If you purchased my memoir ‘Deferred Genius’ you read the chapter about my family’s experience with police abuse of power and prosecutorial injustice.
Recent bills to promote Police and Immigrant Reform are a distraction from real reason we hear politician’s constant rants that we need law and order. Unfortunately, the Black Lives Matter protests feed into this narrative. Our message is lost with the violent outbreaks we saw during protests this summer. Under the guise of ‘law and order’ private actors push for a more securitized state, due to their profit motive.
Let’s stop being bamboozled by the rhetoric and code words around the protests. Let’s use logic rather than emotions to see how we must vote to protect poor people and minorities from unwarranted arrests and rising incarceration rates.
Since the 1980’s war on drugs, there has been a rapid increase in incarcerating minorities. Why? Private prisons provide a supply chain that earns for-profit companies billions in tax dollars to warehouse minorities and poor people for largely non-violent crimes. The private prison population grew 80 percent between 1999 and 2010.
Police are the tool used to herd thousands of black and brown men to prison cells. The police are aware black and brown men are not valued in this country except to flood the pockets of private prison business owners with our tax dollars.
The Obama Administration had begun the process to phase-out private prisons and retain prisoners in less costly public prisons. The for-profit companies running our private prisons did not spring up out of patriotism. Two of these for-profit companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic, together booked $4 billion in total 2016 revenues.
Read the Memo: https://www.bop.gov/resources/news/pdfs/20170224_doj_memo.pdf
The current administration rescinded Attorney General Yates’ direction to reduce the use of for-profit private prisons arguing that the Obama-era directive “impaired” the ability of the Federal Bureau of Prisons — which runs all federal prisons — “to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”
The past three years under Trump, private prisons are cashing in on ICE detainees. LaSalle Corrections, a family run prison firm, has added 24 immigration detention centers and are housing 50,000 prisoners and detainees. Each detainee and prisoner generates $23,000 per year for these businesses. Imagine how we would be better served with the redistribution of these tax dollars. A minimum wage worker earns a little over $10,000 per year.
‘ Law and Order’ has never been a concern or the cause for mass incarcerations…PURE GREED is the only motive.
The past four years there has been rigorous lobbying, policymaking and lucrative private contracts to generate billions off the backs of poor people and minorities without regard for the damage it has caused American families.
Share this story, do your own research to know the facts. Encourage voters to not allow the rhetoric expressing safety and chaos are at stake in this election. Disregard the debates and in the political ads designed to confuse us. Follow the money.
E-mail me at bea@beaclarkbooks.com if you have more information about these facilities.
Sites Referenced:
https://time.com/5405158/the-true-history-of-americas-private-prison-industry/