Addict Nation (25 page)

The Other “Pushers”

Just like drug cartels make billions off the drug trade, America’s prisons have become big business, a business that has a vested interest in making sure that crime doesn’t go away. Every time a prisoner phones home, somebody makes a profit. Inmate phone calls alone are a $1 billion market!
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There is now a prison/industrial complex where self-perpetuating prison bureaucracies have aligned with the private sector to create a massive industry based on locking people up. They even have their own magazine,
Corrections Today,
and a product-packed Las Vegas convention.

“You walk in and it’s absolutely every business from toothpaste suppliers that design special packaging for prisons, to telephone companies, the chairs, the restraints—every company that is feeding at this bulk of money that’s been allotted for criminal justice and corrections [is] there. And it’s lights and cameras, and the whole bit.”

—Donna Selman, author of
Punishment for Sale

The American Correctional Association’s yearly confab is like the auto show, except, instead of nifty new gizmos in cars, it showcases cool ways to house and control captive humans. Several hundred exhibitors show off their wares, everything from suicide-proof toilets to pre-fab prison cells. Here’s a look at just one prison product in a $37 billion (and growing fast) prison industry.
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“With 2-inch hollow steel walls, the cells feature built-in lighting, beds, and plumbing. MaxWall, which typically sells for $14,000 to $18,000, is shipped like an erector set and stitch-welded together onsite. The cells can save 10 square feet of space each over conventional cell construction techniques, allowing prisons to accommodate more inmates.”

—CNNMoney.com

It costs more than $22,000 a year to feed and house the average prisoner. Some say it’s actually a lot higher than that. But, for argument’s sake, multiply that figure by the more than 2 million Americans who are locked up, and you get a taste of how much money is up for grabs.
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Lately, there has been a frightening trend toward privatizing prisons. This provides an even greater profit incentive to lock up as many people as possible. If you’re in the prison industry, how do you “grow” your business? Imprison more Americans! Critics complain that the prison industry has a powerful lobby that pushes politicians to enact even tougher laws with even longer incarceration.

“These are profit-driven, market-model industries, and their premise is to make money and increase market. Their market and, unfortunately, their raw materials are human beings.”

—Donna Selman, author of
Punishment for Sale

“We feel very, very good about the business prospects,” a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) executive told
Business 2.0 Magazine
. The Nashville-based company is the largest private prison operator in the U.S., employing nearly 17,000 people and housing 75,000 prisoners. The company also has a subsidiary that transports prisoners. It reportedly racked up a profit of $47 million during the first six months of 2006 alone.
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CCA is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CXW.
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“Our core business touches so many things—security, medicine, education, food service, maintenance, technology—that it presents a unique opportunity for any number of vendors to do business with us,” the executive added. On its website, CAA calls itself “the fifth-largest corrections system in the nation, behind only the federal government and three states.”
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A Business . . . REALLY?

I think it’s our responsibility to ask ourselves,
Is this something we
really want to delegate to the private sector?
Do we, as American taxpayers, really want to underwrite a for-profit business that relies on humankind’s darkest impulses to keep its doors open? It gives you that queasy feeling, doesn’t it? But, wait, there’s even more to keep you tossing and turning tonight as you think of the more than 2 million people in America who literally cannot get up and go to the kitchen to whip up a midnight snack! The Democratic Leadership Council estimates “about 100,000 of America’s 2.3 million inmates of state, federal, and local prisons work in national and state prison industries.”
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That’s right, I said they “work” in prison! The yearly sales total is around $2.4 billion.” TWO BILLION DOLLARS!

And Now for Something Really Orwellian

Most Americans have no idea that something called UNICOR exists. That’s the trade name for Federal Prison Industries, a wholly owned, government corporation that’s been around since 1934 and was inspired by the Great Depression. It claims to keep inmates “constructively occupied” by getting them to churn out “market-priced quality goods and services for sale to the Federal Government” at more than a hundred prison factories. UNICOR/FPI claims to be “not about business, but instead, about inmate release preparation . . . helping offenders acquire the skills necessary to successfully make that transition from prison to law-abiding, contributing member of society.”
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The merchandise? “Merely by-products of those efforts.” Hmmmm. By law, FPI must sell its products to the federal government. Its biggest customer is the Department of Defense, where it racks up more than half its sales.
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According to the
Left Business Observer
, the federal prison industry produces much of the U.S. military’s helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. But along with equipment for war, prison workers can also be found making paints, paintbrushes, appliances, headphones, and office furniture.
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Many state prisoners hold jobs sorting public records—anything from tax files to student transcripts—for federal, state, and local governments. By the way, that means some convicts get to see Social Security numbers and other personal information about citizens on the outside— despite years of warnings that it’s a dangerous practice.
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UNICOR’s net sales in 2008 approached $1 billion. But . . . less than 5 percent of its revenue went to inmate pay. How’s that possible? It’s possible because UNICOR pays its captive workforce—of more than 20,000 prisoners—anywhere from twenty-three cents an hour to a top salary of $1.15 an hour.
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Critics call this slave labor. Some have even made the comparison to Nazi-era slave worker camps. Still others point out that prison labor also has its roots in slavery. After the Civil War, a system of “hiring out prisoners” was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition.
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While I understand the argument for keeping prisoners occupied and productive, the irony becomes positively surreal when you consider that we are locking up armies of Americans for decades over nonviolent crimes and then telling them we are going to “help them” stay productive and “train them” for their re-entry to the real world by having them churn out goods (often on out-of-date, retired equipment) while earning a quarter per hour. Would that make you angry? You wonder why we often see these news stories of ex-cons engaged in horrific random violence against law-abiding citizens who’ve done nothing to deserve it. Well, a couple of decades behind bars provides a lot of time to build up rage, rage that is not directed at any single individual but rather at society as a whole.

