Inmates strike in Alabama, declare prison is “running a slave empire”

a reply to: Bassago

You see you don’t understand sir or mam. This system is like slaughtering a hog.
You have to use every part of the hog to eat. The brains, the feet, the ass, everything goes.

This is likened to this capitalist system where the pigs have to get all they can out of anything including the prison industry where they can make a buck.

Just like now charter schools, libraries, bathrooms, etc etc etc.

Its called pigs feeding at the trough, they leave nothing, not even for the vultures!

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: minusinfinity
You do realize in some states if you have prescription medication not in their original labeled containers you can be charged with a felony, right?

Then simply keep it in the correct container.... why not leave it there? See, that is how simple it is to stay out of jail....

a reply to: totallackey

There is no doubt...and the thoughts expressed in your writing are describing Neo to a tee...

And you of course know better? I won't argue with you over it, I'm simply going by what the article says the prisoners are saying about the prison for profit situation they find themselves in.

Maybe if you find yourself on their side of the cages someday you'll understand their point. Maybe not, nothing to see here, move along.

not sure if anyone has brought this up, however this system is called "peonage" and is outlawed by fed law.

peonage
noun (Concise Encyclopedia)

Form of involuntary servitude, the origins of which date to the Spanish conquest of Mexico, when the conquerors forced the poor, especially Indians, to work for Spanish planters and mine operators. In the U.S., the word peon referred to workers compelled by contract to pay their creditors in labour. Though prohibited under U.S. federal law, peonage persisted in some southern states through state laws that made labour compulsory. Another form of peonage exists when prisoners sentenced to hard labour are farmed out to labour camps.

watched a pbs program about it in north florida. you get arrested, sent to prison, then the prison farms you out to private enterprise. your "employer" then dictates slave like conditions, cause if you refuse or demand better your "employer" says you caused trouble and back to prison you go.

nice little cheap labor system they have going.

As long as I can remember most states has the license plates made by inmates. I have not done any research on privately owned prisons so I can't speak for this but like someone said, being in jail and being in prison is two different things.
Don't forget they used to sentence people to hard labor (breaking rocks) a friend of mine said they worked on the roads here in AZ when he was in and he said it was a LOT better than sitting in a cell all the time. Here in Arizona, they pay the inmate a certain amount so they can buy stuff from the prison store.
The map someone uploaded was doctored or old as there was a lot missing, here is one about a year old:

originally posted by: wulff
As long as I can remember most states has the license plates made by inmates. I have not done any research on privately owned prisons so I can't speak for this but like someone said, being in jail and being in prison is two different things.
Don't forget they used to sentence people to hard labor (breaking rocks) a friend of mine said they worked on the roads here in AZ when he was in and he said it was a LOT better than sitting in a cell all the time. Here in Arizona, they pay the inmate a certain amount so they can buy stuff from the prison store.
The map someone uploaded was doctored or old as there was a lot missing, here is one about a year old:

working for the state is one thing. i actually support that.

imo, prisoners should work for the state in whatever capacity needed, like road side cleanup or growing their own food, making their own cloths, license plates or whatnot. the state isnt making profit off them, and their work contributes to their care.

prisoners should not be farmed out to the private sector. prisoners should be a profit loss situation. that way the state is encouraged to find ways to prevent crime, rather than just lock people away.

when you start to make profit off prisoners, then there is incentive to keep or add to the prison population. its happened before in north florida, it will happen again if we arent careful.

a reply to: FlyersFan

What about that fellow who was just parked sitting on the passenger
side of his SUV when the police hit his car then proceeded to search
for cameras before arresting him and charging him with several felonies?

Should that guy be locked up and forced to work? you know because he
sat there doing nothing.... if we could trust the justice system then i
would agree but since we clearly cannot as evidence by that story i
just repeated and hundreds of others like it......

I for one simply do not trust the prison system to be honest and justice
to be served, not when there is money like that involved.... just not
a safe thing.

Okay, there are approximately 2 million prisoners in the US.

2 million.

And at a push there are maybe 3 or 4 cases in this thread of being falsely arrested and imprisoned. See the big difference there? 2 million versus 3/4?

Fact of the matter is the overwhelming majority of those incarcerated deserve it. They've done something which violates someone's "God-given rights." Here in the UK, as well as in the US, God-given rights is a term used in Common Law, and violating them involves committing harm, loss, or injury to another person. Of those 2 million imprisoned in your prisons everyone (except the 3/4 who shouldn't be there) have violated those rights, and in so doing have done wrong not only to the victim but to society as a whole. Now, far as I'm concerned they themselves have no rights. If the government wants to sell them off as labour to a corporation, even better. They should have no human rights, and as such they should not be considered human.

