Amid fears that the law’s passage is leading to a “brain drain” of academics and will discourage students from applying, Steiner’s is a high profile departure tied to the new statute. One of the university’s most distinguished professors, he will become the dean of the University […]
prisoners working under contract Credit: popular resistance
Once slavery was abolished in 1865, manufacturers scrambled to find other sources of cheap labor—and because the 13th amendment banned slavery (except as punishment for crimes), they didn’t have to look too far. Prisons and big businesses have now been exploiting this loophole in the 13th amendment for over a century.
“Insourcing,” as prison labor is often called, is an even cheaper alternative to outsourcing. Instead of sending labor over to China or Bangladesh, manufacturers have chosen to forcibly employ the 2.4 million incarcerated people in the United States. Chances are high that if a product you’re holding says it is “American Made,” it was made in an American prison.
On average, prisoners work 8 hours a day, but they have no union representation and make between .23 and $1.15 per hour, over 6 times less than federal minimum wage. These low wages combined with increasing communication and commissary costs mean that inmates are often released from correctional facilities with more debt than they had on […]
Credit: The Palm Beach Post/AP
The country’s two largest private prison corporations, GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) released their annual financial reports last week, showing that they each made thousands of dollars in profits per prisoner incarcerated. GEO made a profit of $2,135 per prisoner, while CCA squeezed out $3,356. (emphasis added) This is most certainly not cause for celebration.
Indeed, every American should be appalled that there are companies that profit on human misery and that can guarantee a profit only by denying human beings basic medical care and necessities. Moreover, the national conversation should not be one of how to incarcerate more and more people for less and less money, but how to rehabilitate them at a cost far less than incarceration.
The research and policy organization In the Public Interest estimates that the cost of rehabilitation is not only significantly lower than the cost of incarceration, ($35,350 per prisoner in the federal system) it is, in many cases, even lower than […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
