Hey Americans: Want a Job? Just Go To Jail!

One of the great things about social media is connecting with intelligent people who you'd otherwise never get the chance to "meet". Facebook and Twitter have brought thousands of new friendly voices into my realm over the past few years and they are what I lovingly refer to as my "Mad Posters" - meaning, they/we love to share news and videos and education regarding not just the Drug War, but injustice in whatever form it happens to take throughout the world.

"Posting Links" is one of the best tools that social activism has, on any given day I am gifted with personalized judicial and ecological news from Canada, the States and beyond. With the click of a mouse a daily itinerary is before me and I appreciate those who take the time to "Pass It to the Left".

While much of what we share is from news outlets and other mainstream media, what I cherish the most are contributions from everyday people passionate about making a difference. On Saturday a "Note" was posted on Facebook and it was so informative that I asked the writer, Lydie Meunier, if she would let me post it here to share with all of you and she graciously accepted.

Lydia brilliantly opens our eyes to scheming corporations and the U.S. Prison Industrial Complex coveting much sought after jobs and profiting greatly from free and cheap inmate labour. It's also a shocking glimpse of what will happen here in Canada if the Conservatives are re-elected and allowed to proceed with their fear driven crime agenda and American style prison plans.




GUEST POST
U.S. Unemployment Exacerbated by the Outsourcing of Jobs to Prisons
By Lydie Meunier

SLAVERY IS BACK IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Call your Congress Members and Ask them to Put a Stop to this Infamy!!!

I know that many people don't want to look into prison labor and the impact it has on unemployment figures because this is a disturbing issue. And yet, Jobs are outsourced to prisons, and slavery is being reinstated because corporations are counting on, and taking advantage of folks' apathy and disdains for prisoners... Meanwhile jobs for law abiding citizens are taken away from them to be given to cheap prison labor.

Today, prisoners are being exploited by corporations, paid more or less 40 cts/hour, more often less than more, sometimes paid nothing at all (see current situation in Georgia prisons not covered by the media), in lieu of the minimum $7.25/hour that corporations would have to pay to law abiding citizens. The difference, quite clearly, contributes to major corporate profits, while law abiding citizens are still unemployed and continue to lose their jobs.

On the FREE National market (vs. the WALLED industrial complex market), only 9% of our GDP comes from manufacturing. You can not sustain a middle class lifestyle with a service economy. To turn that 9 % into a much higher number, we need to introduce a new Bill in Congress to stop the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to prisons (outsourcing to prisons is now called "insourcing").

When you consider the major corporations that employ prison labor (furniture factories, Microsoft, Boing, IBM, Starbuck, Victoria secret, BP, Sodexo, medical supplies, road signs, military supplies, etc.) you quickly realize that moving jobs back to law abiding citizens would surely help diminish unemployment figures!!!

The way these prison partnerships typically work is that a manufacturer wanting to increase profits moves their equipment, technology, materials and unfinished goods to a factory setting within a prison industry facility. Once up and running, the same products come off the assembly lines and are shipped as before. The difference is this, private sector employees of the company have been terminated or laid off. A handful of employees are usually kept on long enough to train inmates and prison supervisors in the manufacturing used to make the products. Once that is accomplished, they are also eliminated and their positions taken over by a prison industry supervisor.

This insourcing of labor creates quite a number of unemployed citizens. Burdens are placed on state and community social help programs, unemployment compensation, etc. So while the corporation saves lots of money in labor costs - no more unemployment insurance premiums, less expenses in lease of facilities (usually leased by the prison operators at $1.00 per year), and no more employee benefits such as medical insurance, vacations or paid time off - the communities they vacated are left to fund the unemployed left in their wake. In addition the local government loses taxes that were paid by the corporation, previous landlords of the facilities once leased to the corporations are left with vacant property and local shops and other businesses suffer a drop in sales due to the newly unemployed workers left behind.

Efforts to involve Union officials, management and labor leaders in rectifying this issue have been unsuccessful for some reason. Politicians and Union leaders are too busy arguing about outsourcing of our jobs overseas and seem to not have any interest in eliminating or addressing insourcing. The next time you or your neighbor loses your/their job; before looking toward China or India to see if you can see your job making its way there, look the other way and see if perhaps some criminal that stole your car has just as easily stolen your job and income as well.

