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The Justice Department is not evaluating the performance of pretrial diversion programs, residential re-entry centers, and home confinement, according to congressional testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Under President Barack Obama administration, the Justice Department sought to reduce booming federal prison populations by providing alternatives to incarceration for people with low-level nonviolent offenses.

Although federal prison populations and recidivism rates declined slightly in recent years, overcrowding remains a major issue, and there are still far too many people returning to prison. Forty-nine percent of people released in 2005 were rearrested, 32 percent were re-convicted, and 25 percent were re-incarcerated within eight years.

Diana Maurer, director of GAO’s Homeland Security and Justice Office, delivered her remarks [PDF] to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on December 13. Her testimony came as GEO Group, CoreCivic, and other private prison companies dominate these areas of the legal system.

Maurer told Congress the Department of Justice is not identifying, obtaining, and tracking data on pretrial diversion program outcomes. These are programs which give people an opportunity to avoid prosecution and incarceration for certain offenses if they complete a program, such as substance abuse treatment.

She said the department has more work to do in shifting prosecution priorities and reforming sentencing in ways that eliminate unfair disparities.

Some of these efforts undertaken by Obama as part of its Smart On Crime initiative were rolled back by new guidelines issued by Donald Trump’s presidential administration.

According to Maurer, the Justice Department is not tracking the amount of time it takes for clemency petitions to go through review, which makes it difficult to assess whether there are processes that contribute to unnecessary delays which should be corrected.

The Justice Department established a plan for evaluating the effectiveness of residential reentry programs and is working to improve cost controls by requiring contractors to submit separate prices for reentry center beds and home confinement services. But without a way to measure their performance, it is impossible to know their effect on recidivism rates and whether they are helping people successfully reenter society.

Maurer said to the committee that “knowing the outcomes of these efforts can help [Bureau Of Prisons] adjust its policies and procedures, and ultimately optimize their benefits.”

Private prison companies faced enormous public backlash for their inhumane treatment of people held in the state and federal prisons and immigrant detention centers they operate. They responded by cashing in on treatment and rehabilitation through billions of dollars in mergers and acquisitions in this space.

GEO Group, for example, operates pretrial diversion programs and residential reentry centers. They also profit from home confinement services, where people are placed under house arrest and subject to curfews, random staff visits, and electronic monitoring.

The Justice Department’s ignorance of how these efforts perform is ideal for contractors. It gives contractors an opening for more business without having to prove that their lucrative services actually provide the support needed to reduce recidivism.

The lack of data on how these programs work also obscures the degree to which incarceration is shifted to other locations outside of traditional prison facilities.

Altogether, conditions are perfect for contractors, which already have lengthy records of abuse and corruption.

Top photo | Razor wire at the maximum-security Mount Olive Correctional Center in Mount Olive, W.Va. (AP/Steve Helber)

Published in partnership with Shadowproof

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ALBANY, NEW YORK – Prisons in New York state are rolling out a program that will ban most reading material and end inmate care packages from families. The program is currently being tested at three state prisons, but plans to implement the directive at all 54 of the state’s correctional facilities are aiming for a Fall 2018 start date.

Authorities say the move will help clamp down on contraband – prohibited items – inside the prisons, which they claim will, in turn, make the prisons safer for both staff and inmates. While supporters and prison activist groups have decried the new policy as being “draconian” and creating another economic hurdle for families, what’s not being talked about is the primary way that contraband gets into the prisons in the first place: correctional officers walk it in.

The role of guards

Prison guards walk down a corridor in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. (AP/Ben Margot)

Gary Heyward, who spent two years in prison for smuggling tobacco and cocaine into New York’s Riker’s Island facility, says that when he was a new correctional officer in training, his instructor told him: “‘Look to your left. Now look to your right. One of you is going to smuggle something in, some inmate is going to talk you into doing bad.” Hayward said, “I thought, ‘Oh, no, not me.’ But, you know, you never think it’s going to be you.”

The stories of prison guards who either attempted to or did bring contraband into state prisons are legion. And, while the operations to catch corrections officers in the act often net only one or two officers but numerous non-prison employees, the fact remains that correctional officer collusion is difficult to deter. One reason is that in many instances, guards who bring in contraband are given mere slaps on the wrist.

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According to an article published in March 2009 in the Houston Chronicle, in a five-year study of personnel records spanning 2003-2008:

Of the 263 employees disciplined solely for contraband, about three-fourths were given probation, where they were placed under special scrutiny for specified periods. Thirty-five were fired; 26 received no punishment at all. One of the 263 was criminally prosecuted for the contraband, but served no prison time.”

The 263 employees were at 20 of the state’s prisons that had the most pervasive problem with contraband during the years studied.

Spitting at the wrong spot

A television news photographer films confiscated cell phones as officials prepare to return them to a box of evidence following a news conference at Jessup Correctional Institution in Jessup, Md., Jan. 11, 2018. (AP/Patrick Semansky)

California has tried a variety of ways to clamp down on its prison cell phone problem, including installing multi-million dollar hardware such as scanners, surveillance cameras and metal detectors, and signal-jamming technology. Even though it hasn’t worked well, the state is continuing that program. What California has not done, however, is stand up to the union for correctional officers.

The California Policy Center scolded the state and Governor Jerry Brown several years ago for cowardice in the face of the guard’s union. The issue, which is couched in labor language, is that corrections officers are not required to walk through metal detectors when they get to work at any of the state’s 23 prisons. Writing for the Policy Center in 2011, Stephen Greenhut states:

[T]hink about that for a moment. When mostly law-abiding people head to the airport to take a family trip, they must endure increasingly intrusive screenings and X-rays and searches. At the state’s prisons, there is no such screening system. We can thank the obstructionist efforts of the prison-guards union. As always, unions zealously protect even the most corrupt and bad-behaving members, which creates something of a race to the bottom.”

At issue is the concept of “walk time.” That’s where a correctional employee literally gets paid to walk from their car into the facility. Paying officers for the time taken to remove various articles of their uniform, to go through a metal screening process, then put their items of clothing back on, could cost the state millions of dollars. Money the state is not willing to part with. Even when it knows without question that the guards are the ones bringing in the contraband cell phones.

Correctional officers, like police officers, enjoy a benefit of the doubt that the average person does not. That benefit of the doubt extends to automatic trust in their character, belief in their innocence, and belief in their statements about the inmates they guard. Like their brothers in law enforcement out on the streets, these law enforcement officers in our correctional facilities must be looked at critically, with less of a blind-spot. If not, we will continue to go round and round, and search far and wide when the answers are right in front of us.

Top Photo | A correctional officer stands near a gate at Baltimore City Detention Center in Baltimore. (AP/Steve Ruark)

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TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA – Prisoners in Florida went on a statewide strike on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday this week, after having issued a list of demands in December. Operation PUSH, as the action is called, is scheduled to last for one month. The prisoners are demanding fair wages for the work that the prisoners do; fair pricing for the goods they must purchase from the prison; and a restoration of parole to end what the inmates call “Buck Rogers release dates” – lengthy, often astronomical sentences.

Inmates in Florida are not paid for their work; instead, time is deducted from their prison sentences. In the words of Jacqueline Azis, an attorney with the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union:

A lot of times people will work in order to get time deducted, and then the prison guards and officials will find ways to punish someone for what the prisoners are saying are made-up reasons that then extend the person’s time.”

 

Prison slavery enshrined in U.S. Constitution

When Florida prisoners say they want an end to prison slavery, they’re not being hyperbolic.

They’re not calling it prison slavery simply because they aren’t paid wages for their work, despite the $38 million that the state’s Community Work Squads provided in 2017. It’s prison slavery because that mode of punishment is enshrined in the United States Constitution. The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The shifting role of prison in the U.S.

Inmate laborers cut down trees along the Highway 29 near Calistoga, Calif. as deadly wildfires rage nearby. (AP/Jae C. Hong)

The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, created the first jail in the 1700s in Pennsylvania. It was conceived of as a place where persons who committed crimes against society would be sent to do penitence – reflect on what they had done and how they might contribute to society instead of preying upon it. It was supposed to be a place of both punishment and rehabilitation.

The theme of rehabilitation continued throughout the founding and maturing of the U.S. up until the 1970s. A push towards punishment and away from rehabilitation began during the time that the Civil Rights movement began to yield to the more threatening Black Power. Both of these phenomena involved the galvanizing of African-Americans in demanding equality and an end to discrimination.

Read more by Thandisizwe Chimurenga

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The end of chattel enslavement via the 13th Amendment – except in prison – was also a transformation that heavily involved African-Americans. Scholar Angela Davis notes in her work Are Prisons Obsolete? that the “Black Codes,” which were created to repress the movements of newly freed African-Americans in the aftermath of slavery, provided a direct link into the prison system:

The new Black Codes proscribed a range of actions-such as vagrancy, absence from work, breach of job contracts, the possession of firearms, and insulting gestures or acts-that were criminalized only when the person charged was black.”

Fast forward nearly a century to a new period of backlash in the 1970s. Still reeling from the upheaval of the 1960s, there were also a number of prison uprisings that helped trigger a new and steeper decline from rehabilitation towards more punitive confinement. The most notable uprising of that era was Attica.

