Todays entry is re-blogged and shared from the ITFO Newsletter. The newsletter is the companion to a book, by Sonni Quick soon to be published: Inside the Forbidden Outside.
The buzz this week on all major news sites, on down to Facebook groups that keep us posted about what is going on in the world of injustice, is the slow dismantling of the prison industrial complex from profiting from running the Federal prisons. Because a vast majority of the population don’t understand the reason for our prisons they still believe they are used to lock of criminals. Yes, there are criminal in the prisons. There will always be bad people. But have to be raising our children to be much much worse than children in other countries to have the percentages in prison than we do – while at the same time declare we are a Cristian Nation. If that were the case than wouldn’t we have less people in prison than say, China.
Our government went to war against the citizens of America. We have all seen the graphs by now that shows how we have 5% of the worlds population, yet also have 25% of the prisoners. Because this country is so profit oriented, making hospitals for profit, schools for profit, it was only natural that prisons would be made for profit. But when an institution has to make profit because there are shareholders, the only way to do that is to deprive the people of the necessary things needed for life – like depriving inmates of medical care, food and skills to survive. I still hear people say inmates have free medical and have it good. All they do is repeat soundbites they hear on corporate owned media who feed you the information they want you to know.
Deaths are increasing in prisons from simple sicknesses that could be easily cured. What if that were your husband, brother, son, wife or daughter? You would be angry and you would feel helpless because when you call the prison no one will tell you the truth and you can’t get the help your loved one needs and you know how much pain they are in. But they news we heard didn’t tell the whole truth. It raised the hopes of many people, just like last year when we were told 6000 Federal inmates were being released but they didn’t clarify who the people were who were being released. It sounded like they were releasing American citizens, when more of them were illegal immigrants and people at home with an ankle bracelet. Only 20% were citizens and most of them were already on the books to be released.
The prisons they are closing now and slapping the wrists of CCA and GEO Group, corporations who run these federal prisons, are the ones that are holding illegal immigrants. Yes, they are being treated horribly. There crime is coming here illegally – again. They don’t deserve to die. One woman’s husband didn’t find out for a year that her husband had died. Can you imagine what that was like? The are human beings the last I checked. These corporations run the state prisons as well. Of the 2.3 million inmates only 800,000 are Federal. We need to get rid of these corporations all together, but are they in bed with too many politicians?
NPR’s program Fresh Air had an interview with a journalist who spent four years investigating this. It made my blood curl. I put the written transcript on my blog in two segments. If you want to find out more about this go here for part one and here for part two. Before anything can be done, people need to know. Please share this. Please.