#exploiting prisoners

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Economic Exploitation "Most prisoners I interviewed believe that the California prison system operates as a big business and the profit motive guides important decisions.

It’s all just business. I’ve watched it. Whenever there are a few empty beds around here, you wait. You'll see a bunch of guys getting violated. They got to keep the place full. They get paid by the convict. You watch it. They fill the place up by bringing guys back in, then they go to legislature and get more money to build anew prison.

Though the prisoners’ view of how the system works is somewhat distorted, it is based in reality. Prison systems are big businesses, and many groups, such as guards’ unions, architects, construction companies, prison hardware manufacturers, and prison professionals, have an economic interest in expanding prison populations. Prisoners understand this and have developed a profoundly cynical view of the operation, which they see as corrupt and unjustly exploitative and oppressive.

There are some profit-making practices in the prison operation that directly affect prisoners and are seen as particularly corrupt and exploitative of them and their families. The most blatant of these is the telephone policy. In California prisons, pay telephones are located in all housing units and are readily available to prisoners. Prisoners may only make collect calls from these phones, which are installed and maintained by a private company, which charges an extra fee of $7 per call. This fee is paid by the person (usually a family member) receiving the call. This fee is split by the private company and the CDC. The CDC’s share goes into the state’s general fund. In the year 2000, California earned $36 million from this source. Prisoners feel that this is gross exploitation of them, their friends, and their families, who are usually poorer people and less able to pay this fee. Several prisoners told me that they believe that the CDC unscrupulously delays their mail to encourage phone use. At present, a letter may take as long 21 days to be delivered to a prisoner. Moreover, prisoners must pay an added 10 percent fee for every item they purchase through the canteen or any other source. This fee goes into the Inmate Welfare Fund along with any other money prisoners possess. This fund totaled $10.1 million in 1998, at which time some California prisoners sued the state to receive the interest from this money. The state informed the courts that the money held in the Inmate Welfare Fund had not been deposited in interest-earning accounts. Litigation continues on this issue, and prisoners in other states have filed similar suits. Regardless of the outcome of these cases, California prisoners feel the state has cheated them or has earned money on their money. As California prisoners’ attorney Herman Franck views it, the state is stealing from the prisoners, and though each convict is losing only a few dollars, when you consider the vast number of prisoners, “150,000 small thefts becomes one big, fat theft.”? In addition to aggravating prisoners’ sense of injustice, these practices corrode the administrators’ claims of moral superiority and reduce prisoners’ sense of moral inferiority and responsibility."

- John Irwin, The Warehouse Prison: Disposal of the New Dangerous Class. Afterword by Barbara Owen. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2005. p. 164-165

[spellofwinter]

insert john cena are you sure about that meme here

[primus-why]

I love the idea of Ratchet being captured while badly injured. It wasn't necessarily on purpose-- he knows the Cons would love to take him prisoner in order to utilize his medical skills, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once they realized he was a medic they pulled him from the rubble and got him on a slab pretty quickly all things considered. The trouble is there's a reason the Cons value medical expertise-- he's bleeding out, they don't have enough supplies, and at this rate Ratchet knows he's gonna die. So with whatever strength he can muster he gets the attention of one of the grunts working on him.

Ratchet: H... hey... I need you... to pass on a message...

Con 1: To who, your Prime? Not gonna happen.

Con 2: Yeah we don't really do the 'any last words' thing.

Ratchet: No... *wheeze* to Deadlock.

Con 1 & 2: *go still*

Ratchet: Tell 'im... I'll... be waiting... for him...

Con 2: Wait a klik...

Con 1: ... You don't think--?

Con 2: -- Frag! Oh frag!! His vitals!!! Dealock is gonna kill us!!

Con 1: Scrap! Get Soundwave on the line, have him patch to the DJD!

Con 2: He's not gonna make it! I don't want them to know my face!

Con 1: It. won't. matter. If we wait, it'll look worse!

Con 2: Oh Primus, I hope they don't pick up...

Con 1: Just go!!!

Ratchet: ... I'm waitin' to... kick his aft... *passes out*

[videoreligion]

Happy #FrancoFriday !

99 Women (1969)

[meltyman666]

The first potential law passed in the US will likely have imprisoned migrants working in agriculture/traditionally exploitative jobs for “slave wages” and inhumane hours. The private prison industrial complex will profit heavily from the Laken Riley Act.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

we need more feminist horror

[penderbend]

going back to s3 malevolent and good LORD this shit is so good. forgot how absolutely insane it is. easily my fav season (though i do love me my medieval jaunts) this just has something mixed in it thats so damn captivating

[aloeverawrites]

Is there an anti slave labour, anti human exploitation symbol that’s as regulated as vegan ones? Because I really feel there should be, we should make it as easy as possible for people to boycott.