Limited options for prisoners seeking reform

Inmates at Attica State Prison in Attica, N.Y., raise their hands in clenched fists in a show of unity, Sept. 1971, during the Attica uprising, which took the lives of 43 people. (AP Photo)

The uprising at Attica, begun as an observance of the murder of California inmate and author George Jackson a couple of weeks prior, was the largest and deadliest prison rebellion of the 1970s. Deadly as a result of the violence carried out by New York state troopers in putting down the rebellion. The demands made by the inmates were not unreasonable: payment of fair wages for work; the right to form a union; and the ability to have insurance for on-the-job injuries were just three of several that dealt with the issue of compensation for labor.

Rebellions and work stoppages are the most potent weapons available to prisoners since, under the Constitution and by law, slavery is allowed to exist in U.S. prisons and jails.  The action by Florida prisoners this week is the second such move undertaken by them. They were involved in a nationwide protest in September of 2016 to mark the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising. Billed as the largest prison strike in history, the event was called specifically to end prison slavery:

This is a call to end slavery in America. This call goes directly to the slaves themselves. We are not making demands or requests of our captors, we are calling ourselves to action. To every prisoner in every state and federal institution across this land, we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease reproducing the institutions of your confinement.”

As of press time, supporters of the Florida prison strikers were demonstrating at the state Department of Corrections. One woman was arrested after police were called. The department issued a press release stating there were no reports of any inmates stopping work.

With prison slavery, or “involuntary servitude,” sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution itself for those convicted of crimes, striking prisoners seeking payment for their work and decent treatment are appealing to a more fundamental principle: what is fair and right.

Top Photo | A prison guard on horseback watches inmates return from a farm work detail at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. (AP Photo)

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In December last year, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, issued a statement on his 15-day fact-finding mission of some of the U.S.’s poorest neighborhoods.   Alston, the author of the quoted phrase in the excerpt, is an Australian who is a professor of law at New York University.  During his mission, he visited Alabama, California, West Virginia, Texas, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico.

Alston’s statement on American poverty and inequality has been overlooked by most of the mainstream media.

Alston has a record of consistent impartiality, which makes his statement on American poverty all the more credible.

He was critical of China in his report on that country (the Chinese government later accused him of “meddling” in its judicial system).  He wants Sri Lanka to be investigated for war crimes against its Tamil minority population.  According to The Guardian, Alston also “tore a strip off the Saudi Arabian regime for its treatment of women months before the kingdom legalized their right to drive, denounced the Brazilian government for attacking the poor through austerity, and even excoriated the UN itself for importing cholera to Haiti”.  Alston also reprimanded the World Bank for “playing a double-game” that is “leading a ‘race to the bottom’ on human rights”.

Alston began his statement on the U.S. by saying that “in practice, the United States is alone among developed countries in insisting that while human rights are of fundamental importance, they do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to affordable healthcare, or growing up in a context of total deprivation. . . at the end of the day, particularly in a rich country like the USA, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power. With political will, it could readily be eliminated”.

He then said of his visit:

I met with many people barely surviving on Skid Row in Los Angeles, I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to, I heard how thousands of poor people get minor infraction notices which seem to be intentionally designed to quickly explode into unpayable debt, incarceration, and the replenishment of municipal coffers, I saw sewage filled yards in states where governments don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility, I saw people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor, I heard about soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction, and I met with people in the South of Puerto Rico living next to a mountain of completely unprotected coal ash which rains down upon them bringing illness, disability and death”.

Asked to compare the U.S. with other countries, Alston provided a cross-section of statistical comparisons worth noting.  (In several cases, I have supplemented Alston’s comparisons with data from other sources.)

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Numerous indicators confirm that the U.S. is one of the world’s wealthiest countries.  It spends more on national defense than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined.

U.S. health care expenditures per capita are double the OECD average and much higher than in all other countries. But there are many fewer doctors and hospital beds per person than the OECD average.

U.S. infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world.

On average, Americans can expect to live shorter and sicker lives, compared to people living in any other wealthy democracies, and the “health gap” between the U.S. and its peer countries continues to grow.

U.S. inequality levels are far higher than those in most European countries.

Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA.  It has been estimated that 12 million Americans live with a neglected parasitic infection. A 2017 report documents the prevalence of hookworm in Lowndes County, Alabama.

The U.S. has the highest prevalence of obesity in the developed world.

In terms of access to water and sanitation, the U.S. ranks 36^th in the world.

America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Turkmenistan, El Salvador, Cuba, Thailand and the Russian Federation. Its rate is nearly 5 times the OECD average.

The youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the OECD with one-quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14% across the OECD.

The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks the most well-off countries in terms of labor markets, poverty, safety net, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. The U.S. comes in last of the top 10 most well-off countries.

In the OECD, the U.S. ranks 35^th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality.  According to Alston, 19 million people lived in deep poverty (a total family income that is below one-half of the poverty threshold) in the U.S. as of 2017.

According to the World Income Inequality Database, the U.S. has the highest Gini coefficient (measuring inequality) of all Western countries.

The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality characterizes the U.S. as “a clear and constant outlier in the child poverty league”.  According to UNICEF (see above chart), the U.S. has higher child poverty rates than 15 other high-income countries. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that more than half of American babies are at risk for malnourishment.

Around 55.7% of the U.S. voting-age population voted in the 2016 presidential election. In the OECD, the U.S. placed 28th in voter turnout, compared with an OECD average of 75%.  Registered voters represent a much smaller share of potential voters in the U.S. than just about any other OECD country. Only about 64% of the U.S. voting-age population (and 70% of voting-age citizens) was registered in 2016, compared with 91% in Canada (2015) and the UK (2016), 96% in Sweden (2014), and nearly 99% in Japan (2014).

In a nutshell: most developed countries do much better than the U.S. on internationally recognized human well-being indicators, such as life expectancy, infant mortality, pregnant mother mortality, obesity rates, rates of incarceration, homicide rates, standards of educational attainment, income disparities, levels of childhood poverty, nutrition standards, homelessness, etc.

Homeless drug addict Andrew Hudson, 33, injects himself with heroin next to an angel statue, Nov. 8, 2017, in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles. “It’s miserable quitting, or trying – trying anything,” said Hudson. Skid Row is home to thousands of chronically homeless people on the edge of the downtown. (AP/Jae C. Hong)

In fact, on some of these indicators show the U.S. is going backward (in contrast to other wealthy countries).  According to The Washington Post:

American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016, fueled by a staggering 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The United States has not seen two years of declining life expectancy since 1962 and 1963, when influenza caused an inordinate number of deaths”.

Alston attributed much of the above to U.S. policy choices, more specifically, the U.S.’s “illusory emphasis on employment”.

Proposals to slash the already precarious social safety net are touted primarily on the premise that the poor need to get off welfare and back to work (the motivation behind “welfare to workfare”, a process started by Bill Clinton).

The almost laughable premise here is that there are many jobs waiting to be filled by individuals with substandard educations, those with disabilities (many already failed by an inadequate healthcare system), sometimes burdened with a criminal record (perhaps for the crime of homelessness or being unable to pay a traffic ticket), and, moreover, with little or no training or adequate assistance to succeed in a job search.

Attempts to raise the minimum wage, already low by the standards of other developed countries, are regularly forestalled by Republican legislatures.

Alston noted another fallacy underlying this premise, namely, that it assumes that the jobs the poor could get will make them independent of the welfare system.  He says: “I spoke to workers from Walmart and other large stores who could not survive on a full-time wage without also relying on food stamps. It has been estimated that as much as $6 billion dollars go from the SNAP program to support such workers, thus providing a huge virtual subsidy to the relevant corporations”.

The abolition of food stamps is on the Republican agenda.  It is noteworthy that the location with residents most reliant on food stamps is Owsley County, Kentucky, which is 99.22% white, according to the U.S. Census, and 95% Republican, and where at least at least 52% of its residents received food stamps in 2011.

Anyone would think that Americans accept, somewhat stoically, the above situation because as a trade-off it somehow boosts the U.S. economy by delivering sound economic “fundamentals”.

Jose Guillen, 68, sorts recyclable items at a recycling center in Los Angeles, Sept. 14, 2011. The ranks of the nation’s poor have swelled to a new records — nearly 1 in 6 Americans. (AP/Jae C. Hong)

Alas most of these “fundamentals” — trade balance, government debt (soon to be deepened by Trump’s reckless tax cuts for the rich), household debt, budget deficit, a negative savings rate, a relatively weak dollar, poor investment and productivity since 2008, etc.– are hardly reassuring where the U.S. is concerned.

It doesn’t take an economic genius to know that what rescues the U.S. is the dollar’s role as the primary global reserve currency and the vast size of its economy.  A huge and rampant stock market helps, but since that contributes significantly to cycles of boom and bust (87, 97, 2007, ??), its contribution to the overall economy should not be overestimated.  In objective economic terms, therefore, with a smaller overall economy and without a global reserve currency, the U.S. would in all probability be more like Brazil.

After making his statement on the U.S., Alston gave an interview on the Amy Goodman radio show, at the time when the Republicans published their tax-cut bill which is now law.  To quote him:

[T]he issue with elimination of poverty always is around resources: ‘We don’t have the money.’ The United States, again, uniquely, has the money. It could eliminate poverty overnight, if it wanted to. What we’re seeing now is the classic — it’s a political choice. Where do you want to put your money? Into the very rich or into creating a decent society, which will actually be economically more productive than just giving the money to those who already have a lot?”.

