The U.S. Prison System — Modern-Day Slave Labor

The U.S. Prison System — Modern-Day Slave Labor

In the “Land of the Free,” there are currently an estimated 2 million people in prison. This total makes up for around 20% of the total prison population on the planet, even though the U.S. only makes up 5% of the world’s population.

In this demographic, African Americans have on average represented around 33% of the total population in prison, even though they only represent around 12% of the total U.S. population. In comparison, Hispanics who represent around 16% of the total U.S. population represent around 23% of the prison population, and whites who represent 64% of the total population represent 30% of the population in prison.

So, why are there a higher percentage of Hispanics and African Americans in prison? This obviously is related to profiling by police, as well as selective enforcement. There also exists a higher instance of crime in lower socioeconomic demographics, as well as a higher likelihood of arrests and charges for poor people. Which, unfortunately, both of these demographic groups experience at a higher percentage than whites as a whole.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. — Aristotle

There are many causes of this, but some are due to laws such as the outlawing of marijuana by the federal government with The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. This law was in part passed to help prop up the paper industry, but also to help justify funding for the newly developed DEA. There just weren’t enough cocaine and morphine addicts to bust, so they decided to target another substance. Banning cannabis was done specifically due to the fact that many Hispanics in the west, and African Americans in the south used it, and they needed a target to keep their bloated funding.

Thus “Refer Madness” was born, even the choice of using the name “Marijuana/Marihuana” was to fool Congress into not knowing what they were signing. Cannabis had been widely used in medicine and for hemp production since the founding of the country.

There’s also a lot of suspicion that the CIA contributed to or even started the crack epidemic in Los Angeles, and funneled that money to the Contras in Nicaragua during the 80s.

This mixed with the “War on Drugs” has had disastrous consequences, seeing over a 500% increase in population in the last 40 years.

So why would the U.S. want to have a prison population this large? Isn’t it a drain on society, and taxpayers?

Prisoners are a super cheap source of labor for prisons, their pay maxing out around $0.52 per hour, that’s about 1/14th of the current U.S. minimum wage of $7.25/hour. Fourteen workers for the price of one isn’t bad in their eyes. Especially when they have them producing:

• Military and police protective gear and equipment
• Furniture
• McDonald's uniforms
• Victoria Secret lingerie
• Honda car parts
• Dentures
• JCPenney’s blue jeans
• Microsoft software packaging
• Ikea furniture
• Packaged meats
• and more…

Beyond all of this, they even are used to handle call center tasks.

Some may say, “Well they’re serving their time for their crimes, and at least they’re staying busy and productive.” People who think this way need to realize that there are still people serving years in prison for a minor marijuana charge, meanwhile other people are running legit legal marijuana businesses in over half the states. They also need to come to the realization of how stupid it is to lock people up for marijuana usage and or possession when alcohol is legal across the country, which causes so many more detrimental health affects, as well as drunk driving accidents and deaths.

So, why would the system keep people in longer than necessary? If it even was necessary in the first place? This is where for-profit prisons come into play. These prisons are private institutions that get contracts from the government to run the prison, rather than the state owning and operating the facility. The biggest issue here is where the profit motive leads.

Any business is going to do whatever it takes, within or even outside of the law, to maximize profits for their shareholder. Prisons are no different. The profit motive here dictates that you want to maximize sentence time and recidivism rate. The more inmates you have, the more money the prison makes, and if you can utilize the prisoners to make products for corporations while they’re in there, then all the better.

It also wouldn’t surprise me if some money was being used to bribe judges and law enforcement to make sure the beds stay filled.

According to the ACLU, it’s estimated that nationally incarcerated individuals produce over 2 billion in products and 7 billion in services per year.

It’s really not that complicated. Let’s remove morals out of it for a moment and just follow the money. In scenario one, let’s say the state pays for prisons using taxpayer money. In this scenario there is no profit motive, the prisons are seen as a public necessity, and it’s in the best interest of everyone for people not to be kept in there longer than what is deemed as fair or necessary. This scenario also incentivizes not incarcerating people for minor infractions, since we’re all paying for it with our tax dollars. This also discourages creating new laws that ban things that may get additional people locked up. (small drug charges as an example, and mandatory minimum sentences)

On the other hand, let’s think about for-profit prisons. There is an obvious profit motive to run them “more efficiently”. This includes having prisons in Texas with no air conditioning, where people have literally died due to the heat. Not to mention cutting necessary medical and hygiene items for inmates for “efficiency’s” sake. If we keep following the money, we see that all financial motivation points to incarcerating more people, and keeping them in there longer by playing up disciplinary citations or denying parole. This has a two-fold benefit, profit-wise. It allows the for-profit prison to get more money from the state by having a larger census, while also cutting costs, as mentioned above. This also provides a larger workforce for the aforementioned product manufacturing or service work.

So corporations benefit by receiving “made in America” goods at cheaper wages. The prison keeps their contracts with the state where they profit by cutting quality of life goods and services from the prisoners who have no recourse, and the prison gets to profit heavily off of what amounts essentially to slave labor.

So we’ve named who wins, but who loses? That would be the over 2 million people who are stuck in modern-day slavery where even a phone call out costs around $0.25 a minute (so 30 minutes of work for a 1-minute phone call), but for most people on the outside, it’s out of sight, out of mind.