Louisiana is the world's prison capital

Louisiana is the world's prison capital

www.nola.com

Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's.

A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt

If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars.

In the past

(visit the link for the full news article)

I already knew this
You already knew this

But reading all of it with that much detail is just so poignant even to someone who is already aware of it!

Also it does a disservice to the nation as whole in another way too, it makes the word "Criminal" very abstract, it no longer holds the meaning it should to anyone who reads this article.

Slavery is no longer racist!

These are human beings, can you even imagine one state have 7 times more prisoners than CHINA???????

This article really got me sad and I don't think that ever happened to me before since I heard of Gandhi's death.

This is people's freedom we are talking about, and to me freedom is more than food and shelter.

Yes because if I was given a choice between life in prison and same sentence in time as a homeless person I would chose to be homeless.
I'd rather have my freedom than food on a regular basis.



www.nola.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I saw an article in our local paper about the sheriff saying they had caught a "Drug Dealer"

Yet, when I read on through the piece, this couple only had 32 uhh, banned plants.

They (police) also were proud that they had seized cars, the home, jewelry, money.

These are fellow citizens. It could be you next. I heard a lawyer say "Show me the man, and if I can get a search warrant, I'll show you the crime"

We have got to take this country back from imbeciles, no doubt.

Star and flag from me. I'm disgusted.

Incredible. I had no idea the situation was this bad, but the fact of the matter is that the War on Drugs needs to end soon.

It's far worse in the south than it is the rest of the country. They are more interested in lining pockets than liberalizing, or as the rest of the country calls it "joining the 21st century", anything.

Pretty sure "$182 million industry" is a typo, considering that's not too much more than what a single prison costs

Louisiana has a very high black population.

This does not surprise me.

Who knows what feudalism is?

Think about the similarities between a sheriff who owns a for-profit prison and a feudal lord?

It's the same concept, except to "criminals". The local authority determines who and who isn't a "criminal", geez didn't see this one coming huh?

Sheriff = Lord
Guard = Vassal
Prisoner = Fief

Only this time around the fiefs don't have any rights.

reply to post by rbnhd76


Don't break the rules and you don't have to worry about it. My freedom is more important then owning a few plants.

While comparing to China the article should have stated that China just executes people

reply to post by Carseller4


mmmmm...mmmmm ....good. a little race bait for supper.

you must be thinking about New Orleans, not Louisiana.

and it just means they don't give you much room to screw up, not that they care about what color you are.

the rocks you'll be pounding don't break no different depending on the color of the man swinging the hammer.

if you speak clearly...and don't have a good alibi ... work camp could be your future.

Originally posted by michaelbrux
reply to post by Carseller4

 

mmmmm...mmmmm ....good. a little race bait for supper.

you must be thinking about New Orleans, not Louisiana.

and it just means they don't give you much room to screw up, not that they care about what color you are.

the rocks you'll be pounding don't break no different depending on the color of the man swinging the hammer.

if you speak clearly...and don't have a good alibi ... work camp could be your future.

Born and raised in Louisiana, recently moved to Texas 2 years ago.

When you see statistics like this the population has to be noted.

Just saying.

reply to post by Carseller4


I suppose...but Wyoming and Montana and Dakota have prisons as well. places not much smaller than Louisiana which only has about 5 million people.

I wonder who's in those prisons and i wonder what they look like.

the posters comment suggests that the guys in louisiana's prisons are victims of a profit motivated system which punishes people based on their race as opposed to being people that really, really need to be locked up and kept out of society because they are a danger to themselves and others.

reply to post by michaelbrux


I don't think carseller is race baiting here. It is a statistical fact that black men are disproportionately put in prisons:

One in 86 adult Louisianians is doing time, nearly double the national average. Among black men from New Orleans, one in 14 is behind bars; one in seven is either in prison, on parole or on probation. Crime rates in Louisiana are relatively high, but that does not begin to explain the state's No. 1 ranking, year after year, in the percentage of residents it locks up.

Further, I don't think carseller was passing judgment on any race, nor was he suggesting that black people tend to be more criminal than other races, and was simply pointing out that black people are disproportionately put in prison, not just in Louisiana but accross the nation:

By the mid-1990s roughly one in three young black men were under the "supervision" of the criminal-justice system--that is, in a jail or prison, on probation or parole, or under pretrial release. The figure was two out of five in California, and over half in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. In California today, four times as many black men are "enrolled" in state prison as are enrolled in public colleges and universities. Nationally, there are twice as many black men in state and federal prison today as there were men of all races twenty years ago. More than anything else, it is the war on drugs that has caused this dramatic increase: between 1985 and 1995, the number of black state prison inmates sentenced for drug offenses rose by more than 700 percent. Less discussed, but even more startling, is the enormous increase in the number of Hispanic prisoners, which has more than quintupled since 1980 alone.

Far from carseller being the race baiter, there are people in political power who have clearly used dubious legislation to imprison non-white people at a rate that is alarming and hard to ignore.

It's true. I was in jail for a mere 5 days for having a dirty pipe in my car. No drugs in the car, just a pipe.

And I'll say, a majority of the individuals in the jail were black. Alabama takes it very seriously. It's not just a black issue though. It's an income issue. Had I been able to afford a lawyer, the case would've been thrown out. Had it been in another state, the pipe would've been broken and I'd have been fined 100 dollars, no jail time.

Poor college students get it just as hard as most anyone. Hell, had it been campus police, the case would've probably been thrown out as well, but a county cop definitely wanted more DEA funding, so I'm not at all surprised.

My cell mates were there for domestic violence and assault with a deadly weapon/armed robbery.

But how do they expect someone to retain employment after serving 5 days in jail to pay for a year's worth of drug testing?

They. Don't. Care.

Basically a slave culture brewing right under our noses in every little prison town in America and nobody sees anything wrong with this I guess.

It blows my mind how this was allowed to happen. How could someone in their right mind send or support sending someone to a freaking cell for years and years for some of this crap they are throwing at us. People are truly stupid and some people just plain want to cause harm to others in any way they can.

This little hateful trait of human nature is why democracy doesn't work.

Take it from someone who lives in Louisiana, this is really not surprising. As one member said before, the black population is quite high here, even in the northern part of the state (where I live). Although I would like to see the prison occupation rates parish by parish along with white to black ratios in each parish, just to see if there are any trends in certain areas.

This might seem really racist to some, but honestly it's just how it is.

Even worse, young offenders are also included in this system.

Which means that young offenders who in other states would get a slap on the wrist are getting jail terms for YEARS because the judges are in the back pockets of the folks who run the "for profit" prison system.

The more "criminals" the judges send the jails, the more kickback they get.

The problem is that the drug cartels are smarter than the police. The big money makers at the top of the drug organizations never get caught. Its always the guy standing on the corner selling a few grams of crack that gets caught, they are the most visible and the easiest to catch. Black unemployment is high and the drug lords welcome what they consider disposable employees.

If you want to keep your neighbors out of jail you need to get rid of the expensive and addictive street drugs, its a dead end for everyone but the drug smugglers. Legalizing crack would still leave the addiction problem and instead of going to jail for dealing, the crack heads would probably end up going to jail for grand theft trying to finance their habit.