It is impossible to disagree with Philip Alston when he says that this state of affairs has resulted from political choice and not economic necessity.

Apart from his plutocratic supporters (the Kochs, Papa John the pizza man, Sheldon Adelson, Art Pope, Robert Mercer, Robert Kraft, the DeVos wife and husband, and of course the army of their hangers-on and wannabes in Republican country clubs), Trump’s base consists of moderately or less well-off whites who’ve had the show all to themselves for many decades–  this making their own systemic exploitation somewhat bearable– but who now have to share this show with blacks and Latinos, Muslim Americans, “the gays” (as the near-senile televangelist Pat Robertson refers to this community), as well as a small quota of refugees from America’s unceasing wars and bombing campaigns, and so forth.

As other CounterPunchers have noted, “Make America Great Again” is code aimed at this group of white self-professed “victims”— thanks to Trump’s declamations the latter somehow believe they are more likely to have the show to themselves once again.

Supporting the very affluent wearer of a baseball cap (made in the U.S. but from imported fabrics) sporting this slogan, is always a political choice, as is the preference of the plutocracy to line its already ample pockets by donating massively to the cap-wearing con artist:  “con artist” being the appellation used by his fellow Republican plutocrats Michael Bloomberg and Mitt Romney, who have political ambitions of their own not entirely congruent with Trump’s white-nationalist agenda, however incoherent the latter may be.

Trump, Romney, or Bloomberg?  Whichever one gets ahead politically; the plutocracy will prevail.  As it did with Bill Clinton and Obama.

Also, a political choice in this context is the preference of mainstream Schumer and Pelosi Democrats to make congressional shadow-boxing a pitiful facsimile of real opposition.

And so, a great many Americans have before them an option expressed by a well-known philosopher, if only they opened their eyes: “You have nothing to lose but your chains”.

Illusions aside, the liberation of poorer Americans, ostensibly an immense distance away, is therefore still close enough to touch.

Top Photo | Homeless tents are dwarfed by skyscrapers in Los Angeles. (AP/Jae C. Hong)

Kenneth Surin teaches at Duke University, North Carolina.  He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.

© CounterPunch

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Henry Minter was working as a farm laborer in Georgia in the 1870s when he met Mary Dotson, a young black servant girl. The couple never married – which would have been illegal at the time – but they stayed together until Henry’s death.

Mary, who was left with their four children, then became a washerwoman in Atlanta. Their daughter, Florence, tried to raise funds by making moonshine. Caught in 1920, she served three years for illegally making liquor.

When Florence’s father was born in the 1850s, the state prison population was largely white. But, by the time she was imprisoned, the majority of prisoners were black.

Newly digitized records from the 19th and 20th centuries reveal the names and the stories of thousands of prisoners like Florence – as well as the racially charged beginnings of mass incarceration in the U.S.

Mass incarceration

In 2016, in the U.S., about 1.5 million people were in prison. Approximately 12 to 13 percent of the national population is African-American, but this group makes up over one-third of prisoners.

Why does the American prison system disproportionately imprison black men? Some analysts blame the war on drugs. But that wasn’t the start of the connection between race and imprisonment. Previous historical research shows that, after the Civil War, there was a significant rise in imprisonment of former slaves in the U.S.

The end of slavery also saw a rise in prison populations across the British Empire. Before the abolition of slavery in 1833, the West Indies had a prison population of approximately 1,000 inmates. By 1835, it had risen eightfold.

As in the British West Indies, the end of slavery in the U.S. was accompanied by a desire to incapacitate “problem” populations in other ways. As the future governor of Mississippi’s penitentiary stated at the time, “Emancipating the negroes will require a system of penitentiaries.”

Georgia’s prisoners

Ancestry.com has uploaded prison records to the internet, to satisfy genealogists searching for ancestors who may have been imprisoned. Thousands of digitized prison records are now available for not just the U.S., but also for Canada, the U.K., Australia and other countries.

We presented our research on digitized records of Georgia’s penal system at a workshop on prison history at the University of Georgia on April 10. Our analysis of nearly 25,000 prison register entries shows how connections between race and imprisonment started in the 1860s.

A Georgia penitentiary in 1911. Library of Congress

The records’ range of information for Georgia is impressive, running for 200 years from 1817. In addition to the name of the prisoner, the offense and details of the sentence, the records also include details like eye color, height, birthplace and place of conviction, as well as whether the prisoner was subsequently pardoned or escaped.

Before the Civil War, an average of 40 people a year were sent to prison in Georgia. Samuel W. Whitworth from Jones County was a typical prisoner. The blond and blue-eyed cotton farmer was jailed for causing “mayhem” – probably some drunken violence – on March 1, 1817. Sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, he managed to escape on Christmas Eve 1820. He was later recaptured and hanged in South Carolina.

As a white man, Whitworth was part of the majority at a Georgia prison. Between 1817 and 1865, records reveal that a fifth of inmates were described as “black,” “dark” or “copper.” The range of descriptors used to describe “complexion” – later swapped out for the category of “race” in 1868 – were impressionistic and casually derogatory. About 900 people in our sample were described as being the color of “ginger cake.”

In 1864, just seven former slaves were imprisoned in Georgia. By 1868, this had risen to 147.

From the 1870s to the 1900s, sentenced prisoners were forced to labor in the fields, rather than stay inside prison walls. When this convict leasing system ended, the figures again rose inexorably upwards. The number of prisoners rose from 42 in 1900, to over 500 in 1910, to over 1000 by 1920.

Our research shows that the huge upswing in Georgia prison numbers throughout the 19th and early 20th century was caused by sweeping young black men through the prison gates. The increase in numbers was primarily due to a rapid and sustained influx of African-Americans between ages 18 and 22.

Stories in the data

Statistics can only take us so far. Using methods developed in a previous project on British convicts, Digital Panopticon, we have started to match together digitized trial reports, census records, prison documents and family histories in order to reconstruct prisoners’ lives before and after they were imprisoned in the system. Ultimately, we hope to make this research freely available online.

In our view, these people should not be defined either by their status as former slaves or as prisoners. They spent time in prison, but then were released to build their lives again.

For example, Rose Jackson, with 15 siblings, born in 1856, was convicted of stealing from her employer’s house in Muscogee, Georgia. She served six years inside the prison before resuming her life, never to be in trouble with the courts ever again.

James Wimley – described as a 5’ 4″ black man – was convicted of theft at age 15 in Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta. Despite serving six years in custody, he went on to work on a farm, got married and had children. In 1909, he was still living with four of his children as a widower in the area now known as Cartersville City.

Prisoners like Jackson and Wimley often led successful lives on release, despite the inequalities of the system that had locked them up. When searching for employment and a place to live today, former prisoners of African or Hispanic descent may face similar problems to those faced by former slaves 150 ago.

Black prisoners matter, even if historians have sometimes been blind to that. Thanks to these newly digitized records, researchers can now compare the lives of people who were imprisoned in Alcatraz, Kansas Leavenworth, Eastern State Penitentiary, and so on. Historians like ourselves are now equipped to reveal the names and stories of thousands of forgotten prisoners.

Top Photo | Inmates at Attica State Prison in Attica, N.Y., raise their hands in clenched fists in a show of unity, Sept. 1971, during the Attica uprising, which took the lives of 43 people. AP Photo

Barry Godfrey is a Professor of Social Justice at the University of Liverpool, he has over twenty years of experience in researching comparative criminology, particularly international crime history; desistence studies; and longitudinal studies of offending.

Steven Soper is a Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia. His study of associational life in nineteenth-century Italy, Building a Civil Society, was published last fall by the University of Toronto Press. It won the American Association of Italian Studies 2014 prize for the best book on 18th- or 19th-century Italy, and the Society for Italian Historical Studies 2014 Marraro prize for the best book on the history of Italy. He is currently working on a second book project, concerning political prisoners in southern Italy on the eve of Italian unification.

Originally published at The Conversation

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The United States holds more of its population in prisons and jails than any other country in the world. Suicide is one of the biggest causes of death in U.S. jails and hit a high of 50 deaths for every 100,000 inmates in 2014.

That makes the death of Jeffrey Epstein, who was involved in a sex trafficking ring, a uniquely American death, especially if investigators confirm he committed suicide.

A day after Epstein was found dead, the New York Times spoke with an unnamed “law enforcement official with knowledge of his detention.” The official claimed Epstein was “supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed” on August 9.

The Times cited additional unnamed officials, who suggested “because Mr. Epstein may have tried to commit suicide three weeks earlier, he was supposed to have had another inmate in his cell.”

“But the jail had recently transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone, a decision that also violated the jail’s procedures,” according to two officials.

The Associated Press reported that guards in the Metropolitan Correctional Center’s Special Housing Unit, where Epstein was confined, was staffed with “one guard working a fifth straight day of overtime and another who was working mandatory overtime.” The information was attributed to an unnamed person “familiar with the jail’s operations.”

It strongly suggested the jail failed to follow “protocols,” which fit into a larger investigation on jails and prisons that the AP published in June.