[lianico]

Anybody else just… I love Roblox

Ahhhhhh

[videoreligion]

Happy #FrancoFriday !

Women Behind Bars (1975)

[bloodybosom]

Barbed Wire Dolls

[evpath]

Modern Australia Slave Trade

Not many people in So-Called-Australia know about its history of slavery, nor its present slave trade.

Up until the 1960s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were used as slave labour. One form of this was the apprenticeship system used during the period in which the government kidnapped and applied eugenicist policy to aboriginal and Torres strait islander children.

These forms of slavery would often have enslaved people work at either their school, which usually meant a catholic juvenile prison existing for the purpose of eugenics, or at a domestic or agrarian property. Today across so-called-Australia similar forms of slavery continue, sanctioned by the government. Similar to the way in which the state would force Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders into domestic labour, The state now forces Prisoners into both public and private labour. Prisoners, a population in which Disabled, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and other marginalized populations make up large portions of, are legally allowed to be forced into labour.

Here is a report by Anti-Slavery Australia:

The following website is run by the New South Wales state government and allows you to rent slave labour in the form of Imprisoned Persons:

Not only can companies rent enslaved people, but the government refuses to reveal which companies use slave labour. This means that we have no idea which companies use slave labour, including local businesses which can use slave labour.

This is happening today. Slavery has been in So-Called-Australia since colonization. The Commonwealth of Australia is a colonial regime occupying stolen land seized through genocide.

The military acts in service of US imperialism. The police target radicalized people and swear loyalty to a monarch. Stolen land is used for commercial enterprise, military bases, prisons and other oppressive forces. The federal government endorses Israels right to exist, which means they endorse the colonization of Palestine. Refugees are kept on island prisons for years before being deported back to countries where they will be killed.

While the Commonwealth of Australia may seem like an amazing country with great rights and lots of protection, that is only because you have the privilege to not be effected by the mass exploitation and suffering which the Commonwealth of Australia is built on.

If anyone wants to add anything to this post or correct me on anything please do!

[queen-mabs-revenge]

Kamala Harris isn't your goofy wine aunt any more than Joe Biden was your "uncle you’d shake your head at but not think twice about—the sort of guy who’d wink and say, “Don’t let your meat loaf!” as a farewell."

As the former Onion editor in the article says, "I wish we had looked more at [Biden's] actual career in politics—which includes opposition to busing as a way to integrate schools and support for predatory financial institutions—and tried to really puncture him, rather than just turning him into a clown. We helped make him more likable by inventing a version of Biden that never existed."

Kamala Harris should not be unburdened by what has been, because what has been is a recent history of defending apartheid, genocide enabling and misinformation spreading, being the mouthpiece of the biden administration's violent anti-migrant policies that have doubled ICE detention population since entering office, to name a few of her positions.

And her long term "what has been" as California's attorney general includes arresting parents of chronically ill children for 'truancy violations' a policy which she was warned would disproportionately affect low-income people of color, laughed at the idea of decriminalizing recreational cannabis use, appealed a county decision that the death penalty was unconstitutional, fought to keep non-violent prisoners locked up so their labor could be exploited for wildfire fighting, and has a track record of denying appeals and new DNA tests on wrongful conviction cases.

Don't let the memes do what they did for Biden by removing Harris from the context of her record and all in which she lives and what came before her.

[schlock-luster-video]

"Welcome to prison, ladies!"

Here's an original portrait of Lina Roman inspired by Barbed Wire Dolls (1976)!

[agnesandhilda]

one criticism of iron widow: I think revealing that shimin was physically forced into alcohol dependence by his captors is a weak narrative choice. taking away that last bit of his autonomy was necessary to getting zetian to fully sympathize with him (she would never be comfortable with a guy she even suspected had been manipulated into sacrificing women via his addiction. and why should she?), but the overwhelming subtext of constraint surrounding shimin's alcoholism was already there. zetian has already seen shimin's cell, that he's not allowed to leave unless he is literally bound, she already knows he's had all forms of art and self-expression besides the chrysalis (where he's used as a human weapon) taken from him. is it so hard to believe that someone would organically develop an addiction in those circumstances? is shimin's addiction more sympathetic and easier to understand if the liquor was forced down his throat, as opposed to something he turned to in response to---I don't know, being kept in a cell the size of a shoebox for years when he's not released so that he can be exploited?

[suspiria76]

CAGED HEAT

USA

1974

Directed by Jonathan Demme