Is prison an industry, has it become a business? If so, who are the winners and losers? To date, the United States have the largest population on prisoners on the planet, 2.3 million prisoners and growing. At a cost to its tax payers of more than 80 billion dollars annually. Prisons are here to stay, no doubt about that, and it is not my objective to totally rid society of them. My objective is to take the business out of them, because, as long as business is tied to it then the incentive will always be to keep them at full capacity, and not to reduce them no matter how much it is shown to destroy families and communities. So we find, those in the business of imprisonment are constantly driven to find and persecute those unfortunate poor souls who find themselves at odds with the law. In most cases they are prosecuted to the full extent of the law in order to keep their prisons filled for decades. Here’s a little known secret, it is not in the best interest of those business men to reduce crime nor to stamp it out for that matter. And so, they remain the winners while the public remain the losers.
Consider this, maybe 75% of the people in prison are guilty of the crime they were convicted of, at best. Now, where the problem arrives is that the majority of that 75% do not deserve the lengthy sentence they were handed down. For there are many in that number who are serving decades behind bars for nonviolent offences. The losers in that regard is the children of those men and women, who find themselves locked in a cycle in which they are likely to wind up in prison themselves. And lets not forget those in prison who are totally innocent of the crime they were convicted of, their families are totally dstroyed! And yes, people, there are innocent people in prisons, far more than you’re led to believe. My good fellow citizens, why would you find that hard to believe when throughout the pages of history we read about the evil that men perpetrated on other men. With that said, you best believe there exist those in authority that knowingly prosecute and convict innocent people.
No doubt, those in the business end of imprisonment have given much thought to this subject and have invested their wealth in maintaining the status quote.
So where will they find the next generation of prisoners. They are hoping to find them in your sons and grandsons, not to mention your daughters and granddaughters.
Temple Bravo
DOC #1190151
