There is an old saying that being poor is expensive. If this is true, it is even more expensive to be poor and imprisoned. Imprisonment disproportionately affects blacks, especially from poor communities, and there is a growing trend to shift the cost of imprisonment to prisoners.
The cost of imprisonment starts even before you have been convicted of a crime. On April 7, the Baltimore Action Legal Team (BALT) sent an urgent email about people in need of help paying for electronic surveillance fees. BALT’sCells for securityThe campaign began in the early days of the Covid-19 lockout. According to BALT spokeswoman Janaya Brown, that is pre-trial logistics coordinator, community residents faced a decision to go to jail or pay private detention companies up to $ 19 a day to be placed under house surveillance. “You can imagine how fast it will increase,” she told the Daily Kos calling Zoom.
COVID-related court backups combined with the fact that there has been a 500% increase In prison populations since the start of the “war on drugs” 40 years ago, “we have seen cases of pre-trial detention lasting a year,” Brown said. And unlike bail, even if the accused is found innocent, they still have to pay a home care fee. This means that community members are not even convicted of a crime could still be indebted to private e-carcassing companies.
Prisoners are in a Catch-22 situation: there are prisons and prisons incredibly high prevalence of COVID. Many public inspections put pressure on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to introduce more security COVID protocols for inmates, so prison authorities responded by making a mandatory solitary confinement cell. In all federal prisons, even the lowest risk offenders were forced to perform several mandatory solitary rounds– Adding to the “normal” pandemic stress and physical health risks the pressure on mental health caused by intense isolation.
If you want to stay out of jail, you have to pay big bucks –all during the peak of the pandemic, when businesses were closed every day and long-term unemployment rose sharply. “People were afraid of being violated for not paying. I had a client who told me: At this point, I’m just giving up because I can’t pay at all. We’re trying to keep people out of the cages,” Brown said, “so they can move so they can work.” so they can stay with their families, we try to keep people free.
From leasing to convicts to corporate profits
The GEO Group Incwhich is declared “the largest provider of GPS, alcohol, and RF technology and services in the United States,” sells electronic surveillance technology to governments. As of December 31, 2021, the GEO Group also managed approx 83,000 prison beds and about 250,000 “offenders” and pre-trial defendants. They made a total income $ 2.26 billion in 2021 alone.
How did we end up in a world where private bodies could imprison people, make a profit from your workand earn billions in the process? The Daily Kos spoke to Robert Craig, an attorney at Abolish Private Prisons (APP), who claims that private prisons are unconstitutional because they violate Amendment 13’s ban on slavery. “It simply came to our notice then […] “What the criminal justice system looks like should be driven by data and experts, not profit incentives,” Craig said.
However, the prison has been profitable since its inception. Convicts in the era of leasing after the Civil War “Black codes“Criminalized being Black and sentenced him to prison for minor offenses such as wander or do not carry a work permit. Deep-rooted slavery introduced black codes by ‘slave patrols’–militia style groups, a direct forerunner of modern policing. Both children and adults were classified as convicted and ‘leased’ to mines, railway companies or, in some cases, the same plantation they had just left. Kreig Daily Kos said: “These plantation owners had no incentive to keep people alive. They could always get more cheap labor out of the state from the convicted leasing system.
As Craig said, “prisons and industrialization grew together. The era of Manifest Destiny created the need for fast infrastructure […] and cheap labor. Railways had to be built; the factories needed staff. Since then, there have been court cases in which “prisoners are state slaves”.
However, there is a main difference between a country that gets wealth from prisoners and private corporations that imprison people and force them to work. A war on drugs was needed to make this transition possible. According to APP, it “needed this Reagan idea that private parties are doing better.”
Amendment 13 contains an “exception clause”: slavery is illegal except cases of imprisonment. “If we remove the exception clause, the state can’t imprison people at all. And if they imprison people, they can’t make them work,” Craig said. “And we think the exception clause. for sure it does not mean private corporations can imprison people. We think that Amendment 13 is intended to be suspended. This should prevent an individual from forcing someone else to work for themselves.
