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And You Thought Slavery Had Been Abolished

from The Cracks Start Appearing by Active Minds

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The USA has 5% of the world’s population, but houses 25% of its prisoners. In the decade between 1990 and 2000, the US prison population doubled from one million to two million people - mainly those from black and hispanic minorities.
Harsh sentencing means that more and more people have been imprisoned for increasingly longer sentences for non-violent offences. In California in the mid-1990’s the “three strikes and you’re out” law was enacted in which people received a mandatory life sentence if they were found guilty of a third crime - even if they were only minor misdemeanors. One man was given a life sentence for stealing a pair of socks (having had two previous convictions for robbery fourteen years earlier, when still a teenager). Another received a life sentence for stealing four videotapes, after previous minor offences were also taken into account. In 2012 this law was finally amended so that minor offences would no longer be included as the “third strike”, but that could still result in a life sentence for someone involved a street brawl, as well as still leaving many inmates in jail who were sentenced under the old regime.
Elsewhere in the country, harsh anti-drug laws have been used over the years to imprison huge numbers of people - often for non-violent low-level drug possession offences. Some communities can find whole generations blighted by the threat of imprisonment. All of this costs a vast amount of money, so how does the government afford to pay for that?
The answer is to use prisoners as forced labour. A large prison population means a large potential workforce. The creation of privately owned prisons, operating for profit, has meant that increasingly US goods are produced by prisoners who can be paid as little as 25 cents an hour. One report stated that more than a third of US household appliances are made in prisons. Private companies now own 10% of US prisons, and that figure is growing.
And those Wall Street stockholders include some very influential people, who can lobby hard for tougher sentencing which, in turn, expands their low-cost workforce. The system feeds itself - with modern day slaves.

lyrics

If you thought slave labour was a thing of the past, there’s a two billion dollar industry and it’s growing fast in a country which has a quarter of the world’s prison population and jails can be owned by Wall Street corporations. This is the reality is the U.S. of A - “the land of the free”, or so they say. Increasing numbers of people are now doing time. With “three strikes and you’re out”, how can the punishment fit the crime? Judges passing sentences with a profit motive in mind - more of the population behind bars than in the history of mankind. Two million people sitting idle in jail - the basis of a brand new business model that simply cannot fail. Whether making consumer goods or equipment for the state, having a captive workforce means the profits can be great.

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from The Cracks Start Appearing, released December 19, 2014

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Active Minds Scarborough, UK

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