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- The land of the free is now home to 25% of the world's
prison population Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Tuesday February 15, 2000
Vigils are being mounted today in more than 30 major cities in the United
States to draw attention to the arrival of the two millionth inmate in
American jails. The US comprises 5% of the global population yet it is
responsible for 25% of the world's prisoners. It has a higher proportion
of its citizens in jail than any other country in history, according to
the November Coalition, an alliance of civil rights campaigners, justice
policy workers and drug law reformers. The coalition is co-ordinating protests
across the US to draw attention to what they feel is a trend for locking
up ever more offenders, most of them non-violent. "Incarceration should
be the last resort of a civilised society, not the first," said Michael
Gelacak, a former vice-chairman of the US sentencing commission. "We
have it backwards and it's time we realised that."
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- "Two million is too many," said Nora Callahan
of the coalition, which is calling for alternatives to prison for the country's
500,000 non-violent drug offenders.
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- "We are calling on state and federal governments
to stop breaking up families and destroying our communities. Prison is
not the solution to every social problem," she said. In New York city,
the Prison Moratorium Project will focus on the fact that one in three
black youths is either in custody or on parole. Kevin Pranis, of the project,
said: "New York state is diverting millions of dollars from colleges
and universities to pay for prisons we can't afford." Criminal justice
is already a campaign issue in the presidential race. The Republican frontrunner
George W Bush, governor of Texas, is a staunch supporter of both the death
penalty and stiffer sentencing for drug offences. Since he took over in
Texas, the prison population there is up from 41,000 to 150,000, much of
this as a result of locking up people for drug possession. This is one
of the reasons that commentators have pressed Bush to be more open about
his own alleged drug use in the past. Second biggest employer Of those
held in federal rather than state prisons, 60% are drug offenders with
no history of violence. Aminah Muhammad, who is organising the Los Angeles
vigil, said: "My husband is doing 23 years for just being present
in a house where drugs were found, so my 10-year-old son doesn't have his
father."
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- The vigil also coincides with the publication of Lockdown
America, a report by Christian Parenti analysing the US criminal justice
system. He notes the expansion of the private prison sector - dubbed by
one investment firm the "theme stock for the nineties" - which
now runs more than 100 facilities in 27 states, holding more than 100,000
inmates. A total of 18 private firms are involved in the running of local
jails, private prisons and immigration detention centres. It is estimated
that firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch write between $2-3bn
in prison constructions bonds every year. This has led some commentators
to suggest that the United States is effectively creating a prison-industrial
complex in much the same way as the military-industrial complex operates.
Critics of the system suggest that so much money is invested in incarceration
that politicians would find it difficult to reverse the trends against
the wishes of their financial backers and lobbyists. In his study Christian
Parenti suggests: "In many ways the incarceration binge is simply
the policy byproduct of rightwing electoral rhetoric."
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- With the economic restructuring of America, politicians
found it necessary to address domestic anxieties, Parenti suggests and
this "required scapegoats, a role usually filled by new immigrants,
the poor and people of colour". The cost of building jails has averaged
$7bn per year for the last decade and the annual bill for incarcerating
prisoners is up to $35bn annually.
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- The prison industry employs more than 523,000 people,
making it the country's biggest employer after General Motors. Some 5%
of the population growth in rural areas between 1980 and 1990 was as a
result of prisoners being moved into new rural jails. The national convention
of the American Bar Association, held in Dallas, Texas last weekend, was
told there was growing momentum for a moratorium on the death penalty.
This follows the recent announcement by the Illinois governor, George Ryan,
that the state will suspend executions pending an investigation into the
number of death row inmates who turn out to have been wrongly convicted.
There are 3,600 people awaiting execution in the US - 463 of them in Texas
alone. Today's vigils are being held near jails, courthouses and prisons
and span the US from Spokane in Washington state to Gainesville in Florida,
from Austin in Texas to Newhaven in Connecticut. In 1985, the then Chief
Justice Warren Burger said: "What business enterprise could conceivably
succeed with the rate of recall of its products that we see in the 'products'
of our prisons?" The demonstrators today are hoping to make the same
point count, if not with the politicians, then at least with the voters
who will be called in to endorse such penal policies in the coming months.
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- Comment
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- From Terry Markley <MR_T@prodigy.net>
- 2-17
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-
- Jeff
-
- Great program and one of a kind. Boy it certainly is
great to
- get some truth in the age of cover ups and deception.
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- I would like to respond with some very interesting and
critical information in regards to the report on your web page about 25%
of the worlds jail population being within the corporate UNITED STATES.
The corporate UNITED STATES has 5% of the global population and 25% of
the incarcerated people. There is now the opinion afoot with plenty of
evidence in support of this view that it is because there is HUGE commercial
benefit to the government.
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- Here's briefly how. In order to finance the daily ops
of the corporate UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT since around 1933, the Birth
Certificate issued by mom at the hospital ends up at the Fed with the
Treasury and the Department of Commerce...where this instrument is evidence
of Title of the child (there goes all essential Constitutional rights)
and is converted into a Bond and SOLD within the world central banking
community with the proceeds going to: you got it, the UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT.
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- Whenever a criminal "CHARGE" ($$) is brought
against a "citizen" there are certain internal amounts of money
( again unbeknownst to us) paid the local, state and federal government
from that Bond to finance further government activities on top of the
already over taxed sheeple.
-
- EVERYTHING is commercial and is about $ and power.
?? How do you think the Nazi's went from a hugely depressed and collapsed
economy with massive inflation etc., to a world superpower in a decade?
Perhaps by useing the flesh and blood to create $$ securities that could
be traded for funding...like any other type of bond.
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