The 99% Declaration » 21. Curtailing the Private Prison Industrial Complex

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# 21. Curtailing the Private Prison Industrial Complex

Grievances Add comments
Jan 212012

Curtailing the Private Prison Industrial Complex. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (“BJS”), in 2010, the number of adults under supervision of correctional authorities in the United States was 7.1 million at year-end. This is more than any other country including India, Russia and China. Of these adults, 2,266,800 were in jails or prisons; also more than any other country. The same source reports that between 1980 and 2009, the adult arrest rate for drug possession or use {excluding illegal sales} grew 138%. Hence, of these 2.26 million people in our prisons and jails, approximately 27% are in custody for non-sale drug offenses and about 16% of all inmates suffer from mental health disorders. The incarceration of these millions of people for non-violent offenses is part of a booming private monopoly . The vast majority of arrests of young people under age 21 are for non-violent drug offenses, often resulting in prolonged incarceration where youth are housed in the adult jail population pending hearings and trials in over-burdened courts. It is clear that the mass warehousing of people who suffer from the disease of addiction and mental or emotional disorders is immoral and counter-productive except for the privatized prison industry, government agencies and contractors that either profit or justify their annual budgets from incarcerating non-violent drug offenders. The so-called “War on Drugs” is a war on young people, minorities and the poor who cannot acquire adequate legal representation because the criminal justice system is overwhelmed and understaffed. The elderly also disappear into these modern dungeons; the BJS reports the number of sentenced federal and state prisoners who are age 65 or older grew 94 times faster than the total sentenced prisoner population between 2007 and 2010. Non-violent drug offenders who do not engage in drug sales, and those with mental health issues must be treated rather than imprisoned and adjudicated through specialized drug and mental health courts. The cost of drug or mental health treatment can be as low as $1,100 per year while the cost of incarceration can be as high as $70,000 per year. Drug and mental health courts offer multiple alternatives to incarceration, support, treatment and rehabilitation rather than punishment for profit. Private prison corporations play on public fears and rely on campaign contributions to politicians as a quid pro quo to authorize the building of jails and prisons at taxpayer expense.

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### 13 Responses to “21. Curtailing the Private Prison Industrial Complex”

1. flaja says:
   2012/01/26 at 7:51 pm

   Alcohol is perfectly legal, regulated and heavily taxed in the U.S. and it is the most often abused drug in the country. So how will legalizing drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines be a good idea? What will the U.S. gain if we let the country become a continent-size Amsterdam? And how can we ignore the fact that countries that have more stringent drug laws and more rigidly enforced drugs laws than the U.S. has have nothing comparable to the U.S. drug problem?

   The sad truth is that we have lost the war on drugs simply because it has never been fought as a real war. Our military has never been ordered to eliminate any country’s ability to export illegal drugs to the United States. Our legal system has never treated drug dealers as the murderer that they are. And we have a revolving door on our re-hab centers even though few addicts are physiologically capable of getting clean and sober and staying that way. Death sentences for dealers and life sentences for addicts and military interdiction are the only solutions that have any hope of working and these solutions are exactly what the liberals and the libertarian fringe refuse to let us try.

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2. bchristie says:
   2012/01/24 at 8:06 pm

   Good to see that the “War on Drugs” is recognized as an important grievance. But it is so much more. Not only are vast numbers of ordinary citizens being incarcerated and tainted, usually at a very young age, hampering their futures with a ‘felony’ record, unable to get jobs, but the deeper social costs must be brought to greater light and change demanded.

   Michele Alexanders’ book, “The New Jim Crow,” is the definitive recent work on this problem. It is a must read. Briefly, while white youth and youth of color have been shown by numerous research reports to be involved with various drugs at about the same rates, black and brown youth, especially males, are differentially targeted by law enforcement in the extreme. I won’t quote all the stat’s here, but the result is that from a very young age boys of color are isolated from societal resources in a variety of ways and ‘channeled’ into the ‘criminal justice’ system where they have become a new caste, unable to participate in society or economy as the rest of us do.