Source: INSOURCING- A new concept about private sector job losses, by Bob Sloan, November 10, 2010

The prison industrial complex shows the fastest growth in profits, with politicians and judges and lawyers, and the top 2% investing in its stocks, which constitutes the most corrupt conflict of interests: for each incarceration, the private prison industry is not only paid big bulks by our tax money, it also disposes of the people as private property subcontracted to corporations. Meanwhile, we keep paying for the prison industrial complex to sustain itself with our tax money, oblivious to the fact that we are also paying with the loss of our jobs!!!!

Wake up folks!!! This is not only a national disgrace, it is a national scandal!!!

The United States has the highest incarceration rate!!!! Do you want to know why? Follow the money!!!

Here is a report for you to read to understand the mess this country is in regarding employment politics by regressing into slavery The prison industry in the United States: big business and a new form of slavery

Civilian Inmate Labor Camps designed to manufacture army supplies Jobs that used to be performed by law abiding citizens

Insourcing - Transfer of Private Industry Jobs to Prison Industry-Made in USA

PRIVATIZED PRISONS - PRISON LABOR IS SLAVERY

Here are more links related to more recent news in Georgia where prisoners have been forced to work without pay for their labor, a violation of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude:

The Largest Prison Strike In American History Goes Ignored By US Media

Prisoner Strike Enters New Phase, Needs Our Support

Prison labor on the rise in US

Corporatocracy can best be described as: "A type of government in which huge corporations, through bribes, gifts, and the funding of ad campaigns that oppose candidates they don't like, become the driving force behind the executive, judicial and legislative branches". It explains why prison labor is ignored by politicians and main stream media!!!!!

Federal PIECP and Program Violations: Discussions on the use of prison labor in the U.S. and corporations that eliminate private sector jobs with inmate labor

While we are busy believing that prisoners need to pay their debt back to society, corporations are cheating society by "hiring" prison labor

Prisoner Advocate Elaine Brown on Georgia Prison Strike

Mass Incarceration in America

Private Prison Industry Helped Draft Arizona Immigration Law

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

Private Prison Lobby Behind Arizona's Immigration Law

Rachel Maddow: Exposing Private Prison Industry Role in Shaping Arizona's Anti-Immigration Law - August 14, 2010 - Corporate Con Game

PRIVATE PRISONS AND THE ARIZONA ANTI-IMMIGRATION LAW - Dec 13, 2010

VALLEY OF THE DRY BONES: HUMAN BODIES FOR PRIVATE CELLS (2002)

Prison Labor: A Dynamic Sector - Covert Action Quarterly #54 - Fall 1995

Prison Labor - Policy Report 2002

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle - 2010

Prison labor cheats society - 2001

As Prison Labor Grows, So Does the Debate - Published on Sunday, March 19, 2000 in the New York Times

Prison Industry Funnels Donations To State Lawmakers Introducing SB1070-Like Bills Around The Country

The Prison Industrial Complex: Does It Create A New Form Of Slavery? How Much Labor Is Done In The Prison System?

"One might think an enterprise able to pay unskilled workers just 21 cents an hour would be able to manufacture goods it could sell at rock-bottom prices. Unfortunately, that is not so when the enterprise is Ohio's Penal Industries system." Penal Industries Costs Out of Line - February 3, 2011 - The Intelligencer

"ACLU 2010 report presents the results of a yearlong investigation into modern-day "debtors' prisons," and shows that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to afford." American Civil Liberties Unions - 2010 - See 2011 update

Last year, officials in McIntosh County, Okla., south of Tulsa, issued about 1,500 debt-related arrest warrants, up from about 800 a year before the crisis, according to a court clerk. More than 950 borrowers got similar warrants in Salt Lake City courts last year. Maricopa County, Ariz., officials issued 260 debt-related warrants in 2010 Welcome to Debtors' Prison, 2011 Edition

Other people's suffering makes such a lucrative opportunity for investment Private Prisons Have Future Growth All Locked Up - Oct 20, 2009

Prison Valley - A web documentary exploring the Prison Industry

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

The United States continues to have the largest incarcerated population and the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world.
- Human Rights Watch, World Report, 2008

Hey Canada! It's Important to Save Our Farms!

While this post doesn't discuss prohibition specifically, I feel it is a very important topic for Canadians to be aware of so I've decided to include it here on my blog as it speaks to the benefits of rehabilitation programs as opposed to the Conservative punish happy ideology.