Nobody needs to break the law. There's no reason for anyone to do it. And to all of those people saying "What if!?"
"What if I just glance at a text while driving?" Well, it's dangerously irresponsible to be controlling a giant hunk of metal at accelerated speeds whilst not concentrating. Criminal negligence.
"What if I happen to have a little bit of weed as I travel?" Weed's illegal. Whether we believe it should be or not, it is. Don't carry it everywhere with you.
"What if I'm carrying my meds in a little baggy and not the pack they came in?" Walking around with miscellaneous pills? Sound like a good idea? The original pack is convenient and hardly cumbersome. Just leave them in there.

Seriously, everyone who says "ANYONE CAN GO TO JAIL!" needs to remember that yes, anyone can go to jail. But you've got a hell of a lot more of a chance if you're breaking the law.
Make them work! Make them work hard! When their sentence is up let them out and maybe they'll remember how tough it is and not violate the liberties of anyone else.

a reply to: JackofBlades

Here in the UK, as well as in the US, God-given rights is a term used in Common Law, and violating them involves committing harm, loss, or injury to another person.

If the government wants to sell them off as a labour to a corporation, even better. They should have no human rights, and as such they should not be considered human.

First aren't you folks in the UK now hauling people off to jail for sending offensive tweets or making a snarky Facebook post? I'd be arrested every day in the UK just for carrying my pocket knife.

The second part of your statement there makes me despair for the empathy and future of humanity. As I said earlier, maybe when people get arrested and convicted of something we should just kill them. Right? After all they're not even human.

ETA - that last bit was sarcasm (just for clarity.)

originally posted by: opal13
Cry me a river. They incarcerate people for crimes. The reason they work is they earn a very small amount of money to put in an account and then they have it to buy things such as toiletries. The other part of their work is to help support themselves while they are in there.

As it should be because the taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for criminals. Even worse the incarcerated criminals who are also illegal immigrants who commit all sorts of crime here. Inmates have too many rights as convicted felons, for instance access to free libraries and lawsuits for things that don't suit them. I remember once a friend of mine worked as a corrections officer and they had lawsuits for all sorts of things. One filed one because he couldn't get crunchy peanutbutter and they only served creamy. F that. It's ridiculous and a waste of taxpayer money.

IMO, the child rapists and molesters should not even be in prison, they should be euthanized like a dog would be for harming a child. A dog many times knows no better, a person does.

Not feeling sorry for them at all.

The private prison gets inmates. The state pays the prison $x/day/inmate. The prison farms these inmates out to private corporations as a labor force. The corporation pays the private prison $1/hour for the labor. The prison gives the prisoner $0.04/hour.

The private business is now effectively buying slave labor. The prisoner is forced to work for slave wages or is tortured until they comply. The honest citizen now has to compete against a slave that will be forced to work longer for much less money.

Prison labor screws honest people as much as it screws the prisoner.

Being a former resident in Florida's and North Carolina's correctional systems, I can tell you from first hand experience how it works.
In Florida, you have 2 choices: work or solitary confinement. Thats it.

in NC, you have a variety of jobs, from working on the grounds or off the grounds at places like hospital laundries, DOT, National Monuments (ie the USS North Carolina), and in some cases, fast food, etc. The inmates get paid at their max, about 50-75 cents AN HOUR. Sometimes you can work up to 12 hours a day, and earn 9.00 A DAY, which gives you $45.00 A WEEK. Then they STILL take out taxes, social security, etc, then expect you to pay something for room and board, and child support and alimony, if court ordered, so most they get is like $2.00 $3.00 a week for themselves to buy a bag of chips (which costs about .75) and a can of soda (.50).
Yes its slavery. But who cares,right? We're all convicts. We're all guilty.

originally posted by: mugger
If they were made to work for a private company, then I see a problem.

Say that louder please.

Lets see....

Jonathan Fleming, 51, spent nearly half of his life behind bars for a 1989 murder he didn't commit...
The 27-year-old Brooklyn man stood accused of gunning down Darryl Rush, 22, at the Williamsburg Houses in Aug. 1989.

Fleming did fit the profile of a murderer. He was an ex-con and one-time crack dealer with a long rap sheet.

But seated behind the defense table in a gray silk suit and matching gator shoes, Fleming was certain the jury would find him innocent. On the night of the slaying, he was in Florida on a family trip to Disney World.

Investigators, after launching a probe of the case last year, found two documents buried in Fleming’s court file that proved his innocence.

One was a phone receipt from an Orlando hotel showing he was there just hours before the murder. The other was a local police report that quoted hotel staffers who remembered seeing him.

story

Nearly 30 years after a jury convicted Glenn Ford of murder, he has walked out of “Angola” a free man.
The 64-year-old spent nearly 30 years locked up at the Louisiana State Penitentiary for a murder he did not commit. He faced the death penalty.
There were no witnesses to the crime and investigators never found a murder weapon, but an all-white jury found Ford guilty of the murder.

