Modern American Slaves: Private Prisons Get Profits on Both Ends

   Slavery still exists in the United States. And it's a booming industry. The private prison industry makes money by housing criminals and getting paid by the tax-payers. Then lobbies for more draconian laws so that the US has more prisoners per capita , and more prisoners in just numbers than any other country in the world. We have %5 of the world's population, but %25 of all the world's prison population.
   
    Once we've shipped jobs overseas, devalued our labor force, and put millions out of work, what do you have? Desperate people. And desperate people are more likely to commit crimes. And now you have more people to fill more prison beds.

   And what do we do with all that warehoused manpower? Well, put them to work.

   ""All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day," the professors write.
And some prisoners don't make a dime for their work, according to the Nation, which notes that many inmates in Racine, Wis. are not paid for their work, but receive time off their sentences.
The companies that do pay workers can get up to 40 percent of the money back in taxpayer-funded reimbursements, according to RT."

   Now, due to "free trade agreements" we have to compete with low wage and slave labor from all over the globe, and with slave labor in our own prisons.

 
   "One of Walmart's suppliers, Martori Farms, was the subject of an exposé by Truthout in which one female prisoner described her typical day working for the private company.

Currently, we are forced to work in the blazing sun for eight hours. We run out of water several times a day. We ran out of sunscreen several times a week. They don't check medical backgrounds or ages before they pull women for these jobs. Many of us cannot do it! If we stop working and sit on the bus or even just take an unauthorized break, we get a major ticket which takes away our 'good time'.

In response, Joseph Oddo, Martori Farms' human resource director, told the Guardian that the company is no longer using inmates because prisons are not always able to provide workers on call the way they need. Oddo also said that workers were provided enough water, but the prisoners didn't sip it slowly enough."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-labor_n_2272036.html

 
   Slavery is even legally traded in our markets.
Financial reports for CXW (Corrections Corporation of America), a 3.3 billion dollar market capitalized company, traded on the NYSE.


http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=CXW+Interactive#symbol=CXW;range=my

   One more way American style deregulation and laizze faire capitalism forces a suppression of wages and life style for all but the thieves at the top. Ain't capitalism grand?

Prison populations by country from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm


More on how prison is for profit, not punishment, not rehabilitation. Just for profit.

http://realitybyalex.blogspot.com/2013/07/slavery-racism-and-police-state.html
CCA under investigation for violence and negligence.

Mark Snyder, Governor of Michigan, right wing darling, fan of privatization, and sucker for corporate welfare and raids on the public treasury, gives his prison/slave trader buddies a wink and a nod when it comes to fines for abrogating contractual obligations and putting lives at risk. Privatized profits/socialized costs once again. But they're prisoners, so who cares?:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/12/1329208/-MI-GOV-SCANDAL-Snyder-admin-quietly-canceled-98K-fine-for-for-profit-prison-food-vendor-Aramark?detail=facebook