   This is not nearly as much about ‘our’ freedom to do pot as legitimately as others have done alcohol, as it is about a systematic repression of a very large portion of the total population as a means for financial gain for military contractors, the DEA, and local police forces, resulting from Drug-War policies and funding that ‘incentivize’ police to increase arrest rates, targeting vulnerable urban populations rather than college campuses, to get funding and new whiz-bang military equipment. Think about it! It works the same for U.S. municipal police departments as it does with ‘foreign aid’ to overseas military and secret police forces. Have you noticed that the riot police in Cairo and in other cities reacting to the Arab Spring are wearing the same armor, using the same weapons–tear gas, pepper spray, etc.–driving the same armored vehicles, etc.–as the cops in Oakland, NYC, Philly, etc. here?

   War is profit, and the Drug War is no exception. It’s so deep it’s even changing the culture. “The Homeland” implies and Empire! It’s so sad to see some of the cops, vets of the Iraq-Afghanistan apocalypse, beating on their Iraq Vets Against the War brothers at the Occupy events around the country. While some wake up to the insanity of the OCCUPATION of these other countries, many others either retreat into their own PTST, act out and do at home what they were trained to do to the peoples of other nations.

   Ending the War on Drugs (do drugs have guns?) will save so many lives in so many ways.

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   - bchristie says:
     2012/01/25 at 4:15 pm

     Typo, next to last paragraph: that would be PTSD, not ….T.

     Anyway, I failed to mention another major problem with the War on Drugs, which is the fact that it has been and continues to be a major source of international and intranational violence in and among several nations; in Latin America, of course, but also in Afghanistan and other countries in the region. Different drugs, same problem.

     As DEA and other agencies conduct open and clandestine military operations in these countries, encouraging and forcing other governments to participate, vast sums of money are made on ALL sides of these conflicts, while local populations are put at increasing risk of death.

     Whatever your views on addiction, how a person can get ‘clean,’ etc., drug use in the biggest market (the US), the Drug War has had no measurable effect on drug use, only on the bank accounts of the drug ‘warriors’ and arms dealers, as well as the disruptive effects on the nations affected.

     Decriminalize drug use, regulate recreational drugs like alcohol and pharmaceuticals, and use the vast moneys thereby saved to develop serious climate-change reduction and adaptation projects to put people to work on something constructive instead of escalating violence everywhere.

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3. bogotabro says:
   2012/01/21 at 3:01 pm

   Part of any Ending the War on Drugs grievance should include the decriminalization of marijuana and legalization of it’s use for medicinal purposes. This would remove hundreds of thousands from the criminal justice system. A vast majority of marijuana arrests are by non-violent, productive members of society with no other criminal records. It has not been proven as a gateway drug, is not addictive, and is no more dangerous than alcohol. Furthermore this would also dissolve the conflict between the federal government and those states who have already passed laws legalizing medicinal marijuana, and have productive, law-abiding, and tax-generating enterprises in business for this purpose. The pharmaceutical lobby is the biggest opponent to this and should not be held unaccountable for the suffering of millions of Americans not living in states who have approved the drug for treatment.

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   - robdinsmore says:
     2012/01/24 at 12:21 am

     I disagree about marijuana being non addictive. Anything that causes pleasure can be addictive. It is not physically addictive like caffeine, nicotine and alcohol or heroin or cocaine, but it can lead to abuse just as easily as food can.

     Other than that, I agree. There is no real reason to keep it illegal if alcohol is legal. The cost to us all for keeping it as such is far more than any harm that would come by legalizing it. Actually it may lead to less use of harder drugs. Weed is certainly a gateway drug in terms of teaching people how to procure illegal drugs, legalizing it, would make it obtainable through a friend’s older brother buying it for them instead of them finding it through dealers.

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     - bogotabro says:
       2012/01/25 at 12:42 am

       It can be argued that there is a psychological addiction to marijuana, much the same way gambling can become an obsessive-compulsive disorder. As you point out, any number of things in society can be deemed as addictive. That doesn’t make them illegal. There is no valid, logical reason to keep this substance classified as it is today, most especially for medicinal purposes if not recreational.

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4. cindygail420 says:
   2012/01/18 at 11:27 pm

   Stop the mass incarceration and criminalization of our citizens, Please. Immediate Prison Reform; Immediate Reform for the criminal justice system, including law enforcement, the juvenile justice system, mental health system, the probation and parole system, and the prison system.

