical care and feeding of 2.2 million people is a costly endeavor consuming billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer's money every year in America. Corporations are lined up to receive a portion of the public funds used to support the self-perpetuating incarceration industry. States such as California spend more public funds, tax dollars, your money, my money, on prisons than for education and schools.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The largest network of prison labor is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons' manufacturing consortium, UNICOR. While paying inmate laborers entry-level wages of 23 cents an hour, UNICOR boasts of gross annual sales (primarily to the Department of Defense) of $250 million.The correctional-industrial complex therefore relies on a sobering "joint venture" directly relating profits to increased incarceration rates for four kinds of "partners," only the first of whom are those seeking opportunities in prison construction. A second kind of partner stocks these prisons with stun guns, pepper spray, surveillance equipment, and other "disciplinary technology," corporations such as Adtech, American Detention Services, the Correctional Corporation of America and Space Master Enterprises. A third partner finds a state-guaranteed mass of consumers for food and other services in the prisoners themselves, such as Campbell's Soup and Szabo Correctional Services. The fourth partner can be any private industry or state-sponsored program that stands to gain from paying wages that only nominally distinguish captive forced labor from slavery. In this last category, an example of the former is Prison Blues and of the latter is UNICOR which uses prisoners to produce advanced military weaponary ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Telecommunications contracts in the prison industry are highly prized and lucrative "deals" that invariably entail legal kickbacks to the prisons euphemistically labeled "attractive commission and incentive programs." An initial telecommunications contract with a state department of corrections can involve a million dollars or more in "incentive" up front.Slavery in your portfolio? Take a good look at the list below...own any stock in any of the companies listed? Patronize any of the telecommunications companies? Verizon? MCI? Think about it, these companies are all making profit from the incarceration of human beings under conditions which cause suffering to the prisoners, their families and loved ones, the guards and administrators who hold them captive, and the social fabric of our communities. http://www.engaged-zen.org/articles/Kobutsu-Investing_in_Slavery.html
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