Over the last five years, based upon over 400 lawsuits filed over alleged abuse of inmates, the AP found 40 percent of the lawsuits involved suicides in local jails—135 deaths and 30 suicide attempts.

“Of the 165 jail suicides and attempts, about 80 percent of inmates were awaiting trial,” the AP report stated.

Federal statistics from 2014 showed 372 suicides had occurred in 3,000 jails that were surveyed.

Epstein was found with injuries to his neck on July 23 and placed on suicide watch. That required a check every 15 minutes but his attorneys apparently requested he be taken off suicide watch and was downgraded to “special observation status.” Two guards would check on him every 30 minutes.

Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst and former prosecutor for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) for over eight years, recalled how his office housed “thousands of defendants” at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. He could not recall any suicides during his tenure.

An MSNBC legal analyst, Mimi Rocah, also worked as an assistant U.S. State’s Attorney in SDNY from 2001 to 2017. She remembered “defendants/targets who committed suicide but usually when at home or about to be apprehended.” While suicides are common in jails, Rocah insisted suicides typically do not happen at a federal facility like MCC.

Much of the public reaction to news of Epstein’s death involved suggestions that there was some kind of conspiracy that involved not monitoring him closely so he could kill himself or murdering him in jail. This was largely a product of the fact that Epstein used his status as a multi-millionaire to secure a plea deal in 2007 that helped him avoid facing those who accused him of sex crimes.

The deal, which former U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta struck with Epstein’s attorney, ensured Epstein only served 13 months in county jail. According to a Miami Herald investigation, “potential co-conspirators” were granted immunity. Details of the deal were sealed until the judge approved the deal. Plus, the non-prosecution agreement effectively ended an FBI probe into “whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes.”

“This is the story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them,” the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown wrote.

Acosta was President Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary until he was forced out in disgrace for his role in cementing the Epstein deal.

At one time or another, Epstein’s social circle intersected with former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Trump.

Documents unsealed on Friday contained allegations from one of Epstein’s most well-known accusers, Virginia Giuffre. They implicated “former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, Hyatt hotels magnate Tom Pritzker, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, the late Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Marvin Minsky, modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, another unnamed prince, plus ‘a well-known Prime Minister.’”

America’s criminal punishment system operates with one system for the wealthy and powerful and one for the underclasses, especially people of color. Elites prevented a wide-ranging probe but in 2019, the publicity along with the #MeToo-inspired shift in consciousness meant they were no longer likely to escape accountability.

None of the above proves a conspiracy. However, it should give space to citizens to express their reservations about what happened until authorities involved in an investigation can transparently account for Epstein’s death.

What has happened instead is U.S. media organizations have encouraged panic or resentment toward anyone suggesting Epstein was killed as part of some type of conspiracy. They even have used innuendo to fuel paranoia that Russian intelligence agents may be behind bots spreading conspiracy theories about Epstein to sow discord.

Joe Uchill, an Axios contributor, tweeted, “A Russian bot I keep tabs on is going in heavy on Epstein conspiracy theories.”

Democratic Senator Cory Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate, suggested the spread of conspiracy theories about Epstein involved the “same tactics and languages of the Russians if you look at the intelligence reports about how they’re coming at our democracy.”

NBC News added, “The Kremlin-funded media outlet RT was leading its English language website with stories about conspiracy theories related to Epstein’s death.” This was true, however, every single U.S. media organization had coverage of alleged conspiracy theories on their front page over the weekend. Were they advancing Russian state propaganda?

The effort to constrain discussion among skeptics was given a boost when Trump retweeted a video from conservative comedian Terrence Williams that claimed the Clintons were responsible for Epstein’s death. Now, anyone who questioned whether Epstein died as a result of suicide could be accused of promoting “baseless conspiracy theories.

That did not stop centrists and liberals from pushing their own theories that were as unfounded as suggesting the Clintons ordered some kind of mafia hit against Epstein.

In the aftermath, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough uttered the most prominent expression of delusion. “A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably…Russian.”

Alec Baldwin, who has enjoyed a resurgence in fame from impersonating Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” declared, “The Russians killed Epstein. They’re in charge of everything now.”

To his nearly 3 million followers, actor George Takei tweeted, “It is disturbing that a powerful billionaire accused of sex trafficking minors, who was already on suicide watch, has died while in federal custody, his many secrets about other powerful men going with him to the grave. This sounds like something that would happen in Russia, no?”

In reality, it sounds like something that would happen in a nation that incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. And to the extent that this could be murder and not suicide, it is important to note that, although Epstein was a powerful man, he was also an accused pedophile. His money and past elite status may have helped him win access to management to challenge his confinement conditions, but they could also make him a target by corrections officers or other prisoners looking to assert dominance in a place where power struggles are a regular feature of daily life.

The culture of violence and dehumanization within the jail did not translate into a concern for his well-being. It produced “irregularities” that ended in death and deprived Epstein’s accusers of their day in court and a shot at some semblance of justice.

Processing the moment may require a bit of a balancing act, but let us consider the following. We can shut down the most outlandish theories while demanding an investigation confirm that an apparent suicide occurred with a report that clearly details what happened.

There does not have to be a conspiracy for people to be permitted space to grapple with this outcome in the context of a system that constantly grants rich and powerful people total impunity for their crimes.

Certainly, if the establishment will allow any theories implicating Russia to flourish, citizens should be able to express skepticism and not automatically be lumped in with the folks who see baby-eaters or lizard people populating the ranks of our government.

Feature photo | FILE – This March 28, 2017, file photo, provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. Credit | New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof Press. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.“

Published in partnership with Shadowproof

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Military whistleblower Chelsea Manning spent her 32nd birthday behind bars yesterday for continuing to refuse to testify against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange. She has been in prison since May after a U.S. District Judge ordered her incarceration for not recognizing the legitimacy of the grand jury. She tweeted that she was grateful for the support and the letters that she had been sent while imprisoned at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, VA.

https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/1206971917929975809

Her lawyers have argued that the sentence is unlawful and merely punitive revenge from a state that wishes to make an example of her as a prominent whistleblower. Under federal law, a recalcitrant witness can be jailed only if there is a reasonable possibility that the incarceration will coerce them into testifying. However, Manning had already announced that she would rather “starve to death” than participate in the persecution of Wikileaks. As part of her punishment, she is being fined $1,000 per day and will owe nearly half a million dollars to the government by the time her 18-month sentence is over, something which may increase the likelihood that she is reincarcerated as she enters what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the “debt to prison pipeline” where those that cannot pay what they owe are sent to jail.

In 2013 she was sentenced to 35 years and had been kept in solitary confinement, almost universally recognized as torture outside of the U.S. and had previously endured a long hunger strike in protest of her inhumane conditions. One of President Obama’s final presidential actions in January 2017 was to commute her sentence. By 2019, however, she had been re-arrested. On Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31, many Democratic presidential nomination hopefuls, including Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tweeted out messages of support to the trans community. But none addressed the plight of arguably the most famous transgender American at the hands of the government they wished to head.

Manning was sentenced for leaking the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, which showed U.S. military personnel carrying out a massacre of civilians (including two Reuters journalists), in cold blood, laughing at the carnage they were creating. Neither the army members who carried out the atrocity nor their superiors faced any consequences, unlike Manning, who was prosecuted for sharing the tape and labeled an “ungrateful traitor” by Donald Trump. In contrast, Amnesty International called her “one of the biggest human rights heroines of our age.”

Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017

Her treatment closely mirrors that of others who have exposed the nature of the U.S. military and surveillance state to the public. Julian Assange, for example, is currently being confined in Belmarsh Prison, London, where he is being denied life-saving care, according to a letter signed by more than 60 doctors. Those doctors demand that he immediately be moved to a hospital for treatment. “Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr. Assange could die in prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose,” they wrote. Assange is also still battling possible extradition to the United States.

Political comedian and MintPress contributor Lee Camp claimed that Manning and Assange are not being punished for treason but “for revealing war crimes and corruption. Most citizens want to know when their government is murdering people in their name,” adding that, “We owe Manning & Assange our undying gratitude!”

Chelsea Manning & Julian Assange aren't being punished for "treason." They're being punished for revealing war crimes & corruption.

Most citizens want to know when their government is murdering people in their name. We owe Manning & Assange our undying gratitude!

— Lee Camp [Redacted] (@LeeCamp) December 17, 2019

Meanwhile exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed to the public the depth of the state spying operation the U.S. government is conducting against its own citizens, claimed he would “likely die in prison for telling the truth” if he ever set foot again in the United States. Speaking with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, Snowden condemned the treatment of Manning and Assange, claiming that the U.S. government’s war on whistleblowers is now a “war on journalism.”

Today is sister Chelsea Manning’s birthday. Celebrate with us and send her a letter! -AC @xychelsea pic.twitter.com/izC2e1l6Gy

— Comrade Alyssa (@comradealyssa) December 17, 2019

Although Manning’s sentence should end in late 2020, her own case shows how those who challenge the U.S. government are subject to cruel and unusual persecution, so her supporters remain concerned for her safety, health and freedom. Supporters are attempting to organize a letter-writing campaign to her in order to keep her spirits up.

Feature photo | A “Free Chelsea Manning” poster is seen on a wall in Montreal, Canada. Gone Coastal | Flickr

Alan MacLeod is a MintPress Staff Writer as well as an academic and writer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. His book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published in April.

