The Worst: Private Prisons In America

Greetings all!

This post comes shortly after the death of Margaret Thatcher, the conservative leader of the United Kingdom during the 1980s. Her rule was marked by a dissolution of British labor protections in favor of privatization and large capitalist-driven growth. By the end of her rule, stagnation and civil unrest marked her leadership, although she remains a significant figure in British politics to this day. And while my fellows and I may feel no remorse for our criticism of her, I do not rejoice in death. Even though I’d love to embark on a full critique of Thatcherism, tonight I have reserved a piece which I consider one of my best among my body of work here. Tonight, I write on private prisons, and how the very nature of these institutions is wrong and they should be abolished. This week’s quote is from David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miner’s Association and a critic of Thatcher whom I felt deserved a place for his voice.

Private prison operation is a mostly new phenomenon in the United States. Like many other things wrong with America today, private prisons began their expansion mostly during the 1980s. This was due to the effects of the War on Drugs, in which our incarceration rates began to move up on the scale to the point now where we have the world's largest prison population. Due to increased arrests of a disproportionate amount of racial minorities on minor drug-related offenses, towns and cities suddenly had far more prisoners than public institutions were ready to hold. This was a significant issue because drawing up money to build new prisons was difficult seeing as Reagan had transferred much public money away in order to “grow” the private sector. And so, private prisons stepped in, eventually becoming major corporations such as the Corrections Corporation of America.

I’ll take the liberty of linking my main source for criticism of private prisons right now, this lengthy article from PRWatch. My main, to put it lightly, quip with private prisons is their legality within the framework of our Constitution. However, they also exhibit several other areas where they fall short of reasoning for existence. First and foremost, private prisons are often accused of prisoner abuse by guards and other forms of poor treatment that is not seen as frequently in public prisons. Not only are we taking away the freedoms of many people at a time with private prisons, but we also violate their freedoms at the same time. This is increasingly hypocritical when you realize just how many prisoners are put away for minor drug-related crimes, such as marijuana possession. Whether you believe marijuana should be legal or not, you cannot dispute that people should be treated as people and not scum, even when in prison. If doing that worked to improve societies, we would not have issues integrating ex-cons back into society. Norway has easily proven that rehabilitation is a far superior method towards that goal.

Private prisons, or rather the companies that run them, have also been caught in conflicts of interest. They often hold some form of murky, questionable political power or influence in the places they operate most freely, like in the Arizona town referenced in the PRWatch article. And so just like banks, the abuse public services and funds to fuel themselves while also protecting themselves from the public. If this doesn't sound like a corporatist government, I don’t know what does.

One of the worst parts of private prisons is the very notion that they exist. Think about it in terms of a capitalist market. In capitalism, all business is driven by the profit motive; businesses want to make money somehow. The goal of prisons is to keep prisoners in an isolated location and to ready them for a return to society, although rather in America their goal is to punish offenders of the law. Private prisons therefore earn a profit per each prisoner they hold. This is horrifying. These private prisons are encouraged by our capitalist model to arrest more people and keep them in prison for longer periods of time while using as little money as possible to keep them alive in order to make money. This is perhaps the only thing more abhorrent about the state of our economic model than the power which large banks hold over us.

In closing, I’d like to bring up the fact that, in essence, private prisons are unconstitutional. But why, you ask? There is nothing saying that the state must provide for all prisons, after all. While true, there is an amendment to the constitution which effectively outlaws the activity of private prisons. I refer to the 13^th Amendment, which outlawed the practice of slavery in America. We have people being placed in poor conditions and then forced to work (prison labor) while those keeping them imprisoned (guards and corporate owners) make a profit. To simplify that, unpaid and abused prisoners are being forced to work so owners can make a profit. This, my friends, is slavery, clear as can be. Therefore, any and all private prisons exist in blatant illegal opposition to the 13^th Amendment, and should be dissolved immediately.

That is all for this week, and I think I've proven my point well. As always, I encourage feedback through the comments, my email at zerospintop@live.com, my Facebook, Twitter, Steam, DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Reddit accounts. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off. 