If private prisons offer any benefit, it is the flexibility to build more prisons and faster. Craig asks, “Do we want this flexibility? If it makes it easier to detain immigrants? To imprison more people?” […] A more rational response would be to release low-risk offenders or arrest fewer people first. “
Imprison fewer people. Release those who are unable to pay the security deposit. Create restorative justice systems that fill communities, not impoverish them. Stop stimulating imprisonment by bribing politicians with otkat. These reforms are a direct threat to the business model of private prisons. There is a known enemy to the profit imprisonment that encourages corporations to enslave individuals: criminal law reform.
Pay to go to jail
If it seems strange that these huge monopolies make a profit by selling prisons to prisoners, it is because of this. Poor color communities are disproportionately imprisoned; it increases the cost to prisoners’ family members, exacerbating the cycle of poverty, rather than returning wealth to communities or return programs.
Loved ones report spent thousands of dollars talking to his imprisoned family members, and lawyers complained of ridiculously high conversations. Prices vary, but a 15-minute phone call can cost the same as $ 5.90 in the state of Kentucky.
“There is there is no concrete evidence that electronic surveillance reduces recidivism, ”reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation. However, there is evidence that electronic surveillance and many other methods are purely profitable. Almost all needs can be met; the same is in prisons. From food to care packages, phone calls clothes, people’s contact with public property e-booksPrison companies have many opportunities to collect money. In 2016, it was estimated that prison commissioner companies did more than $ 1.6 billion nationwide, based on a survey conducted by the Association of National Educational Institutions in 34 countries. The Prison Policy Initiative reports:
“These figures contradict the myth that prisoners buy luxury goods; rather, most of the little money they have is spent basic necessities. Consider: if your only bathing option is a shared shower area, no shower sandals need? Used for more than one roll of toilet paper week is really a luxury (especially during periods of intestinal disorders)? What to do if you have a chronic health problem that requires continuous use of over-the-counter medications (such as antacid tablets, vitamins, hemorrhoid ointments, antihistamines, or eye drops)? All of these items are usually only available at the commission and only to those who can afford to pay.
Let’s say toilet paper costs $ 2 and eye drops cost $ 7. Prison salaries range from $ 0.14 – $ 2 per hour across the country. It may take a business day to pay for a phone call to your home or a roll of toilet paper.
Securus is a corporation that earns millions by selling telecommunications services to inmates. It’s awful to read such manipulative marketing news Easy site:
“” $ 20 for gas and parking per visit, or $ 5 for 20 minutes every day, if you want… yes, it’s worth it. Destiny Choquette, Family ”
Firstly, it is clear that $ 20 is too low an estimate – calls can reach exorbitant rates, and unfortunately the days when $ 20 was charged are long gone. Second, no phone calls can compensate for the fact that your loved one is away, in cages far from you, and it is mostly unpleasant.
Where are we going from here?
The answer is not that states can or should cover the cost of imprisonment. The answer is that we should imprison fewer people and end non-profit prisons. People are imprisoned in the United States more than 10 million times a year Many of these arrests are the result of the criminalization of mental illness, substance abuse and poverty. Attracting higher costs to families in difficulty who have lost a loved one due to the carcinogenic system is not fair. Paying prisoners the wages of slaves and then selling them for basic necessities is not fair. What would justice look like in a world without prisons?
James Boldwin, in his letter to Angela Davis in 1970while she was imprisoned, offers a way forward when he writes:
“… we to do we feel valuable enough to fight even with relentless forces to change the fate of us and our children and the state of the world! We know that man is not a thing and must not be subjected to the grace of things. … We know that a baby does not come into the world just to have another profit tool. We know that democracy does not mean all coercion in deadly and, ultimately, evil mediocrity, but the freedom of all to strive for the best they have or have ever had.
Next steps
It doesn’t have to be the world we live in. There may be people in your area working to end a profit-making prison. Support these organizations. Support Baltimore Legal Team, a team “committed to building local movements for the power of black life.” Follow Eliminate private prisons, the only organization that fights against private prisons at the constitutional level. Find an organization for criminal justice reform security bond fund, or a protest against a prison in your area. Freedom depends on the insistence that “all coercion for deadly and, ultimately, evil-mediocrity” cannot be normalized.
This story was created through the Daily Kos Emerging Fellows (DKEF) program. Read more about DKEF (and get to know other prospective fellows) here.