I don't know anyone who doesn't know that "life isn't 'fair'."
But, few - if any - ever ask WHY?
There are more than 2 million inmates serving time in the United States, up from 744,000 in 1985. America has the world's highest incarceration rate, and the revolving door helps keep those prisons packed: A 2002 study by the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 52 percent of released convicts were back in jail within three years.
"All of these things are terrible, BUT THEY are GOOD for BUSINESS," says Martin Roenigk, CEO of CompuDyne, a security software and hardware provider to the corrections and homeland security markets.
This is a COLOSSAL conflict of interest and it's at the HEART of all this darkness - if there was NO way to PROFIT from the prison system it would shrink almost overnight.
State prison systems spend more than $30 billion annually, and the Bureau of Prisons budgeted $5 billion for just 182,000 federal inmates this year. That translates into plenty of work for companies looking to crack the prison market.
That's like paying each inmate $27,472.53 per year!
To put that in perspective - that's more than twice what someone making $6/hr (above minimum wage) would earn in a year if he worked 40hrs/wk, with NO paid vacations.
How many 'inmates' do you think had access to jobs that paid that kind of salary BEFORE they were thrown in prison???
Probably, close to NONE.
Not that inmates get a salary - most work for free. Most of the budget is PROFIT reserved for those ON TOP who EXPLOIT the system to the MAX.
"Our core business touches so many things - security, medicine, education, food service, maintenance, technology - that it presents ["a unique opportunity"] for any number of vendors to do business with us," says Irving Lingo, CFO at Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison operator in the country, with 65 facilities.
CompuDyne broke into the market in the mid-'90s, when the Annapolis, Md., company was just a $20 million outfit, by purchasing two prison security businesses. The company integrated their electronic and hardware security products - lockdown control and perimeter alert systems, closed-circuit television, blast-proof doors, and bullet-resistant windows.
Since then CompuDyne has ridden the prison market expansion and anticipates $60 million in prison-related sales this year on overall company revenue of $140 million. CompuDyne's latest product, MaxWall, is a modular, prefab prison cell (think high-security cubicle).
What an apt analogy.
MaxWall can be dropped quickly into an existing building to accommodate a growing inmate population or serve as a building block for new prison construction.With 2-inch hollow steel walls, the cells feature built-in lighting, beds, and plumbing.
OMG! How many homeless people on the streets of our cities would rob, cheat or kill to have one of those???
Wait - THEY DO! BINGO!
What a great way to increase the prison population - make life SO UNFAIR for those on the outside that they lash out at anyone and everyone that they see NOT KNOWING WHO TO BLAME.
MaxWall, which typically sells for $14,000 to $18,000, is shipped like an erector set and stitch-welded together onsite. The cells can save 10 square feet of space each over conventional cell construction techniques, allowing prisons to accommodate more inmates.
That's particularly important to prison administrators as they grapple with overcrowding and limited budgets. For example, California recently declared its prison system in a state of emergency, in large part because of a lack of cells. The feds, meanwhile, expect the Bureau of Prisons to be about 30,000 beds short by 2011.
That certainly bodes well for MaxWall sales. The company has installed 4,500 cells since December 2002 and has contracts to triple that number in the next year alone. "We expect unchecked growth for the next two or three years," says CompuDyne executive Gary Mangus.
So, you see - there IS a very good reason why "Life isn't 'Fair'" - because those who make the RULES make sure that it STAYS that way.
Unfortunately, while our prison 'system' expands exponentially each year, the REAL criminals - those who hold the MOST contempt for everyone else who inhabits this planet, young and old - ROAM FREE.
Submitted by qrswave on Thu, 2006-12-07 11:21
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"Tyrant. He is no tyrant untill people around him succumb to his evil."
That's precisely my point - Life is not unfair - people ARE.
So, it's not some vague unstoppable condition created by GOD - it's a matter of choice.
People ALLOW this unfairness to continue by not thinking critically about how all this came about and then having the courage to fight the people behind it.
The whole criminal justice system in the modern world is totally designed to keep people in power and to make money and those cought up within it controlled serving as 'examples' to others who may hit skid row.
see http://www.geocities.com/islam2jannat/ahmed.htm
The prisons, courts, lawyers all allow money to be spent to build a police state. If you find gainful employement does not serve and lead to freedom and you feel like rebelling...the Prison system keeps you in place, so you continue to follow the rules and live like a slave.
New High In U.S. Prison Numbers
More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.
The report compiled and analyzed data from several sources, including the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and Bureau of Prisons and each state's department of corrections. It did not include individuals detained for noncriminal immigration violations.
Although studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect may be less influential than changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents and the proportion of young people in the population, report co-author Adam Gelb said.
In addition, when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals -- who make up about half of the incarcerated population -- less-expensive punishments such as community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug counseling might prove as much or more effective than jail.
For instance, Florida, which has almost doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, has reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.
"There is no question that putting violent and chronic offenders behind bars lowers the crime rate and provides punishment that is well deserved," said Gelb, who as director of the Center's Public Safety Performance Project advises states on developing alternatives to incarceration. "On the other hand, there are large numbers of people behind bars who could be supervised in the community safely and effectively at a much lower cost -- while also paying taxes, paying restitution to their victims and paying child support."
Sociologist James Q. Wilson, who in the 1980s helped develop the "broken windows" theory that smaller crimes must be punished to deter more serious ones, agreed that sentences for some drug crimes were too long. However, Wilson disagreed that the rise in the U.S. prison population should be considered a cause for alarm: "The fact that we have a large prison population by itself is not a central problem because it has contributed to the extraordinary increase in public safety we have had in this country."
About 91 percent of incarcerated adults are under state or local jurisdiction. And the report also documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they devote larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased 127 percent; spending on higher education rose 21 percent.
Five states -- Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware -- now spend as much as or more on corrections as on higher education. Locally, Maryland is near the top, spending 74 cents on corrections for every dollar it spends on higher education. Virginia spends 60 cents on the dollar.
Despite reaching its latest milestone, the nation's incarcerated population has been growing more slowly since 2000 than it did during the 1990s, when harsher sentencing laws began to take effect. These included a 1986 federal law (since revised) mandating prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that were up to eight times as long as for those involving powder cocaine. In the 1990s, many states adopted "three-strikes-you're-out" laws and curtailed the powers of parole boards.
Continued