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New York City (BAR) — The awesome power of massed, militant people in motion has been manifest since the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Much of the world now knows Floyd’s name; majorities of Americans say they support  “Black Lives Matter”; New York City’s mayor pledged to slash his cops’ budget in deference to the Black Lives Matter demand to defund the police; the Minneapolis city council has promised to move towards disbanding their police force, in the spirit of outright abolition; and the grassroots demand for community control of police  – previously rejected out of hand by most city councils – is now part of the “mainstream” political conversation. So massive and swift has been the swing in popular sentiment against the police – the coercive organs of the State – that “A&E has decided not to run new episodes of ‘Live PD’ this Friday and Saturday, while Paramount Network has delayed the Season 33 launch of ‘Cops,’” according to Variety magazine.

“Movement” politics is how the people flex their power, while electoral politics under a corporate duopoly system is the domain of the moneyed classes. This is a lesson learned in the Sixties — a period when some years saw as many as 5,000 separate demonstrations. The makeup of the U.S. House and Senate did not change dramatically during that tumultuous decade. Political contributions kept most incumbents in office, year after year, as is the case today. But, for a time, the lawmakers behaved differently — voting for civil rights and social justice measures they had not previously supported — when confronted with masses of determined people in motion, who sometimes burned cities,

Movement politics was finally quashed in the latter part of the Sixties by a combination of lethal force and political seduction. A national policy of mass Black incarceration, supported by both corporate parties, criminalized Black people as a group, while federal and local police waged a murderous, dirty war to crush Black radicals. On the seduction front, the Democratic Party opened its doors to a hungry cohort of Black politicians and aspiring businessmen who preached that the movement must shift gears “from the streets to the suites” – the beginnings of today’s Black Misleadership Class.

By 1979, after a decade of Black electoral victories in cities abandoned by whites, everyone was singing McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” – but the mass movement had long been snuffed out. The Black-white economic gap – which had briefly shrunken as a result of social justice victories in the Sixties — was beginning to widen, and mass Black incarceration ravaged the Black social fabric. But the Black political class and a small elite of entrepreneurs, professionals and entertainers were doing better than ever – and they were all-in with the Democratic Party, which soon succeeded in subverting virtually every civic organization in Black America. The spoils of a long-dead mass movement of the streets had ultimately accrued to a tiny sliver of Black folks in suites.

For four decades, Black America was stalled in a political dead zone in which the only sustained politics was that which took place in the Democratic Party half of the corporate duopoly. As servants of forces hostile to Black people, Black politicians consistently acted against the interests of their constituents, collaborating in the destruction of public housing and the gentrification of Black neighborhoods. In the ultimate act of betrayal, the Black Misleadership Class lovingly embraced the Mass Black Incarceration Regime. In 2014, just two months before Michael Brown was gunned down by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against a bill that would have halted the Pentagon’s infamous 1033 program that funnels billions of dollars in military weapons and gear to local police departments. The emergence of what came to be called the “Black Lives Matter movement” had no substantive effect on Black members of Congress. In 2018, 75 percent of them supported a bill that makes police a “protected class” and assault on police a “hate crime.”

These are the same scoundrels that this week “took a knee” in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall along with their boss, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – the same Democratic leader that refused to hold hearings on the Katrina catastrophe in 2005 for fear that the Democrats would lose white votes in 2006 for being too closely associated with Black people. But, just as the U.S. Congress in the Sixties responded to mass movements in the street, so Pelosi’s Democrats offered legislation  that “forces federal police to use body and dashboard cameras, ban chokeholds, eliminates unannounced police raids known as ‘no-knock warrants,’ makes it easier to hold police liable for civil rights violations and calls for federal funds to be withheld from local police forces who do not make similar reforms.”

These are palliatives that have only been offered because of the presence of masses of people in the streets. Don’t thank the Democrats – the credit goes to the activists that have been disrupting the racist social order that both parties, including the vast majority of Black lawmakers, have maintained for the four generations since we last had a mass political movement. Given the recent phenomenal rise in popularity  of “Black Lives Matter,” which is now supported by a majority of Americans and overwhelming numbers of Blacks, the police reforms are likely to pass the House — and possibly even the Republican-controlled Senate, in some form. But these measures do not empower the oppressed – they are only a response to the power that Blacks and our numerous non-Black allies have shown in the streets: the power to disrupt and shame the ruling order in the United States, and the threat of much more to come.

Having not yet won real power over the police – the coercive organs of government that claim a monopoly on the use of force — this is no time for a lull or a truce. Rather, it is time to sharpen our political instruments and deepen the mass movement’s social penetration. The objective is to seize and exercise people’s power in our communities, and to defend the people’s rights and interests – the opposite of the role played by the police, who defend property rights and white supremacy, whatever the cops’ color or ethnicity.

Community control of police and outright abolition of police are wholly compatible demands, Both are predicated on the right of the people to shape, control or abolish the coercive organs of the state, at least in their own communities. Defunding of the police is about allocation of resources, not power, which is why New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been repeatedly punked by his own cops, can claim to favor some level of defunding. However, a significant section of “Black Lives Matter” – those under the influence of Alicia Garza and her corporate philanthropic backers — is clearly resistant to community control of the police and only gives lip service to abolition as a goal for the far-off future. We can expect that the contradictions between that faction of “Black Lives Matter” and other activists will deepen – maybe rather quickly – since the conflict is rooted in who’s paying the bills.

The lifeblood of social movements against white supremacism, capitalism, and imperialism is solidarity among all the victims of these isms. Alicia Garza actively discourages Black solidarity with anybody outside the borders of the United States – doubtless as a condition of her funding. That’s why her Black Census project, which last year conducted the biggest survey of U.S. Blacks in history, chose not to ask a single question on foreign policy. Black Americans have historically been the most pro-peace, anti-militarism constituency in the nation and, besides Arab Americans, the most empathetic to the plight of Palestinians. The Black Census is most useful as a domestic issues guide for Democratic politicians – which is how it is cleverly packaged. Garza has chosen to be an asset to the Party – a disturbing situation, given her status in the “movement.”

The Democratic Party is the movement’s greatest institutional political foe since it infests and dominates virtually all Black civic organizations. (The Republican Party is not a factor in Black America’s internal workings.) The Democrats are the Party of capital, of the bankers, the people displacers, the warmongers – and a Black Caucus that is allied overwhelming with the police. However, Black America is a one-party polity, due to a system that reserves half of the duopoly for the White Man’s Party, the GOP. Therefore, some genuine Black progressives, and even revolutionaries, have run for office, and won, as Democrats, for lack of any other viable platform. Essentially, this very small cohort of righteous officeholders are anti-Democrats who fight the corporate Party machine at every juncture. Among them are Charles and Inez Barron, the nominally Democratic husband-wife team representing a Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood in the city council and state legislature; and St. Louis alderman Jesse Todd, also a nominal Democrat.

Todd and the Barrons are members of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (as am I), which holds its annual Electoral School, via Zoom, June 13 and 14. The Coalition, made up of 15 organizations plus many individual activists, has promulgated a 19-point National Black Agenda for Self-Determination that puts forward principled, self-determinationist positions on the broadest range of issue-areas, including community control of the police. Black Is Back’s approach to electoral politics is simple: the Coalition will endorse no candidate for office who is not in accord with the National Black   Agenda for Self-Determination.

The term “Black Power,” as we learned in the Sixties, can be misused in myriad ways. Black Democratic Party loyalists claim that Blacks were empowered by voting for Joe Biden in huge numbers in the primaries, thus saving his presidential candidacy. “Hands that once picked cotton, now pick presidents,” the Black Democrats exult as if power flows from abject servitude to the corporate dictatorship. In reality, Black voters gave the presidential nomination to a politician who claims he “wrote” the crime bill that resulted in the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Black people; whose opposition to single-payer health care guarantees that Black people will continue to die disproportionately from damn near all causes; and who opposes defunding the police, a minimal demand of the current mass movement.

The oligarchs that rule the country and control both of its corporate parties and all of its major media want the people to believe that politics is limited to the electoral process, and that street activism, labor militancy, and community organizing are outside the realm of “real” politics.  The events of the past ten days have proven the opposite: that massive street actions and unrelenting people-pressure can yield far better results than decades of pulling levers for corporate duopoly candidates.

Feature photo | Protesters confront riot police during a protest over the murder of George Floyd in Los Angeles, May 29, 2020. Photo | AP

Glen Ford is the executive editor of the Black Agenda Report. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

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A new game called “Prison Empire Tycoon” is going viral. Released in late May, it has risen to become the current number one strategy game in Apple’s App Store and has been among the top 20 most popular games overall since its launch, with at least  3 million downloads to date. In line with many other popular business simulation games like the “Railroad Tycoon” and “Rollercoaster Tycoon” series, where users create huge transport networks or design and run their own theme parks, the point of “Prison Empire Tycoon” is to make money running a private American prison.

During the tutorial at the start, a baton-wielding guard instructs you, telling you that “the state pays us good money” to manage the “lowlifes” they send your way. “It’s a perfect business,” he says, as he shows you how to send inmates to solitary confinement, something that is near-universally described as torture.

