: I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. According to an op-ed in today's "New York Times" by the e-journal Tom Paine.common sense, and citing Justice Policy Institute Research, the prison population in the United States hit two million this week, which is a 42 percent increase since 1990, meaning that although the United States has only five percent of the world's population, it has twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners! This is an estimated $41 billion market for private prisons. : Bear in mind that two-thirds of all prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, and that companies such as AT&T, Toys-R-Us, Microsoft, and TWA have used contract inmate labor, and that there's an effort in Congress, being led by the Republican dweeb, Representative Bill McCollum of Florida, to make it easier for private prison labor contractors to compete against companies paying union wages and benefits, and you can begin to appreciate just how evil our system has become.
: And the United States dares criticize China over its prison labor. The whole thing makes me sick.
Given the social upheavals of the sixties which emphasised the inherent right of individuals to interpret what constitutes right and wrong, why would anyone expect a different outcome? Weren't we exhorted to 'do your own thing'? Didn't the social icons of that era encourage us to 'tune in drop out turn on'? 'Ain't nobody's business if you do' has become a creed for many. There is much to say, I'm afraid, for common mores based on shared ethical beliefs.
Blaming the increased prison population of capitalism is what I expect to see here, as I expect to see some here blame changing weather patterns on capitalism.
While capitalism has been an integral part of this country's historical experience such high prison populations have not been. The social goals of the sixties radicals are bearing their fruits.
Feminism; promised greater freedom to women but gave us single-mom families. Single moms are notorious for being wholly unable to control their male offspring. This has led to the creation of gangs and the rejection of scholastic acheivement, along with the consequences.
The sixties drug-culture; enticed us with greater personal freedom. It gave us instead a cocaine epidemic and the creation of drug cartels.
Blaming capitalism is convenient, but the burgeoning prison population is a relatively new phenomena. I don't see the correlation that you make.
