The Prison Industrial Complex

[TwiceHorn 30834]

Every time there's a criminal-justice-reform related post, seems like people bring up private prisons.  Stumbled across this article examining all of the "stakeholders" in the current state of US incarceration.  There's more to it than private prisons of course.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e127cb1b10e31ed45b20f4/t/5ade0281f950b7ab293c86a6/1524499083424/The+Prison+Industrial+Complex+-+Mapping+Private+Sector+Players+(April+2018).pdf

Quote

Today, more than half of the $80 billion spent on incarceration annually in the U.S. is used to pay the thousands of vendors that serve the criminal legal system. They are healthcare providers, food suppliers, commissary merchants, and more. Focused on their bottom line and advantaged by an obscure and often monopolistic environment, the private, for-profit corporations that operate in the prison industrial complex raise particular concerns for the incarcerated population, vulnerable to corporate abuse.

This report exposes over 3,100 corporations that profit from the devastating mass incarceration of our nation’s marginalized communities. It serves as the largest lens into the prison industrial complex ever published. While this report still far from covers all the private sector companies in this space, it captures all the major players.

It is published by an outfit with a clear agenda. Nonetheless, much of the material is factual and thought-provoking.

[bolverk 29035]

I think this topic doesn't get enough attention, especially here in Texas. In my hometown out in West Texas, GEO Group, is one of the largest employers in town with 500+ employees.

 

I don't mean to CR this topic but in the fall of 2016 when DOJ said they weren't going to be renewing contracts, city leaders were ready to panic (especially with the then recent oil bust). And everyone was giddy when the Trump administration reversed that decision.

 

They liked their devil's bargain and all the problems being a prison town brought. You know, they say there's a fine line between the prisoners and those watching them.

 

But this dependence on the prison-industrial complex isn't just confined to my hometown where the Census counts 15% of the population as prisoners. Small towns all over West Texas are dependent on both private and state prisons. The proliferation of the latter were treated as major competitive economic development projects throughout the 1990s.

 

Just off the top of my head, I can name the following West Texas towns where the local private or state-run prison is one of the largest employers: Fort Stockton, Pecos, Lamesa, Snyder, Big Spring, Brownfield, Plainview, Pampa, Dalhart, and Childress.

 

One of the weird side benefits of having a prison in your town is that the Census counts prisoners as residents and are included in the population numbers. Of course, we know that having inflated population figures help with all sorts of federal funding formulas in addition to redistricting. Helluva a racket if you ask me.

 

Recently, I've heard talk that prison populations are declining as crime rates remain at historic lows. It'll be interesting to watch the hard politicking involved in protecting hometown prisons from closure. Just last year, Eden lost theirs, and that town is about ready to blow away now - actually, for quite a while.

 

 

[elfenix 34075]

Back when I was on the 40 there was a huge stink about sodexho getting the cafeteria contract because it also had some prison contracts.

 

80 billion seems like a lot

 

 

[TwiceHorn 30834]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

I think this topic doesn't get enough attention, especially here in Texas. In my hometown out in West Texas, GEO Group, is one of the largest employers in town with 500+ employees.

 

I don't mean to CR this topic but in the fall of 2016 when DOJ said they weren't going to be renewing contracts, city leaders were ready to panic (especially with the then recent oil bust). And everyone was giddy when the Trump administration reversed that decision.

 

They liked their devil's bargain and all the problems being a prison town brought. You know, they say there's a fine line between the prisoners and those watching them.

 

But this dependence on the prison-industrial complex isn't just confined to my hometown where the Census counts 15% of the population as prisoners. Small towns all over West Texas are dependent on both private and state prisons. The proliferation of the latter were treated as major competitive economic development projects throughout the 1990s.

 

Just off the top of my head, I can name the following West Texas towns where the local private or state-run prison is one of the largest employers: Fort Stockton, Pecos, Lamesa, Snyder, Big Spring, Brownfield, Plainview, Pampa, Dalhart, and Childress.

 

One of the weird side benefits of having a prison in your town is that the Census counts prisoners as residents and are included in the population numbers. Of course, we know that having inflated population figures help with all sorts of federal funding formulas in addition to redistricting. Helluva a racket if you ask me.

