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“The prisoners battling the fires in California deserve real wages. And their rights as workers lead us to larger issues of prison labor, fires or no.”

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Reflection #5–”Prison Industrial Complex”

When thinking about the world of being incarcerated my first choice of words would have never been racism it was more of a concept of you get what you deserve.  But, when you think about it even before relating this back to the article many activist movements today are against the false accusations of people color.  Cases like Travon Martin where an innocent young boy of color was killed because he seemed like a “threat”.  Now you may ask where in the world I am going with this but when putting the Prison Industrial complex into perspective it is rather racist and marginalizing.  The fact that private corporations used the prison system to incarcerate a targeted group of people or more specifically minority groups for labor seems rather inhumane.  Unfortunately, many people have fallen into these false beliefs that incarnation in numbers is a benefit to society but in reality it is not and ties back to racism.  This also leads me to realize that the government in a way sets up these minority and colored neighborhoods for failure because they strategically place things such as liquor stores.  One of the tougher parts of the article to read was along the lines of black of wealth-fare women producing criminal children and having to take these women off the streets.  I could not and still can not put my head around that concept because for one a child is not born a criminal and secondly, targeting a women of color for being low welfare as well as being deemed not good enough to be a parent makes sense.  In all honesty there is no true correlation between the low welfare and being a good parent.  This to me just seems like prison officials and government officials who are more than likely to be men decided that women of color from neighborhoods known for poverty are easy targets because they just want to clear the streets to stop the chances of a “criminal “child being born.  

Anyways it is hard to believe how misinformed and blind many of us are.  The prison industrial complex needs to brung further into the light so that everyone can learn the reality of the incarcerations, the prison system, the racism and marginalization behind it.  

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REFLECTION 5: Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex

Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian youth are portrayed as the purveyors of violence and traffickers of drugs. It has become a big business in network of prisons and jails. There is a mass number of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities suffering because they are being categorized as criminals. To the public there is a justification of attempting to disappear the problems of homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy. When I read that more than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color I was not surprised because of the cruel world we live in. For many decades not much has changed in the system of prisons and jails. I was shocked when the reading stated that the fastest growing group of prisoners are black women. It upsets me that the criminal justice system targets specific genders within race.

The system we live under does not hesitate to impress me. In California since 1964 more than twenty new prisons have been opened. Now comparing to the education system only one new campus had been added to the California State University system. Instead of educating people the system thinks that opening prisons is the  solution to our problems. Instead of improving we are setting ourselves for something worse. Segregating people and placing a label as criminal will not help our system improve. Majority of the people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment. It has been historically proven that prisons do not work to benefit the public as believed. Most people of color are imprisoned for the wrong reasons or no reason at all. Angela Davis is a excellent example of a colored woman who was in jail for something she did not commit.

Most colored people who are imprison do not have right resources due to they are surrounded by poverty. People are not exposed to certain resources that limit them from the rest. Some resources might be food or water which might trigger the need to rob or no employment therefore the need to sell drug to live off some money. These are the same people that if resources like education was offered just maybe there would not be this issue. In my eyes prisons and jails are not helping instead they are giving a negative view on the system. More importance and awareness should be applied to prisons. There is a lot of things that occur behind closed doors that many would not even imagine. Women and men both suffer when put in prisons. Although women and men even in prison like in any other place have different levels of treatment. Therefore the prison industrial complex has many problems within that need to be fixed.

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The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.”

The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people…

At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor…

And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

Read More

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[cw: descriptions of torture, assault]

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We are the most incarcerated country in the world. And it’s sad that we celebrate freedom

Denise Benavides

(via

nimblybimbly

)

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About the movement

RIGHT NOW, we have a critical opportunity to pass historic federal legislation and move closer to ending mass incarceration in America.

With your help, we can reform mandatory minimum sentencing, "ban the box," establish alternatives to incarceration, and provide comprehensive re-entry assistance to men and women returning home from prison.

Together, we can push Congress and President Obama to take action to roll back the incarceration industry in America - sign our petition.

Support this Movement and help us bring about policy changes that keep people out of prison who don’t need to be there, and ensure that our justice system helps to heal communities, families and individuals.

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