The game is undeniably well put together, with a clear, functioning world and appealing, chunky graphics. And judging from the extremely positive reception the game has received, users see nothing wrong with its content either. Indeed, the biggest complaints in the negative reviews left online are that it has a number of bugs, has a tendency to crash, and features a lot of annoying ads and in-app purchases.

With almost 2.3 million people locked up across a sprawling network of thousands of facilities, the United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, significantly worse than brutal dictatorships in Africa, Latin America or Central Asia. The U.S. imprisons its citizens at over ten times the rate of European countries like Denmark or Sweden, and over seventeen times that of Japan. Three-quarters of people held in jails have not been convicted of anything.

For-profit private prisons are a growing phenomenon. Since 2000, the number of people incarcerated in them has increased by 39.3 percent, compared to an overall rise of 7.8 percent. Some states have seen their private prison industry explode. Arizona’s private prison population for example has grown nearly sixfold over the last 20 years. Indiana and Ohio’s have quadrupled, while Florida’s has tripled.

Private prison corporations have a clear and perverse incentive to keep their charges in their custody for as long as possible and to make sure they return. In 2010, a federal grand jury convicted Pennsylvania judges of taking $2.6 million in bribes from for-profit juvenile detention facilities in exchange sending thousands of children to jail, often over the protestations of their probation officers.

Writer and prison critic Chris Hedges, who has taught at a number of penitentiaries, called prisoners the ideal American worker; they do not receive any benefits or pensions, are not paid overtime, cannot organize or go on strike, have no vacations or sick days, never show up late to work, cannot complain, and if they try to protest they can be beaten or tortured in solitary confinement. As such, he concludes, prisons “are models for what the corporate state expects us all to become.” According to a 2017 study by the Prison Policy Initiative, incarcerated workers in non-industry prison jobs are paid between $0.86 and $3.45 per day, a significant decline from previous years.

These wages are used as a battering ram against wages across society. Right now, California is facing a critical shortage of firefighters to tackle the summer forest fires, precisely because the state has relied on prison labor, rather than unionized firefighters. California’s prison population is currently on lockdown after particularly severe COVID-19 outbreaks across the state’s correctional facilities.

While many people are working to change or abolish the institution altogether, the massive prison population and terrible conditions found inside have become so accepted that Chelsea Manning’s jailer is running a successful campaign for Congress in Alabama, as a Democrat. The runoff election is on Tuesday.

Video games are also used to sanitize other inherently violent institutions. Among the most popular genres of games are hyper-realistic first-person shooters like the “Call of Duty” franchise, where players play as American troops gunning down huge numbers of faceless Arabs. The U.S. Army has its own eSports team which it uses to groom suggestible teenagers into joining the military. Indeed, the Air Force has a recruitment tool game on its own website which allows you to drone bomb Iraqis and Afghans. Players who perform well are prompted whether they would like to do this in real life.

The fact that the reception to “Prison Empire Tycoon” has been overwhelmingly positive, with few people remarking on its problematic content, goes to show how normalized the prison industrial complex has become and how few people recognize the dystopian depths that society has sunk to.

Feature photo | An screenshot shows a series of images from Digital Things’ “Private Prison Tycoon”

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

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A new report from prison abolition group Worth Rises has exposed the extent to which corporate America profits from the desperation of the incarcerated. The 132-page study, entitled “The Prison Industry: how it started, how it works, how it harms,” blows the lid off the scandalous business practices organizations involved in what has become known as the “prison industrial complex” employ to reap billions in annual profits.

“The prison industry is ubiquitous in our society. And yet we pay so little attention to it and we know so little about it. This report is really hoping to unveil the prison industry, the government and corporate actors who are exploiting the fact that they have been in the shadows,” Bianca Tylek, Worth Rises’ founder and executive director told MintPress.

Between 1984 and 2005, a new prison or jail was built every 8.5 days

70% were built in rural (read: poor, white) communities @WorthRises release its report on the PIC: How It Started, How It Works, and How It Harmshttps://t.co/HOuTLfBkKK#AbolishThePolice #AbolishPrisons pic.twitter.com/XSAmX0B6tz

— Anti-Fascist AWK (@AWKWORDrap) December 16, 2020

In economics, a “captive market” is a situation where consumers face a severely limited number of suppliers, meaning their only choice is to purchase what is available (usually at a much higher price) or make no purchase at all. Most people resent and feel exploited by the higher prices in captive market situations like stadiums, movie theaters, and airports. But prisons take captive markets to a whole new level.

Being incarcerated is expensive, with inmates forced to pay for extra food and many things most would consider basic necessities, such as toothpaste and phone calls. Often just being sent to a correctional facility incurs a $100 “processing fee” prisoners must pay, while visitors are often charged “background check fees” as well. Prisoners’ friends and families transfer $1.8 billion into correctional facilities every year. Faced with no other choices, they are forced to accept money transfer fees up to an outrageous 45%. Financial corporations like JPay and JP Morgan Chase partner with correctional facilities in order to ensure the best deal for them — and the worst deal for the prisoners. As the report notes:

The industry was built on a profit-sharing model between financial services corporations and correctional agencies — the cost of which is layered onto money transfer fees and billed to families. After years of corporate grooming, some agencies now explicitly award contracts to the bidder offering the highest kick back percentage. As a result, not only are contracts often awarded to the most expensive service provider, but correctional administrators are also incentivized to limit cheaper or free alternatives from which they do not profit.

Prisoners are often forced to use special debit cards for purchases, many of which charge fees as high as $2.95 per transaction, $0.95 for declined transactions, and a weekly “service fee” of $2.50. And on the outside, JP Morgan Chase charges a $10 fee to withdraw money from the card at an ATM.

Phone calls are often far from free; the correctional telecom “market” is worth $1.4 billion annually, with charges of upwards of $1 per minute. Little wonder then that one in three prisoners go into debt trying to stay in contact with their loved ones.

While prisoners are given enough food to keep them alive, it is of notoriously low quality, with food poisoning more than six times more likely to occur in jails and prisons than average, the report notes. Nationally, correctional facilities spent just $2.30 per person per day on food — a number lower than the average daily commissary spend per inmate ($2.59). “There is no doubt that in many cases people spend a lot more on commissary than the system spends to feed them. That you can see time and time again. The state tries to spend as little as it possibly can get away with while up-charging for all of the products that people can purchase in commissary,” Tylek told MintPress.

Any wages earned while incarcerated are unlikely to greatly outweigh expenditures; average hourly wages for workers in facility support jobs range between zero and $0.63, with five states not paying workers anything. Prisons are one of the last great centers of American manufacturing, making everything from military equipment to mattresses to 3M face masks. 40% of California’s firefighters are prisoners earning only a few dollars per day to risk their lives. The state’s response to this summer’s wildfires was hampered by the COVID-19 outbreak among its prisons, meaning large parts of its fire response teams were in isolation. Until recently, former prisoners were effectively barred from applying to become firefighters.

With almost 2.3 million people locked up across a sprawling network of over 7,000 facilities, the United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, locking its citizens up at over ten times the rate of European countries like Denmark or Sweden, and over seventeen times that of Japan. Worth Rises’ report notes that $4.6 billion is spent in the U.S. every year on the construction of new facilities. Nearly 600 prisons have been built on or in close proximity to, contaminated toxic land, leading to injury, illness, birth defects, and death.

For-profit private prisons are another growing phenomenon in America’s incarceration system. Since 2000, the number of people incarcerated in private prisons has increased by 39.3%, compared to an overall rise of 7.8%. Their ubiquity has become so unremarkable that, earlier this year, a private prison simulator game went viral, becoming the number one game in Apple’s App Store.

During the tutorial at the start of the game, a baton-wielding guard instructs players, telling them that “the state pays us good money” to manage the “lowlifes” they send your way. “It’s a perfect business,” he says, as he shows you how to send inmates to solitary confinement, something that is near-universally described as torture. The game was received extremely positively, with the few negative comments focusing on annoying ads and in-app purchases, not the game’s concept. The Worth Rises report notes that American solitary cells are so small that 19 of them could fit into an average one-bedroom apartment.

For many, a change in government from Republican to Democrat represents an opportunity for a new start. On incarceration, however, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been plagued by their close ties to the prison industrial complex. For years, Biden touted his involvement in the now-infamous 1994 Crime Bill, which critics say helped supercharge mass incarceration nationwide. Harris, meanwhile, a former prosecutor and district attorney, used to describe herself as California’s “top cop” and pursued harsh sentences for relatively minor drug offenses, including ones that she herself admits she committed in her youth.

Nevertheless, public sentiment towards the issue of mass incarceration is beginning to change. What can be done? Among Tylek’s immediate recommendations are the abolition of private prisons, making phone calls free throughout prisons and jails, addressing the financial exploitation of prisoners, an end to federal subsidies for the construction of new facilities, and ending cash bail in a way that would decrease the number of people locked up. Could this be done with such an obstinate pair in the White House? “We are hopeful that the tide is turning, that the culture is turning to a degree that the Biden-Harris administration cannot ignore and they must act and do something,” she said.

Feature photo | Inmates return from farm work detail at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. Gerald Herbert | AP

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

The post New Report Details the Shocking Growth of the Prison Exploitation Across the US appeared first on MintPress News.