"The decision to shut down this successful rehabilitation program symbolizes our government's lack of understanding of what actually makes the public safe, and their failure to recognize the value of a restorative approach to justice and a sustainable, local approach to the future of farming and food." ~ Save Our Prison Farms National Campaign

Photo from NUPGE article Major campaign launched to save prison farms - "Dating back to the 1880s, the program includes two operations in the Kingston, Ont. area, and others near Dorchester, N.B., Stony Mountain, Man., Prince Albert, Sask. and Innisfail, Alta."


~SAVE OUR FARMS! - The ‘Save Our Farms’ campaign was launched by the men and women who oversee, instruct and work with inmates in federal prison farm programs, members of the Union of Solicitor General Employees (USGE-PSAC). They welcome the support of national, regional and local organizations that have an interest in a safe, secure and sustainable food supply. Also read "THE FUTURE OF PRISON FARMS II" and III which also includes great audio interviews. Please be sure to take notice of all the awesome links in the sidebar as well.

According to one retired Corrections employee, it would seem that the farm program has a proven track record for its rehabilitative impact. Of the 50-plus inmates that were released during his employment at Frontenac Institution, not one reoffended. Perhaps there is something to be said for a program that promotes accountability through work that heals and helps one along the path to become a better human being.

The Conservatives don't blink an eye at spending at least 1.1 BILLION dollars of taxpayer money on the G8/G20 Summits - but $4.1 million for a program that helps inmates develop valuable life skills that they can use upon release into the community while at the same time providing food for correctional centers gets wiped out - "When they start buying that food (after the program ends) it will cost them at least 50 per cent more on top of what they’re spending." (Tony Abreau, relief instructor for Corcan). And a dairy farmer asked if they planned to import that produce from the US. No officials could answer that question.

"The Conservative government said that it will sell off the prize dairy herd at Frontenac Institution this June, effectively putting an end to the 50-year-old facility. The Frontenac farm supplies milk and eggs to federal prisons in Ontario and Quebec. " - Sludge issue could be costly for prison farm closure, memo indicates

Keep prison farms open, Liberals urge By Rick McGee
SooToday.com
Tuesday, May 11, 2010

NEWS RELEASE

OTTAWA – Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is warning against the Harper government’s decision to cut Canada’s federal prison farms, and is calling for an immediate independent review of the program before prison farms are permanently closed.

“Prison farms benefit everyone involved in them: farmers, corrections workers, and inmates,” Mr. Ignatieff said. “Because Liberals recognize the necessity of rehabilitation programming for preventing repeat offenses, we are demanding an immediate review, in the hopes of preventing the Conservatives from closing these farms.”

Last year, the Harper government announced their plan to phase out six prison farms that currently employ 300 federal prisoners. Last month, the House of Commons Public Safety Committee asked the government to release the strategic review of prison farms from the Department of Correctional Services.

Liberals are calling on the government to wait for the independent review to be completed before moving forward with the closure of any prison farms. The Conservative decision to close prison farms would likely be irreversible, as land and equipment will be sold for other uses.

“The Harper government only cares about locking more people up and throwing away the key in their planned super prisons,” said Liberal Public Safety Critic Mark Holland. “They’ve ignored the fact that inmates working on prison farms develop critical life and employability skills that reduce their risk of re-offending after release – helping to prevent crime and protect our communities.”

There are six prison farms in Canada -- two within the city limits of Kingston, and one each in New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The prison farm program is considered an extremely effective rehabilitation and training program that contributes to public safety and that also provides food for federal and provincial inmates.

Mr. Ignatieff is calling for the Harper government to wait for an open and transparent independent review of the prison farm programs operated by the Correctional Service of Canada that will consider:

• The value of farm employment and training of inmates;

• The impact of the closure on rehabilitation programs;

• The influence that employment in the farm environment has on recidivism;

• The impact that farm closures have had on local agriculture economies; and

• The increase in the cost of operating prisons which are no longer able to purchase food products from prison farms.

“Local farmers appreciate the benefits of these productive prison farms for stimulating the local economy,” said Liberal Agriculture Critic Wayne Easter. “Unlike the Conservatives, our party recognizes the importance of these farms to helping offenders get back on the right track, and for supporting the communities where prisons are located.” - Fin

Sadly, Liberal MP Mark Holland was even denied in the House of Commons today when he requested an emergency debate to discuss the tragedy of the closure of the Prison Farms Program.

