#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

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

we need more feminist horror

[videoreligion]

Happy #FrancoFriday !

Women Behind Bars (1975)

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Gloria Hendry, Cheri Caffaro and Rosanna Oritz - Savage Sisters (1974)

[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.

[rotisseries]

there was literally no reason for the government to stick dazai in mersault actually, like the only thing his ability does is nullify others. they could have stuck him in any old 6 by 8. in fact I think he'd have been in there longer if they'd done that

[bitter69uk]

Recently watched: The Weak and the Wicked (1954) (retitled Young and Willing for the North American market). Tagline: “Frank, raw-truth exposé of women’s prisons! The terrors … abuses … scandals!” Who doesn’t love a gritty women-in-prison exploitation movie? Give me a Caged (1950), Women’s Prison (1955), Betrayed Women (1955), Girls in Prison (1956), Women Without Men (1956) or Caged Heat (1974) and I am entranced! (The whole genre was brilliantly parodied by SCTV in 1977 in the essential sketch “Broads Behind Bars”). Compared to these lurid, hardboiled American exemplars, the British variation The Weak and the Wicked feels buttoned-up, drab, downbeat and yes, tame, by comparison but it’s not without its merits. Glynis Johns stars as Jean Raymond, a posh upper-class woman (she wears prim little white gloves!) with a gambling addiction sentenced to prison on a trumped-up fraud charge. We watch as Jean and the other new arrivals file-in to be “processed” by the stern prison matrons: weighed, bathed (“strip!”), checked for lice and issued their frumpy uniforms. Once installed, Jean promptly befriends brassy peroxide blonde Betty Brown (the perennially sensational Diana Dors. Betty’s first words to Jean: “gizza fag!”). With each new female inmate Jean encounters, we get a flashback outlining her backstory (some are funny, some are tragic). British cinema aficionados should watch for Rachel Roberts, Sybil Thorndike, Irene Handl and Sid James in small roles. (I think it was contractually obligated for either James or Herbert Lom to appear in every single British film of the period). Director J Lee Thompson would reunite with Dors for yet another, better-known women-in-prison movie, Yield to the Night (inspired by the Ruth Ellis case) in 1956.

[nando161mando]

The Convict Leasing Forced Labor System

[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?

[blackbrownfamily]

Black Panther Party Free Food Program

[eraserheadbabyfever]

i know this has definitely been said before but. i can't believe the author of orange is the new black is married to a man

[videoreligion]

It's #FrancoFriday !

Barbed Wire Dolls (1976)

[bloodybosom]

Barbed Wire Dolls

[ball-of-catgirl]

people who think bedrock edition is "as good as" java edition have only ever played minecraft by starting like 12 new worlds a year where they build the same 7x7x4 oak plank brick, get killed by a creeper while looking for diamonds, and give up trying to get their stuff back.

players who prefer bedrock have never even seen a piston. players who prefer bedrock have literally never thrown an ender pearl. probably haven't even beaten the ender dragon before. people who prefer bedrock probably think the silverfish is a modded creature.

"bbbut bedrock runs better--" if you are building the same 7x7x4 oak plank brick and mining at y=40 and getting blown up by creepers then JE and BE run exactly the same on the same hardware. higher render distances doesnt mean shit without an elytra and your ass is not finding a nether fortress anyways

[suspiria76]

CAGED HEAT

USA

1974

Directed by Jonathan Demme