Princeton, New Jersey (Scheerpost) — A few weeks ago I covered the mind-blowing facts about American prisons that should make anyone and everyone rethink/detest/abhor the entire institution. Now, I want to examine the reasons people find themselves locked up in the largest prison state in the world (the Land of the Free) and see if we can’t decrease the number of inmates to something more reasonable …like zero. Or one. …One guy who’s a real grade-A asshole.

I’m well aware that many of you are already yelling, “But what about murderers and rapists?!” We’ll get to them in a minute. Keep your pantaloons fastened. Besides, “What about murderers and rapists?!” is a really abnormal thing to yell at something you’re reading. Come to think of it, maybe you’re not fit for society. Maybe we should lock you up.

First, out of our 2.3 million-person prison population, let’s talk about those not yet convicted.

According to a 2020 report by PrisonPolicy.org, 470,000 of those held in local American jails have not yet been convicted. This begs the question: what happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? Wasn’t that a thing bored teachers taught us in third-grade classes while we secretly focused on trying to flirt with the girl/boy next to us? Clearly, the not-yet-guilties need to be released seeing as they haven’t yet been proven to have done anything.

Boom! You just released 20% of our prison population. They’re no longer prisoners. Doesn’t that feel good? You just released from bondage nearly half a million human souls. You should feel like the Moses of thought experiments right now. (True, you did it with a little help from me, but I’ll graciously let you take most of the credit.)

Now it gets a little trickier. Next up — drug offenders. Yes, I’m referring to those dastardly 328,000 convicted drug offenders who account for 18% of our swollen prison population. Yet, we shouldn’t have those people locked up because drug problems are a health issue, not a crime issue. Furthermore, prisons really only have two main goals — either rehabilitation or punishment. If rehabilitation is your directive, then drug offenders should be sent to rehab centers, not cages. If punishment is your goal, then drug offenders don’t need to be punished because they’re already being punished. Many say they’re harming themselves with drugs. We don’t need to harm them more. Doing so is akin to walking up to a cutter and exclaiming, “Cutting yourself is terrible! To teach you a lesson, I’m gonna spray lemon juice on you.”

At this point some people blurt out, “But drug users do harm to others! They steal and break stuff.” Well, even if that were true, those activities are illegal. It’s illegal to steal — so, sure, arrest them for the stealing. We don’t need to double arrest them. And if they aren’t committing other crimes, then we shouldn’t arrest them for peacefully harming themselves. Isn’t that the right of any American — to peacefully harm ourselves? That’s half the reason I get up in the morning. I can’t wait to find new ways to harm myself. Today maybe it’ll be whiskey and partaking in an amateur rugby match. Tomorrow perhaps cocaine, bungee jumping, and unprotected sex (at the same time!)

To go back to the whole “drug addicts steal” idea for a second, ask yourself: Do they steal more than the thieves on Wall Street? Of course not. But investment bankers aren’t arrested for gambling on people’s mortgages.

Inmate 1:  What’d the cops bust ya for?

Inmate 2:  Eh, I had 100 subprime mortgages hidden up my rectum.

Next, some people will argue, “Well, drug doers hurt the social fabric. They ruin our community.” Even if that were true, all kinds of people hurt the social fabric much more than someone on drugs — polluters, bankers, lobbyists, bad drivers, dudes with no necks playin’ Creed real loud — the list goes on. But we don’t arrest them for any of those things unless they commit some other crime. So the same should be true for drug use.

Alright, so we just freed all the drug users from jail and sentenced them to a rehabilitation plan instead. Then that leaves the drug dealers.

Well, if drugs were decriminalized, then drug dealing would not be the brutal activity it is. Besides, what’s the most harmful drug in the country by the amount of damage done? Alcohol. Therefore, one could argue, the most harmful drug dealers are those serving alcohol. But — here’s the thing, fair reader — I’m a fan of alcohol, and I’m a fan of anyone who sells it to me. Those people are my friends. So on behalf of them, I proclaim, “Drug dealers are good people!”

So all those non-violent drug offenders must be freed. At this point, we’ve released 34% of America’s prisoners. (Gee willikers, at this rate, when we’re through, the U.S. won’t even be one of the world’s greatest human rights abusers. Then what will we put on our souvenir mugs?)

Next up: Non-violent property crimes — burglary, robbery, theft, and fraud. Essentially the stuff teens do on a good, fun Saturday night. Let’s be honest — burglary, theft, and fraud are simply the American way. The entirety of Wall Street is based on it. In fact, it’s an open secret that the stock market is the dictionary definition of a Ponzi Scheme. It’s a giant fraud to extract wealth from the not-so-rich and give it to the already very rich. Then of course there’s the trillions in tax havens, trillions of dollars of wage-theft, the sweetheart deals, insider trading, funny math, tax loopholes, greased palms, shell companies, exaggerated numbers, golden parachutes, and probably some golden showers, too. The “property criminals” or “street criminals” in prison constitute a rounding error compared to the breathtaking theft that goes on by the rich — most of it legally (made legal by corrupt legislatures over the years).

Hell, even the police in this country steal more from people nowadays than burglars do. It’s time to accept that being a thieving bastard is simply the American way. Or, if you’re not okay with that, then maybe one should ponder the fact that if we ended inequality by changing our socioeconomic system, there would be little to no theft.

Point is — Shazam! — that’s another 446,000 prisoners we just released.

And yes, we can still have some punishment for an asshole who breaks into your apartment and takes your signed poster of Jackass: The Movie. We can force those people to sponge bathe the elderly or clean out the sewer pipes or take Dick Cheney for his daily stroll around the block to murder a puppy. (One must remain active in retirement.)

Okay, we only have one million prisoners left. This is going spectacularly well.

There are 44,000 juveniles locked up — almost none of them for truly awful behavior. 61% of underage prisoners are in jail for truancy, or things like being “ungovernable” (whatever that means), running away, or small crimes like vandalism. The U.S. is one of the few countries that even locks up kids for any real amount of time. So let’s get a grip on ourselves and stop that shit. Yes, we could still have places that troubled youth go to for help, but it doesn’t need to be a goddamn prison.

If we really want to call ourselves adults, we must let the children go free.

Next, the U.S. has somewhere around 60,000 people locked up in immigration detention facilities, which is fucking ridiculous (technical terminology). Locking people up because they crossed a line in a field that you told them not to? What are you twelve? Are we playing tag? Is the floor lava? Grow up.

Not to mention we wouldn’t have so many immigrants if we didn’t destroy their home countries with CIA coups and economic warfare. So if we stopped that behavior, then we wouldn’t have nearly this number of refugees and migrants. And if we don’t cease our belligerent destructive activities, then it only makes sense for the U.S. to take in those fleeing our mass destruction.

Between the juveniles and the immigrants, we’re down to only 900,000 prisoners left.

Next: The 266,000 imprisoned for “public order” crimes. As AttorneysOnDemand.net so succinctly puts it, “Public order crimes are actions that do not conform to society’s general ideas of normal social behavior and moral values.”

Right off the bat, I can tell this is a load of bunk because what the hell is “normal social behaviors”? I find a lot of normal social behaviors awful — like putting little shoes on your tiny dog or spitting out chewing tobacco in public or owning three cars and a McMansion with a giant yard that requires 11 billion gallons of freshwater every day to keep it greener than the Jolly Green Giant’s ass or the animal torture that goes into creating the meat for a Taco Bell mystery meat Dorito Loco Taco. There’s loads of stuff categorized as “normal social behavior” that’s reprehensible, nauseating, or repulsive. In the past slavery was normal behavior, genocide against indigenous peoples was a normal and sometimes rewarded behavior. So was slapping children across the face because they looked at you funny or marrying off your 13-year-old daughter to a strange man in exchange for a couple of goats or locking your wife in a kitchen for 10 to 20 years. Those were all normal social behaviors at one time. I don’t think I like normal social behavior.

Nowadays, most public order crimes (other than drug use) stem from prostitution, public drunkenness, and paraphilia. On any given night in America, scores of people are publicly drunk to some extent — it should only become criminal when they do something bad. But then, that’s the crime. If they beat someone up or stab a guy, that’s the crime — not the drunkenness. So you can get rid of that law against public drunkenness. We don’t need it.

Prostitution is often a deal between two consenting adults. Legalize it, make sure it’s not abusive, and then everyone benefits. I’m not saying we need to have it readily available out in the middle of the public jungle gym on a Sunday afternoon. Put it somewhere people don’t have to stare at it with their kids on the way home from the ballpark. You know, put it inside a Segway rental shop — no one’s going in there.

Then there’s paraphilia, or unusual sexual behavior like voyeurism or masturbating in public. First of all, for the truly strange, mental health care is needed — not a jail cell. If you’re caught humping a post office box that you dressed up like Richard Nixon, then prison is not gonna help you. You need a whole team of counselors instead. And if you’re jackin’ off in public, then, again, you could use someone to talk to, but also, as long as you aren’t leaving puddles around, it’s not exactly a huge problem. In fact, a few years ago a Swedish court ruled that it is indeed legal to masturbate in public as long as it’s not directed at someone specific. So there you have it. Just don’t aim the damn thing at anyone.

