Topic Tuesday #60 2013/09/10 - "Red Pill Blue Pill or Suicide is Painless"

An idea has crept into my mind. Freedom. We have an interesting culture. We value life almost universally as a species, our own species. Let me cut to the chase or I will dawdle for a while waxing poetic on this deep thought.
When someone is on death row or serving enough multiple life sentences that they will die in prison, why not offer them the Blue Pill, and let them choose to drift off to la la land and pass away peacefully?

Harsh? I don't think so. Analytically it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement. The inmate would not have to languish wasting their potential. The state and the taxpayer would not have to spend the nearly $50,000 a year to keep an inmate "safe" and healthy. The taxpayer and the inmate continue to benefit as an aging prison population starts to rack up the medical bills. The prisoner suffers. The tax payer pays, sometimes over $100,000 a year per aging inmate.
There is a question that has always rattled around in my head. Why does a prisoner, sentenced to death, must be deemed healthy before being executed?
Anyone sentenced to death, automatically (almost always) sits in a special cell block for about 20 years before being executed. The current financials on this have it as an average of almost $90,000 a year MORE to house and litigate these inmates. That's $140,000 a year, for 20 years. $2,800,000 for an average death sentence.

Average "lifer" let's say they made it to 30 (roughly median age of the average prison population across the United States) before having the book thrown at them and tossed away to rot.
Based on demographics, major medical problems begin to escalate around the age of 55. It has been estimated this can triple the cost of care for an inmate until they pass away. If they live to the average North American lifespan of 79 years (both men and women averaged) and they were good girls and boys and were put in medium security AND they were of average health throughout their life. carry the 2....
49 years in prison. 49 * $50,000=$2,450,000 Plus the extended health care cost for the ages over 55. 24
years * $100,000=$2,400,000 + the healthy baseline = $4,850,000 We can go ahead and average this down to $4.5 mil based on the following health factors lowing the life expectancy of any inmate:
Prison populations exhibit an elevated prevalence of communicable disease. High levels of violence, including sexual violence, have been reported among imprisoned populations. Consensual sex without condoms as well as drug injection and tattooing without sterile equipment are reported to occur at dangerous levels and to result in transmission of diseases, such as HIV.

For a well cared for lifer, $4,500,000 to support them to death do they part. nearly 5 decades behind razor wire.
For the average death row candidate; $2,800,000 to support them until we execute them after about 20 years.

So. What do you think?
Red Pill, face the grime reality of being put to death or dying in prison, possibly old and enfeebled.
OR...
Blue Pill. Die on your own terms, without pain or decades of suffering.

I think we should offer it as a choice. What do you think?

Topic Tuesday #33 2013/03/05 - "Do not pass GO. Do not Collect $200 - Go directly to Privatization"

The seed for today's topic. Florida Atlantic University in it's efforts to pay for a 30,000 seat football stadium found an unlikely backer. The Stadium will be christened the GEO Group Stadium, thanks to a $6 million dollar (over 12 years) donation to the public university. GEO Group is the nations second largest operator of for-profit privatized prisons. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/florida-atlantic-football-stadium_n_2720223.html?1361323728
This leads to a great many questions about what privatization really means. We have corporate prisons, corporate schools, corporate space programs, and some would say politicians should dress up like race car drives so we can see who is sponsoring them as well.

Today I want to look at prisons, specifically.

The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails - a 500% increase over the past thirty years. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and state governments being overwhelmed by the burden of funding a rapidly expanding penal system. The original intent, some 200 years ago, when the penitentiary system (etymologically derived from "penance") was formed by the Quakers and other reformist groups, was to take sinners, lock them in a cell, make them read the Bible, and they would repent for their sins. This model of incarceration (which didn't have great success at rehabilitation and repentance) has not changed that much since the inception. What has changed is the perception, method, and value of incarceration.

Not all the privatizations for to Corporations, some just migrate jurisdiction from state to county. In Louisiana it works this way: County or parish sheriffs get about $25 a day for inmates that would have otherwise ended up in state prisons. Some of that money goes to house and feed the prisoners. What’s left over goes to the underfunded sheriffs’ departments to use for much needed equipment and for manpower. The sheriffs get their needed bullet proof vests, and somehow prisoners end up with longer sentences and jail remain at capacity to get their $25 a head. This narrows any funds left for an actual rehabilitation. Again in this example, the funds for those activities come from charity functions like rodeos and Church outreach.
This method is simple, the more you have the easier it is to take care of, and you end up with a more economical situation with more money left over. This is not as insidious as what the real private for profit prisons do.

Slave Labor.

In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit. By dipping into the prison labor pool, companies have their pick of workers who are not only cheap but easily controlled. Companies are free to avoid providing benefits like health insurance or sick days, while simultaneously paying little to no wages. They don’t need to worry about unions or demands for vacation time or raises. Inmates work full-time and are never late or absent because of family problems.
Under the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), private-sector employers receive a tax credit of $2,400 for every work release inmate they employ as a reward for hiring “risky target groups” and they can "earn back up to 40 percent of the wages they pay annually to target group workers."

Companies can lease factory time in prisons. Lease prison work forces.
Noah Zatz of UCLA law school estimates that:
“Well over 600,000, and probably close to a million, inmates are working full-time in jails and prisons throughout the United States. Perhaps some of them built your desk chair: office furniture, especially in state universities and the federal government, is a major prison labor product. Inmates also take hotel reservations at corporate call centers, make body armor for the U.S. military, and manufacture prison chic fashion accessories, in addition to the iconic task of stamping license plates.”

Making stiffer penalties that lead to longer stays in the "big house" has proven a great way to get votes. Making other people responsible and shifting the financial burden is also a great slight of hand for policy makers.

And thanks to all this, there is a dark economy of slavery in this country while record unemployment continues to plague the news, the government has it's armor and ammunition built by felons, and Corporate America hires prisoners for a few dollars a day to slice "Made in Honduras" tags off garments and replace them with "Made in America".

Is it ethical to incarcerate people for the sole purpose of making money? How can anyone think it is?

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/january-11-2013/prisons-for-profit/14485/

http://www.sentencingproject.org/detail/news.cfm?news_id=1445

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/corporate-welfare-incarceration-industry

http://www.alternet.org/story/151732/21st-century_slaves%3A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor?page=0%2C0&paging=off

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pentagon-and-slave-labor-in-u-s-prisons/25376