While I can report on the views of politicians regarding the closures, here's a great citizen "Letter to the Editor" from the Kingston Whig Standard worth a reprint:

Prison farms promote accountability

Recently, I attended a public meeting in Kingston that addressed the current issue of prison farm closures.

Of particular interest was the impending closures of farms at Pittsburgh and Frontenac institutions.

This forum was an opportunity to hear MPs Wayne Easter, Liberal agriculture critic, and Mark Holland, Liberal critic for public safety, reflect on their recent tour of four of Canada's prison farm facilities.

Both were impressed with these operations; especially the two in Kingston. When they had an opportunity to speak with some inmates who worked on these farms, they noted their strong work ethic and sense of pride.

They also noted the broad skill set they were acquiring through such work.

According to one retired Corrections employee, it would seem that the farm program has a proven track record for its rehabilitative impact. Of the 50-plus inmates that were released during his employment at Frontenac Institution, not one reoffended. Perhaps there is something to be said for a program that promotes accountability through work that heals and helps one along the path to become a better human being.

Working the land, being responsible for the livelihood of animals, and broadening one's skill set, is a meaningful way to reach this end. The rehabilitation of inmates is crucial, as most will at some point be released into society. What kind of neighbour would you like?

The government has claimed that $4 million is lost annually by keeping these facilities open. What evidence is there of this? Perhaps we could speculate how much more might be lost if they were to tender food -- currently produced by the prisons -- to other providers (perhaps not even Canadian). Not only do these farms feed all of the inmates from these prisons and others, but they also donate a few hundred dozen eggs annually to the food bank. Uniquely, Pittsburgh Institution boasts an abbatoir as well; whose services are relied on by approximately 150 businesses in the Kingston area.

If a super prison -- which would house inmates from all levels of incarceration -- were to be built in place of these prison farms, the rehabilitative benefit of inmates would be significantly reduced. This style of institution has been tried in the U.S. and was unsuccessful. They now recognize the wrong-headedness of this direction. Why then would we want to follow in failed footsteps?

Finally, how can we, in clear conscience, sacrifice land, classed as prime agricultural, when fertile ground is being eaten up by development on a daily basis? Can we really afford to keep relying on other countries to feed us? This seems unconscienable, given the issue of food security and the ongoing oil crisis. Does this really make financial sense? Are we that removed from our roots? ~ By Sue Peters Inverary

From the Save Our Prison Farms National Campaign (*PLEASE* visit the site):

This new Save Our Prison Farms website has been set up by the national campaign team to respond to growing public concern over the immanent shut down of Canada's six prison farms. We believe that our government will reverse its misguided policy decision as it continues to discover that the vast majority of Canadians of all political stripes support this productive, cost effective, rehabilitative farm-based program.

Opportunities for you and/or your organization to get involved are listed on the You Can Take Action page.

This campaign is a lightening rod for addressing the Conservative Party's generally short-sighted policies on farming, food and justice. The decision to shut down this successful rehabilitation program symbolizes our government's lack of understanding of what actually makes the public safe, and their failure to recognize the value of a restorative approach to justice and a sustainable, local approach to the future of farming and food.

Save Our Prison Farms Information and Action Meeting

Thursday, May 27th, 7:30pm - Perth, Ontario

Perth Lions Hall, Perth Fair Grounds

Speaker include: Mark Holland, Liberal Public Safety Critic; Mike Schreiner, Leader of the Green Party of Ontario; Dianne Dowling, National Farmers Union, Local 316 President; John Williamson, Frontenac Federation of Agriculture, Past-president.

May 17, 2010 - Telegraph-Journal, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, story: New Brunswick's only prison farm still fully operational

May 12, 2010 - CKWS Television, Kingston, Ontario, video news report: Spin offs from prison farms - food bank, farm supply businesses

May 11, 2010 - CKWS Television, Kingston, Ontario, video news report: On recent campaign events in Athens and Napanee, Ontario

May 11, 2010 - Liberal Party of Canada, Press Release: Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff denounces the planned prison farm closures and calls for a public inquiry

May 6, 2010 - Kingston Whig Standard, Kingston, Ontario, story: Ex-inmate makes personal plea to keep farms

May 5, 2010 - The Globe and Mail, story: Critics claim closing prison farms would create $1-million milk bill

Please contact Members of Parliament and let them know you support the continuation of the Prison Farm Program in Canada. Thanks, MaryJane

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