Story

Two men behind bars for more than half their lives over a triple murder walked free this week after DNA evidence tore holes in their convictions.

After a night of partying, Yarbough, 18 at the time, and Wilson, 15, went home to Coney Island. Wilson was staying with friends, they said.

When Yarbough got home, he opened the door to find his mother, sister and a close family friend lying stabbed and strangled to death. The two girls were partially undressed.

"Before you know it, I had this photograph shoved in my face, and I was being threatened and slapped around, and they wanted me to sign a false confession. And I wouldn't," Yarbough said.

Police also took in Wilson and questioned him separately from Yarbough. But he got similar treatment, he said.

"I was scared, afraid; I was lied to, manipulated into believing that I was going to go home, if I do tell ... what they said happened." Wilson said.

Faced with a life behind bars, the young boy cooperated for the promise of lighter treatment.

story

PONTIAC, Ill. (AP) — During his more than 30 years behind bars, Stanley Wrice insisted he was innocent, that Chicago police had beat him until he confessed to a rape he didn't commit. On Wednesday, he walked out of an Illinois prison a free man, thanks to a judge's order that served as a reminder that one of the darkest chapters in the city's history is far from over.

Judge Richard Walsh said Tuesday that two officers had "lied" about the way they'd treated Wrice, who testified that the officers beat him with a flashlight and a 20-inch piece of rubber. A witness testified that he, too, was beaten by the same officers until he agreed to give false testimony against Wrice at trial.

story

I can keep going all night.
They were ALL GUILTY right everyone?
They DESERVED to be in prison I guess.
No corrupt cops/DA's/judges, right???
Instead of denying ignorance, you EMBRACE IGNORANCE

a reply to: minusinfinity

That just is simply a false statement. Many people are falsely imprisoned in this country. Many people are innocently killed by police officers. Many people are setup by police officers. So staying low isn't really an option, fighting back and doing something to beat back the corruption is the only way things will get better.

Is everyone upset about this???

Really???

I mean, come on, it IS PRISON!

When you are sitting in the comfort of your home, reading ATS, you should think about how far from prison YOU are. These people are in prison FOR A REASON.

I personally think it should be a living HELL. Then it should be televised for those that think about offending in the future. It's not meant to be a SUMMER CAMP.

Some machines are just BROKEN and need to be refurbished. Prison should be the HARDEST thing that these people ever gave to do. Then maybe, we wouldn't have repeat offenders or offenders at all.

America scares the bejeebus out me...Seriously.

The privatization of anything that is needed for the General Welfare of all needs to end.

Good luck with that one since a corporation is considered a person, but when it comes to liability it argues it isn't and usually wins the argument.

Convict leasing and Debtor Prisons were made un-lawful long ago.

People just forget, corporate non-persons, fictional entities, legal-fictions...do what they have always done.

Corporations were basically illegal until the 1890's I think, and it was for good reason.

Prison isn't supposed to be a fun place to live. If you do the crime, you pay the consequences. Personally, I have no problem with their situation. The John Howard and Elizabeth Fry Societies might, but for the most part I don't particularly care. If you don't want to be there or are afraid of what could happen to you once you end up in jail, don't position yourself to have that unfavorable place to hang your hat.

The easy answer is to stop making them work. Give them 30 minutes a day outside to exercise or mingle, and 30 minutes for lunch. The rest of the time can be utilized by them to increase brain capacity by reading. Other than that, if you do something bad enough to go to jail, you shouldn't get more free time than that to have fun. I don't think they should be working, either.

If people realized that they'd just rot away in jail, maybe they wouldn't do some of the things they do now. For some, it's a resort, compared to their former lives.

Realistically, it should be harsher. Jail should be something that people are really scared of, and that's not the case right now.

We decided that the only weapon or strategy … that we have is our labor, because that’s the only reason that we’re here,” said Melvin Ray, an inmate at the St. Clair correctional facility and founder of the prison-based group Free Alabama Movement. “They’re incarcerating people for the free labor.” Spokespeople for Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and his Department of Corrections did not respond to midday inquiries Thursday. Jobs done by inmates include kitchen and laundry work, chemical and license plate production, and furniture-making. In 2011, Alabama’s Department of Agriculture reportedly discussed using inmates to replace immigrants for agricultural work; in 2012, the state Senate passed a bill to let private businesses employ prison labor. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

All of this reads really awful. When profit is involved in having people imprisoned, either solely for having them imprisoned or because they also perform tasks that turn a profit, then questions arise about the motivation of lobbies in the area of the penal system, legislators legislating and prosecutors enforcing. Right down to turning a blind eye to planted evidence, because it helps turn another one of the "riff raff" into profit.

Zero Tolerance=Maximum profit.