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   - bogotabro says:
     2012/01/20 at 2:59 am

     Most importantly, NO PRIVATIZATION of the prison system as is happening in Florida and other states. Health care, education, and incarceration should all be public services, not run by some for-profit corporation who will always put their bottom line above the intent and purpose of these entities.

     Then decriminalize marijuana and legalize it’s use for medicinal purposes, as some states have already done. This will take a huge chunk of public expenditures out of out of law enforcement and incarceration, which can then be used for the public good, such as education and health care.

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5. romulus71 says:
   2011/12/31 at 1:48 pm

   I would like to know why this country, especially given the economy the last few years, does not legalize the use of marijuana. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year, on: police, judicial expenses, incarceration costs, public service announcements etc. on the pursuit of illegal use of marijuana. When we could be accruing billions of additional tax dollars through the legalization, regulation, taxing of marijuana. That is not to mention the additional jobs the would be created, and how much less the crime rate would be, when it is having to be sold on the black market.

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   - wethepeople says:
     2012/01/02 at 2:16 pm

     I support this greivance and it should at least be discussed by the delegates before it is submitted to DC. We could even create a poll system on this website to find out where the majority stands on each of these issues including this one, before it is added to our list.

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   - bogotabro says:
     2012/01/20 at 2:50 am

     This will have to be done incrementally if there is any chance of it happening in the long run. We first need to reclassify marijuana and decriminalize it. Then federal law needs to be enacted that legalizes it’s use for medicinal purposes, therefore removing the conflict between the feds and the states who currently allow this. Medicinal marijuana is already a thriving industry in states like Colorado and California, creating tax revenue and relief for patients with a myriad of ailments, but the businesses operate under constant threat of shut down by the federal government. This needs to change.

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   - chuck14od says:
     2012/01/21 at 2:07 pm

     Let’s face it, this is the most medicinal plant given to us by Mother Nature, truly a gift to all her children. It treats damn near all health conditions. I have done hundreds of hours of research on this subject. It is all about money, plain and simple. It was originally banned in 1937 because of the influence of Dupont and the Hearst Corporation, profits pure and simple. Hemp alone as a plant and it’s many uses in clothing, paper, etc. has so many advantages, but again, Newspapers, cotton, etc. and profits for those companies in direct competition with Hemp products. The U.S. Constitution was written on HEMP! As for it’s medical value, there is no other. Research it for those that have believed all the government lies. Just it’s use in pain management…..the U.S. is now totally addicted to pharmaceutical narcotics, and again, it’s all about profits. Today, more people are sticking a needle in their arms, going from prescription narcotics to cheaper street ones than ever before in U.S. history. The entire ‘cancer industry’ is all about it. The law enforcement/prison industry is as well. Money, Money, Money. So much change must take place for America to become the dream it once held, and this is a major one.
     Chuck

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     - chuck14od says:
       2012/01/21 at 4:05 pm

       FYI about the Doctor and Proffesor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who set out to prove how harmful marijuana was to humans, and then learned it was all government lies.:

       The Best Medicine

       Lester GrinspoonDr Lester Grinspoon is Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Now one of the most respected and outspoken proponents of cannabis, Dr Grinspoon originally set out to prove it was a harmful drug. In 1967 he began research to scientifically define the dangers of marijuana. His studies led him to a surprising conclusion, the opposite of his hypothesis. Cannabis was not the dangerous drug that he, and the general public, had been led to believe it was.

       His book ´Marijuana Reconsidered´ (1971) reflected this reversal of opinion and was followed by several more, including ´Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine´ in 1993. In 1996 he expressed his admiration for the Sensi Seed Bank collection of cannabis genetics in a letter which states: “The Sensi Seed Bank is the most comprehensive cannabis genetics bank in the world and it is, from a medical point of view, essential it remains functioning and intact. It is little like preserving the rainforest because we know there are potential medicines there which must not be destroyed.”

       Although many people associate the Netherlands with recreational cannabis, perhaps fewer know that medicinal marijuana has been available on prescription here for over a decade. Sensi Seeds is a fundamental part of the Dutch medical cannabis program: when medicinal company Bedrocan needed stable strains with powerful and reliable cannabinoid content, they chose Sensi Seeds genetics. It is a continuing source of pride to the company that our varieties were selected to help patients obtain the best possible medication for their needs.

       Chuck

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