Prison: Big Business!

Hey Family! I know I touched on Prison when discussing the 3 most important impacts on our people, but this forum is designed to focus on Prison only and expand on its core and how it is all designed to be profitable and keep our people in bondage.

It's something very wrong when a country that only takes up 5% of the worlds population,

has almost 25% of the worlds prisoners. The United States of America has the largest prison population on this planet. At some point you have to sit back and ask yourself why that is. The richest Country in the world, the land of the free, has the largest population of un-free individuals.

Compared to countries with dictators and harsh unjust rulers. How and why would a country founded on the principle of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, allow so many of it's citizens to be behind bars? Well, there is a very simple yet disturbing answer. The United states allows private prisons and many corporations to get rich off of prison labor. Private prisons get paid by the million to keep the prisons at 90-100% occupancy.

Now when you hear that you then have to wonder how are they keeping up this quota. Private Prison's and corporations have banned together with politicians to help increase laws that practically guarantee that the beds in theses facilities will stay filled.

With the war on drugs and mandatory sentencing laws, more and more people are being incarcerated despite the fact that crime rates have not been increasing. They fluctuate like anything else. The prison population has risen 700% since the 1980's.

This was largely due to the Federal Crime Bill of 1994, also known as The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act signed by President Bill Clinton. This is reported to be the largest crime bill in U.S history, 9.7 billion dollars spent in funding prisons. While this bill was intended to lock up violent offenders, currently 49% of prisoners are nonviolent. Research shows that by the year 2000 22% of inmates were convicted on Drug charges. Many of these drug charges are low level Marijuana possessions. Individuals have been sentenced to time as harsh as 55 years on first time offenses with small amounts of the drug. That is more time than some murderers or child rapist.

Our prison system has been designed for prisoners to reenter prison. Statistics show that in the first 3 years of being released 70% of inmates are go back to prison. 95% of inmates are released unprepared to enter into society. A lot of these people are now labeled a convicted felon which makes it hard to get a job, prohibits them from the ability to vote, housing and food assistance. Most return offenders are sent back to prison on crimes committed that ensure survival.

They are also subject to reenter prison do to fines and loans taken out while in prison due to the fact that while in prison they are responsible to

purchase many of the things needed to maintain life behind bars. Parole and probation violation are also too often the cause of prison reentry. Parole officers seem to be a part of the grand scheme to keep inmates locked up.

They show no mercy for the few felons that are able to get on their feet. Requiring them to pay parole and probation fees as well as visit them at mandatory times that may cause them to lose jobs that were already hard for

them to get in the first place.

Too many inmates find themselves trapped in solitary confinement for the duration of their prison term and then released back into society. This solitary confinement can destroy these inmates mentally. Making them more likely to commit crimes when they are released.

So many people leave prison worse than they came in. Prison can turn an nonviolent person violent.

These people can sit around idle for years, subject to gang violence and torture at the hands of corrections officers. In 2016 there were 260 inmates assaults in the U.S. Locking people up for long prison sentences with no counseling does not ensure that they will stop committing crime. Inmates often continue to commit crime behind bars and with little to nothing productive to do they are almost sure

to commit those crimes on the outside.

When the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was written, it also prevented inmates from getting higher education while in prison. Lack of education can be damning for inmates who at some point will be released. Going back into the world with no form of education does not help you to be a functioning member of society. It decreases their already low chances of being able to find work.

A corporation would be more likely to over look the fact that this person spent time in prison if this person is able to show that while in prison he used his time wisely and learned some very important skills. There are American tax payers that feel that their tax dollars should not go to educating someone who may have stolen one's property or sold drugs on the street. But what these people have to realize that, us taking care of them will in turn make them take care of us.

We should all want these inmates to come home and get jobs and then become upstanding tax paying citizens. We have to believe that rehabilitating these inmates is beneficial to each and every one of us.

Many prisoners want to do better and not just sit behind

bars twittling their thumbs, they just don't have the necessary resources. We as a people need to ban together to get our criminal justice system to change it's ways and stop making inmates more prone to violence on the outside and help ensure

that they can live good healthy lives in their communities.

Changes like this will not be made until the people who are not behind bars speak on the insane conditions of prison. Designed for inmates to fail in life.

These private prisons are not only locking up non violent U.S citizens but are largely incarcerating undocumented immigrants. Men, woman, and children.

#reading #writing #lessons