The prison industrial complex fosters an us-versus-them mentality that can lead ex-cons to seek vengeance on the outside for humiliations endured on the inside. Sexual victimization by fellow inmates is a real problem that can scar an individual for life—leaving him bitterly resentful and ashamed. Prison overcrowding and punishment of inmates can create stress and rage. Ponder this one statistic: From 1995 to 2000, the number of offenders assigned to solitary confinement increased by 40 percent!
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Can you imagine what it feels like to be in solitary confinement? Can you imagine a guy being released onto the streets after a long period of severe isolation with no support system in place for him to transition back into society? How long do you think it will take for that man to get arrested again? And for what? Murder, robbery, rape?

In 1979, Congress allowed some private for-profit companies to hire prisoners in some limited circumstances if they’re paid the prevailing wage.
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Critics insist the wages prisoners get from private firms are, nevertheless, often substandard. Every so often a controversy will erupt where a big-name corporation is called out for using prison labor.
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However, much more ominous than the occasional scandal is the relentless push by some politicians to legally throw the doors wide open to the widespread use of prison labor by private, for-profit corporations for egregiously substandard pay, literally pennies per hour. One critic put it best when he said that corporate America is salivating over the prospect of using more prison inmates for labor because businesses don’t have to pay for a prisoner’s health care, inmates belong to no union, they can’t go on vacation, and they can’t complain to the boss when they don’t like the working conditions.
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Are we, as a culture, at the doorstep of a new era of slavery, where it will be taken for granted that a large portion of the population is shackled, chained, and living in cages?

Despite all the talk of building skills in prison, we all have seen enough real crime stories to know the truth. Prisons are “criminal factories.” A person who goes into prison comes out more of a hardened criminal than when he/she went in. They are marked for life and often have trouble getting hired because of their rap sheet. Recidivism is rampant. A few years ago, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons released
Confronting Confinement
, a scathing report on America’s prison system. It noted, “Within three years, 67 percent of former prisoners will be rearrested,” and most will be re-incarcerated.
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And the cost of it all? In 2006, the total tab just for prisons was $60 billion a year. And the bill is sure to have grown since then. That’s your tax dollars. If it all sounds irrational, that’s because addictive behavior is always ultimately irrational. We are drunk on crime and need an intervention to force us to look at some emotionally sober alternatives!

Imagine what we could do to change the culture that has led to so much imprisonment if we spent $60 billion on something positive . . . like improving schools in inner-city neighborhoods that are pockets of crime. Imagine if we took $60 billion and put that into charter schools to replace public schools that are failing so miserably to educate America’s underclass. Imagine if we put $60 billion into after-school programs that offer meaningful alternatives to gang membership. Imagine if we put $60 billion into family planning and birth control so that teenagers weren’t giving birth with no viable means of supporting their infants. Imagine if we put $60 billion into psychological counseling programs so that kids from troubled or drug-ridden homes could have a place to vent and work out their emotional traumas.

“For every dollar we spend on substance abuse programs, we save seven in the long run, but we’re not willing to make the front-end investment. You can take credit for catching a criminal, but you can’t take credit for preventing a crime.”

—Donna Selman, author of
Punishment for Sale

Given that studies show the majority of inmates in American prisons have some kind of substance-abuse problem, imagine if we put $60 billion into treatment programs, rehabs, and halfway houses in the inner city.
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Imagine if we put $60 billion into vocational training so that young men in the inner city could learn a practical trade that would give them a shot at employability as a carpenter or an electrician . . . so they wouldn’t have to resort to drug dealing to survive. Europe offers students two options to gainful employment. For some, it’s college and the professions. For others, it’s learning a trade, like mechanics, plumbing, and electronics. The burgeoning solar industry needs technicians. The healthcare system needs skilled workers. But, today, vocational training is falling by the wayside in America’s high schools. Our education budgets are strained . . . while the budgets for prisons are skyrocketing.

The truth is a lot of undocumented workers cross the border from Mexico or Guatemala with much better practical skills than low-income Americans. Many undocumented workers know carpentry, how to lay cement, basic electrical work, how to lay hardwood floors, and so on. That’s why Americans looking for cheap labor often hire illegals right in the parking lot of do-it-yourself superstores. Conversely, a lot of inner-city Americans grow up skillless! Wouldn’t it be smarter to train young Americans before they end up in prison so they can get meaningful work instead of waiting for them to commit a crime out of financial desperation or hopelessness? Too often, they are incarcerated at huge public expense and, only there, trained inside prison for some theoretical future back on the outside. Wouldn’t it be smarter to give tax breaks to corporations, large and small, to encourage them to become part of the solution by establishing partnerships and mentoring programs that fast track high-risk students into the workforce?

“I’m told it cost nearly $50,000 to house me in jail for those nine months. Six months later I got my GED and was admitted to college under an affirmative action program. My tuition, which included room, board, and classes, cost $6,000 per year. So I received a bachelor’s degree on the back of taxpayers for $24,000—nearly half the amount it cost the taxpayers to keep me in jail for nine months. First of all, it was clearly more tax efficient to educate me than to incarcerate me because I was rehabilitated and didn’t go through that revolving door, and secondly, I’m a pretty good taxpayer myself, helping to offset the pockets of others.”