 

Recently, I've heard talk that prison populations are declining as crime rates remain at historic lows. It'll be interesting to watch the hard politicking involved in protecting hometown prisons from closure. Just last year, Eden lost theirs, and that town is about ready to blow away now - actually, for quite a while.

 

 

Texas state incarceration rates are dropping and have been for a couple of decades, partly as a result of the "uncrime wave" and partly because Texas is actually regarded as being at the vanguard of prison reform.

The federal incarceration rate or number of prisoners (what I really meant), was declining slightly under some of the policies of the Obama administration, which was not nearly as progressive on crime as some of the rhetoric might have you believe, but seems to be accelerating a bit under Sessions.  As I recall, your home town is Big Spring, and I don't think it's going anywhere soon.  As far as I know, most federal prisons are running about 150-200% over designed capacity, so even a  pretty significant reduction in prisoners does not necessarily mean a concomitant reduction in staff/employment.

[SDG 3319]

Seems like a good place to post this:

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Man shackled for days in prisoner transport van files suit

man-shackled-days-prisoner-transport-van-files-suit-184412018.html

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McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Edward Kovari's 18-day ordeal began Sept. 12, 2016, when some guys in a van showed up to take him from a jail in Virginia to Texas, where he was wanted on charges that he had stolen a car.

But the trip from Winchester, Virginia, to Houston took more than two weeks in a crowded van where inmates had to urinate in bottles and take turns sleeping on the van's floor, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by Kovari. The private company that contracted with the jail to transport Kovari, 39, kept him shackled in the back of that van for 18 days as it wound through the country picking up inmates in an effort at cost efficiency.

The charge on which Kovari was brought to Texas was later dismissed.

The company that transferred him, Nashville-based Prisoner Transportation Services, bills itself as the nation's largest prisoner extradition company. It did not respond Tuesday to messages seeking comment.

The lawsuit, filed by civil rights lawyers Jia Cobb, Glenn Schlactus and Orly May, alleges Prisoner Transportation Services prioritizes "transporting as many detainees, with as few stops for rest or care, as possible over their obligation to safely transport those in their custody."

In Kovari's case, that meant 18 days, most of which he spent in shackles. On only two or three nights did the van actually stop at a jail where prisoners were allowed to get out and spend the night in a bed.

Inside the van, no provisions were made for restroom stops, and inmates urinated into bottles which spilled and sloshed on the floor of the van. In one case, a prisoner defecated on the van floor, and in another instance, a prisoner vomited. The lawsuit alleges that nothing was done to clean the mess. "He spent the duration of the transport sitting in human waste and filth," the lawyers wrote.

...

 

edit to add that Winchester, Virginia, to Houston Texas is 1350 miles...

Edited April 25, 2018 by SDG

[bolverk 29035]

Necro bump.

Looong investigative piece by the AP. It raises the real question, "Is prison labor essentially slave labor?" We all know that it exists, but I personally didn't know the extent as a consumer.

Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

ANGOLA, La. (AP) — A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.

Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.

They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.

The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. And some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.

Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime.

That clause is currently being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen states this year.

Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves harvested cotton, tobacco and sugarcane more than 150 years ago, with some present-day images looking eerily similar to the past. In Louisiana, which has one of the country’s highest incarceration rates, men working on the “farm line” still stoop over crops stretching far into the distance.

cont'd:

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e

[Brisketexan 103515]

2 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime.

In other words, the "so, it LOOKS like we're banning slavery, but really, we're mostly gonna rename it" amendment.

From our pal Traces of Texas, posting a pic of meal time at the Imperial Sugar state prison farm:

Quote

In 1878 the state of Texas had begun to "lease" convicts as laborers to private companies operating on the Imperial Sugar property. This practice was widespread in Texas and across the South after Reconstruction, when few states had prisons. Many states generated substantial revenues from the fees for convict leasing. They passed what were known as Black Codes, criminalizing behavior they believed associated with freedmen and charging them fees for convictions, for instance, for so-called vagrancy. Because in a cash-poor economy, men often couldn't pay the fee, they were required to work off the costs as convict laborers. It was lucrative business, and some states made so much money that they had incentives to convict poor men for minor offenses. Convict leasing was little regulated; the state did not protect the convicts or oversee their treatment. The State of Texas bought the 5,200-acre area for the prison in 1908. The Imperial State Prison Farm, one of the first penal institutions owned by the State of Texas, opened in 1909 in the Imperial Sugar plantation. Originally it consisted of 3,700 acres and was the hub of the Texas state correctional agriculture production.

