I want to quickly mention a report that came out in the New York Times, which reads:
"For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars... Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails... Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars... One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34...."
When reading such figures, many things come into mind. First, one wonders why the US is trying so hard to pursue even more 'criminals' outside its borders. Second, the prison business (food, housing among other things) must be a million (billion?) Dollar producing-machine. Third, the US is losing economic power from this potentially massive labour force, which they rather see inside than outside.
Sure you could argue that these people also work, through mechanisms of privatisation, in mines or in manufacturing assembly lines. But as US unions and entrepreneurs are well aware, China is increasingly becoming the only economically viable production hub. Privatised prisons are thus forced to exploit labour to a maximum in order to compete with the cheap labour from China. Moreover, the more people are in prison, the less 'brain' there is to compete economically with the rest of the world. The US industry relies on its technological know-how and superiour flows of information. However, what happens when more and more people are forced into prisons?
Well, besides the fact that society slows in its developments, you create enormous (income, racial, gender, etc) inequalities. In especially the latter, but also the former, one could thus expect social uproar or other forms of class struggles that emerge from the ashes of a self-fulfilling social division in US society.
Bottom line, having one on every hundred citizens is not good for social cohesion, political stability, economic development or external/ foreign relations. Finally, a question that comes into mind:
"are US citizens really that criminal in nature or is there something more fundamentally wrong in its society"?
* courtesy of NYT
"For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars... Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails... Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars... One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34...."
When reading such figures, many things come into mind. First, one wonders why the US is trying so hard to pursue even more 'criminals' outside its borders. Second, the prison business (food, housing among other things) must be a million (billion?) Dollar producing-machine. Third, the US is losing economic power from this potentially massive labour force, which they rather see inside than outside.
Sure you could argue that these people also work, through mechanisms of privatisation, in mines or in manufacturing assembly lines. But as US unions and entrepreneurs are well aware, China is increasingly becoming the only economically viable production hub. Privatised prisons are thus forced to exploit labour to a maximum in order to compete with the cheap labour from China. Moreover, the more people are in prison, the less 'brain' there is to compete economically with the rest of the world. The US industry relies on its technological know-how and superiour flows of information. However, what happens when more and more people are forced into prisons?
Well, besides the fact that society slows in its developments, you create enormous (income, racial, gender, etc) inequalities. In especially the latter, but also the former, one could thus expect social uproar or other forms of class struggles that emerge from the ashes of a self-fulfilling social division in US society.
Bottom line, having one on every hundred citizens is not good for social cohesion, political stability, economic development or external/ foreign relations. Finally, a question that comes into mind:
"are US citizens really that criminal in nature or is there something more fundamentally wrong in its society"?
* courtesy of NYT
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