The American Gulag = Just Business

The private prison industry is the fastest growing business sector in America. Its investors are on Wall Street and it has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and on-line catalogues. It also has direct-advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and containment cells in a nice selection of fashionable colours. One of the things that has continued to stump the average citizen is that murderers and rapists are eligible for parole and manage to hit the streets in just a fraction of the time served by non-violent off enders. It all begins to make sense, though, when you approach the issue from the point of view of a psychopath—oops, employer... Who would you rather have on your factory assembly line, some guy who ripped out someone’s grandmother’s eyeballs and then set her cat on fire? Or gentle Joe the marijuana grower? 

It’s simple once you approach it from a psychopathic standpoint; the private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock more and more people up; in other words, more laws. What’s more, stockholders who make money off  prisoners’ work continually lobby for longer sentences—and more laws—in order to expand and extend their workforce. What exactly does this workforce produce? 93% of all domestic paint sold to Americans is manufactured by American prison labour  as well as 36% of home appliances, 21% of all office furniture and—this may be my favourite—100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts and bullet proof vests. And yet…the United States prohibits the importation of any goods made through forced labour in foreign countries. 

So, there you have it, ninety-seven percent of federal inmates in the United States have been convicted of non-violent crimes and federal prison is where they are going to stay because once you have a cheap, reliable, relatively non-aggressive employee you may as well hang on to him for the rest of his life. What is happening in psychopathic society serves to illustrate precisely how much your personal psychopath will ever value you; namely, for as long as you are still of some use to the psychopath and as long as you make no claim on them in return. 

From Defeated Demons by Thomas Sheridan

At least 3,728 prisoners in the United States will spend the rest of their lives in prison for non-violent offenses according to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) study published on Wednesday.

The study found that 79 percent of these prisoners were convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes and 20 percent of nonviolent property crimes like shoplifting. Most of these cases were sentenced under mandatory minimum guidelines, for which judges had no choice but to dole out a life without parole sentence.

“Fairness has departed from the system,” said one judge as he sentenced a nonviolent offender to life in prison without parole.

In response to increasing criticism, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in August that the Justice Department would attempt to ease America’s overcrowded federal prisons by reducing mandatory drug sentences – a move that was cheered by liberals and conservatives, who favor a reduction in federal prison spending.

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