But sure.....we ended slavery, don't know why anyone is grousing today.  They're just WOKE!

[bolverk 29035]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

In other words, the "so, it LOOKS like we're banning slavery, but really, we're mostly gonna rename it" amendment.

From our pal Traces of Texas, posting a pic of meal time at the Imperial Sugar state prison farm:

But sure.....we ended slavery, don't know why anyone is grousing today.  They're just WOKE!

I was aware of Imperial Sugar, but I thought all that was in the past and naively believed prison labor today was stamping out license plates or working the farms to produce food for the prison system itself. I never once considered that a cheeseburger I got at McDonald's was raised on a prison farm.

[Pods 7461]

3 hours ago, bolverk said:

Necro bump.

Looong investigative piece by the AP. It raises the real question, "Is prison labor essentially slave labor?" 

Yes and it's pretty explicitly laid out in the 13th Amendment.

Quote

13th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Slavery and involuntary servitude are explicitly authorized as punishment for someone convicted of a "crime". Notice how open ended the word "crime" is. 

[Captainant 26902]

4 hours ago, bolverk said:

Necro bump.

Looong investigative piece by the AP. It raises the real question, "Is prison labor essentially slave labor?" We all know that it exists, but I personally didn't know the extent as a consumer.

Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

ANGOLA, La. (AP) — A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.

Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.

They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.

The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. And some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.

Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime.

That clause is currently being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen states this year.

Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves harvested cotton, tobacco and sugarcane more than 150 years ago, with some present-day images looking eerily similar to the past. In Louisiana, which has one of the country’s highest incarceration rates, men working on the “farm line” still stoop over crops stretching far into the distance.

cont'd:

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e

No shit, there was a big ass documentary a while back titled "13th" about how prisoners are used as slave labor in the US to drive profits for the private prisons and for the mega corps getting extremely cheap labor.

[BamaATL 16006]

The prison level is just part of the issue, the C&P apparatus has itself become a big time industry in the form of for profit probation, local jails, etc.  It all stinks to high heaven.  That having been said, grievance alone doesn't get us or anyone anywhere.  I'm not sure what the solution is but what we currently do doesn't work, on any level.  

[Mikey4 2476]

2 hours ago, Pods said:

Yes and it's pretty explicitly laid out in the 13th Amendment.

Slavery and involuntary servitude are explicitly authorized as punishment for someone convicted of a "crime". Notice how open ended the word "crime" is. 

Which, of course, dovetails with the Fourteenth Amendment -- states cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The converse is that a state CAN take away a person's rights as punishment for a criminal conviction.

Edited July 26 by Mikey4

[Captainant 26902]

4 minutes ago, Mikey4 said:

Which, of course, dovetails with the Fourteenth Amendment -- states cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The converse is that a state CAN take away a person's rights as punishment for a criminal conviction.

Which circles back around to the disparity in policing and law enforcement, and shit like the war on drugs being designed to break up families and put people into for profit prisons. Among many other schemes to keep prisons nice and full so their shareholders can get the returns they are entitled to

[BurntEyes 5629]

Good news is there are no shenanigans around longer sentences or higher per capita inmate incarnation cost on keeping these labor forces in prison for profit.

2020 info on private prison shenanigans

So our food cost are going up at restaurants due to "higher wage costs". The prisoners are treated worse in the private prisons. They food suppliers are reducing their cost for supplies of the manufacture of largely extremely unhealthy food. This helps our population get their fat and sugar fixes burdening the health care system. These prisons cost the tax payer more than state run prisons. Finally, we are clearly winning the war on Drugs and the billions of dollars on the enforcement side of this puzzle can help make the tax payers feel super safe because they have APCs, high end tech equipment for spying on evil criminals and AR15s.

Profit!!!!!

Not seeing the issue on this one.

Edited July 26 by BurntEyes