Non-Negotiable: The Rights of Unions and Workers

Greetings all!

This post comes as March draws to a close and my week of extra writing comes to its end. After this, my usual schedule resumes its usual pace. I’d like to wish all Christians a late but happy Easter. Instead of celebrating said holiday, I stood in remembrance of Cesar Chavez, whose birthday was yesterday. He was a perennial leader for rural workers’ and unions’ rights, and his struggle earned him state holidays in California, Colorado, and Texas, as well as earning him a place as this week’s quote. In light of his legacy, tonight I write on the value of unions and the value of workers.

Unions have come under fire for years now, becoming an essential target of conservatives in the crusade to save the economy in their way. Indeed, union membership has declined lately, especially in states like Wisconsin and Indiana where Republican leadership has reduced the power and significance of unions. This is not a new occurrence in America; union membership has, as an overall percentage of population, been dropping since the 1950s when it hit a high of about 35%. Union rights and influence in American economics and politics have been dropping as well.

This is not a solely American problem, either. While unions in Europe have maintained a greater dominance and presence, they have been on the wane since the great liberalization of European economies began in the 1980s. Beginning with Margaret Thatcher and ending with Mikhail Gorbachev, much of Europe used this decade to inject fresh capitalism into the beginnings of what would become the European Union.

During the 1990s, most of the unions in Asia that did have power lost most of it. Central Asian republics formerly under the rule of the Soviet Union adapted capitalist “shock therapy” similar to what was prescribed for Russia during said decade, resulting in severe economic decline alongside worker’s rights which were torn asunder. Middle Eastern dictatorships, republics, and kingdoms did not have much protection for unions and most never did. The Indian license raj was removed after 1991, and while it transformed the Indian economy it also introduced massive corruption and made already harsh poverty endemic to many Indians. Many East Asian economies liberalized in the 1990s especially in light of the financial crisis, notably China which pursued state capitalist reforms.

Much of South America and Africa had no history of union presence or true worker’s rights. Most of South America had been plagued by military governments and other forms of dictatorship, and only now are they becoming truly modern economies where unionization is possible and necessary. Most of Africa is the same; the lack of true industrial bases and the severe exploitation forced upon Africans by colonial empires made independence a tough and often violent process where unions were much less of a problem than wars and suffering were.

However, no person should cry out victory or praise now that unions have diminished. Instead, we should be reminded of what good a strong, collective workforce can do. We should be reminded that workers do deserve the same rights and privileges as do their bosses, no matter what the economic situation.

Unions are certainly an integral part of any trillion-dollar class economy such as our own in America. For my example as to why, let’s begin across the pond in Europe as I do so frequently. While union membership in Europe has been dropping overall for many years now, most European nations have a labor force which is more unionized than our own. Some nations there have unionization rates higher than 50%, a large difference considering our own rate is only just above the French rate of 8%. If the conservative claim that unions hold back economic growth and prosperity were true, then those nations with the highest unionization would also have low economic growth each year. Instead, countries like Norway (where unionization is one of the largest in the world) had their GDP grow at a rate faster than our own. Meanwhile, Spain has pursued strict austerity measures including cutbacks on union strength, and the Spanish economy has been in deep recession for an uncomfortably long time now.

We don’t have to look outside America for examples of the failure of union-busting, either. Just look to a state like, say, Wisconsin. Tea Party hero and Governor Scott Walker made significant budget cuts to his state along with tax cuts, while also becoming a conservative icon by winning a recall election aimed to remove him for his actions against public employees and unions. But while Wisconsin started 2010 as 11^th in job creation, in Walker’s tenure it has fallen to 44^th in job creation. Compare that position to states with the highest rates of job creation such as New York or California. Not coincidentally, neither of these states has weakened its unions or workers’ rights in recent years.

That is all for tonight, and I hope I've provided enough information to support my ideas. I encourage feedback through the comments here, or at my email of zerospintop@live.com. You can also contact me through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, DeviantArt, Steam, Tumblr, and Reddit. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off.