Alright, we just canceled the “public order” crimes. And for those that should remain crimes (like sexual harassment), how about the perpetrators pay fines, or do shitty community service, like cleaning out the elephant cages at the zoo? There’s also electronic monitoring bracelets to make sure people stay within a certain area (if you truly need to keep tabs on them).

So we’re down to 680,000 inmates. Basically, all that remains are violent crimes. Well, let’s put the murderers and rapists aside for a second. We’re looking at 315,000 inmates who are in for violence that isn’t murder, rape, or sexual assault — meaning they’re in for standard assault.

Sure, there should be punishments for fighting and any form of domestic violence, and I won’t deny that assault can be a serious thing. But when you lock someone up for years for punching a guy in a bar brawl, you just turn him into a more efficient, angrier dickhead. You basically sent him to criminal university. You’ve actually torn the social fabric more than the “criminal” did by punching someone. Sure, there should be punishments for assault. Maybe it’s a really boring anger management facility. Get creative with it. But locking people up does not have to be the default answer.

Boom! Just like that, we’re down to only 365,000 prisoners remaining. (Don’t you feel good about yourself?) Even if we left the murderers and rapists in the prisons, we’d only have 16% of the original 2.3 million American prisoners.

The next step is to decrease the insane sentences so even violent criminals receive rehabilitation rather than solitary confinement for 60 years. Pretty soon the U.S. would have the same number of prisoners as — wait for it — other countries. Wouldn’t that be crazy? Americans would be able to view themselves as the adults in the room, just like Iran or Egypt — rather than having ten times more prisoners than them. And we wouldn’t need large-scale penitentiaries because, assuming we had roughly 100,000 prisoners left, we could send a few to each city in the United States. The U.S. has 20,000 cities — so that’s only five prisoners per city. One little house in each town. That’s it. That’s all. One adorable tiny house with a few murderers and a rapist locked up in it. A couple of ’em would probably kill each other — then you’d only have two murderers and a rapist in a wee petite house in every city.

Prison abolition is truly not a crazy idea. It should be a real goal of an evolved species (if such a thing ever shows up on Earth). If prison abolition is not a goal, it shows we’re no better than the plantation owners who claimed slavery was just the only way things could work. But a lot of people knew that wasn’t true even when slavery was commonplace. And right now, a lot of people know our prison system is a crime against humanity. We could easily abolish prisons if we just thought outside of our social engineering. We could one day see a world with no bars, and no cages.

… Except for Jeff Bezos — that unimaginable asshole needs to be immediately locked up.

Feature photo | Thomas Hawk | Flickr CC

Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America. He is a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.

The post Lee Camp: How to End the US Prison State Quick and Easy appeared first on MintPress News.

For a supposedly developed, democratic nation, the United States locks up an extraordinary number of its citizens. Close to one quarter of the world’s prison population is in the United States. Even on a per capita basis, only El Salvador and Turkmenistan come close to America’s preponderance for incarceration.

In a country with a rising population and a falling demand for labor, the government decided to solve this problem by simply locking up millions of its poorest citizens, in the process allowing corporate America to make billions from their suffering. The prison industry is booming: between 1990 and 2005, the U.S. built, on average, a new prison every ten days.

Joining Lowkey to discuss how prisons became big business is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. Chris spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Balkans, and the Middle East for The New York Times and currently hosts the show On Contact on RT. His latest book, “Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison,” was published in October.

“The entire system works to railroad primarily poor people and disproportionately poor people of color into this system,” he told Lowkey. “Almost no one in the United States gets a jury trial; 94% of the people in the prison system are coerced by prosecutors to accept a plea deal. Public defenders can only spend 10 or 15 minutes with their clients.”

In “Our Class,” Hedges describes mass incarceration as “the civil rights issue of our age.” “When you incarcerate someone, in essence, the whole family becomes incarcerated,” he said. Some 77 million Americans have a criminal record, while 113 million American adults have an immediate family member who has been to or currently is incarcerated, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

Once in the system, it is, by design, extremely hard to escape. Incarcerated individuals are forced to work for pennies per hour (some states pay nothing), while all manner of essential items are not provided and cost exorbitant amounts to purchase from the commissary. As a result, inmates are often released owing thousands of dollars.

Having a criminal record bars citizens from many welfare and public housing benefits, as well as applying for jobs in a myriad of professions. For example, during the summer wildfires last year, California prison firefighters worked alongside professionals, tackling some of the worst blazes in American history. For this, they were paid barely $1 per hour, and are blocked from applying to the fire department once they are released. Thus, paying back these odious debts is even harder than it may appear.

Hedges singled out President Joe Biden as playing a particularly key role in turning the United States into an incarceration nation. Biden was “instrumental” in pushing the Democrats into seizing back the “law and order” narrative from the Republicans in the 1990s, helping to pass into law rules such as the Three Strikes Law, which has sent many Americans to prison for life for trivial offenses. The number of crimes worthy of the death penalty was also exanded from barely a handful to 51. Until recently, Biden took credit for the infamous 1994 Crime Bill, which was a key piece of legislation in codifying the prison industrial complex.

Of the 46th president, Hedges, who teaches in a prison in New Jersey, said, “Half of my students (or more) would not be in that classroom but for Joe Biden.”

MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.

Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic, political campaigner, and a MintPress video and podcast host. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique, and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network, and The Peace and Justice Project founded by Jeremy Corbyn.

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ALBANY, NEW YORK – Prisons in New York state are rolling out a program that will ban most reading material and end inmate care packages from families. The program is currently being tested at three state prisons, but plans to implement the directive at all 54 of the state’s correctional facilities are aiming for a Fall 2018 start date.

Authorities say the move will help clamp down on contraband – prohibited items – inside the prisons, which they claim will, in turn, make the prisons safer for both staff and inmates. While supporters and prison activist groups have decried the new policy as being “draconian” and creating another economic hurdle for families, what’s not being talked about is the primary way that contraband gets into the prisons in the first place: correctional officers walk it in.

The role of guards

Prison guards walk down a corridor in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. (AP/Ben Margot)

Gary Heyward, who spent two years in prison for smuggling tobacco and cocaine into New York’s Riker’s Island facility, says that when he was a new correctional officer in training, his instructor told him: “‘Look to your left. Now look to your right. One of you is going to smuggle something in, some inmate is going to talk you into doing bad.” Hayward said, “I thought, ‘Oh, no, not me.’ But, you know, you never think it’s going to be you.”

The stories of prison guards who either attempted to or did bring contraband into state prisons are legion. And, while the operations to catch corrections officers in the act often net only one or two officers but numerous non-prison employees, the fact remains that correctional officer collusion is difficult to deter. One reason is that in many instances, guards who bring in contraband are given mere slaps on the wrist.

Read more by Thandisizwe Chimurenga

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According to an article published in March 2009 in the Houston Chronicle, in a five-year study of personnel records spanning 2003-2008:

Of the 263 employees disciplined solely for contraband, about three-fourths were given probation, where they were placed under special scrutiny for specified periods. Thirty-five were fired; 26 received no punishment at all. One of the 263 was criminally prosecuted for the contraband, but served no prison time.”

The 263 employees were at 20 of the state’s prisons that had the most pervasive problem with contraband during the years studied.

Spitting at the wrong spot

A television news photographer films confiscated cell phones as officials prepare to return them to a box of evidence following a news conference at Jessup Correctional Institution in Jessup, Md., Jan. 11, 2018. (AP/Patrick Semansky)

California has tried a variety of ways to clamp down on its prison cell phone problem, including installing multi-million dollar hardware such as scanners, surveillance cameras and metal detectors, and signal-jamming technology. Even though it hasn’t worked well, the state is continuing that program. What California has not done, however, is stand up to the union for correctional officers.

The California Policy Center scolded the state and Governor Jerry Brown several years ago for cowardice in the face of the guard’s union. The issue, which is couched in labor language, is that corrections officers are not required to walk through metal detectors when they get to work at any of the state’s 23 prisons. Writing for the Policy Center in 2011, Stephen Greenhut states:

[T]hink about that for a moment. When mostly law-abiding people head to the airport to take a family trip, they must endure increasingly intrusive screenings and X-rays and searches. At the state’s prisons, there is no such screening system. We can thank the obstructionist efforts of the prison-guards union. As always, unions zealously protect even the most corrupt and bad-behaving members, which creates something of a race to the bottom.”

At issue is the concept of “walk time.” That’s where a correctional employee literally gets paid to walk from their car into the facility. Paying officers for the time taken to remove various articles of their uniform, to go through a metal screening process, then put their items of clothing back on, could cost the state millions of dollars. Money the state is not willing to part with. Even when it knows without question that the guards are the ones bringing in the contraband cell phones.

Correctional officers, like police officers, enjoy a benefit of the doubt that the average person does not. That benefit of the doubt extends to automatic trust in their character, belief in their innocence, and belief in their statements about the inmates they guard. Like their brothers in law enforcement out on the streets, these law enforcement officers in our correctional facilities must be looked at critically, with less of a blind-spot. If not, we will continue to go round and round, and search far and wide when the answers are right in front of us.

Top Photo | A correctional officer stands near a gate at Baltimore City Detention Center in Baltimore. (AP/Steve Ruark)

The post While Prisons Ban Reading Material, Unsearched Guards Walk in With Real Contraband appeared first on MintPress News.