Prisons

The statistics are familiar but remain startling: America's incarceration rate per 100,000 is "roughly twice that of Russia's and Iran's, four times that of Mexico's, five times of England's, six times Canada's" and nine times that of Germany. In addition, "parole and probation regulate the lives of 4.5 million Americans" - more than twice as many as are confined in prison. What's Prison For? Concise diagnosis of a huge American problem (10/1/2022) Guardian

The United States is the only democracy in the world that strips the right to vote from citizens who have done time in prison. Fourteen states permanently disenfranchise some citizens, in 2004, these laws stripped 5.3 million Americans with felony convictions --disproportionately but by no means solely African-Americans and Latino -- of the right to vote, even after they had paid their debt to society. Katrina Vandan Heuvel, The Nation, July 21, 2008.

Prisoners are ideal employees. They do not receive benefits or pensions. They earn under a dollar an hour. Some are forced to work for free. They are not paid overtime. They are forbidden to organize and strike. They must show up on time. They are not paid for sick days or granted vacations. They cannot alter working conditions or complain about safety hazards. If they are disobedient, or attempt to protest their pitiful wages and working conditions, they lose their jobs and are often segregated in isolation cells. America, the Farewell Tour: Chris Hedges

"America has in jail 24% of the world's prisoners. The United States locks up more people, both in total and as a percentage of the population, than any other country of the world" James Gustave Speth: America the Possible

Billion-dollar prisons: why the US is pouring money into new construction (10/28/2023)

We Are Not Done With Abolition (12/15/2020)

Voting rights for people convicted of a felony

Deaths in custody. Sexual violence. Hunger strikes. What we uncovered inside ICE facilities across the US

This is an incredibly disturbing report. https://t.co/gKpTTZZAlm
— RynheartTheReluctant (@TheRynheart) December 20, 2019

Racism

Death Penalty

Prison Legal News

Incarcerated Americans:

1980: 503,586
1985: 737,183
1990: 1,145,300
1995: 1,592,066
2000: 1,955,323
2005: 2,210,395
2010: 2,270,142
2015: 2,204,247
2018: 2,290,059

The United States makes up 4.3% of the world's population yet has nearly 22% of the world's prison population.
— Rob (@philosophrob) June 7, 2020

Every time you think capitalism has jumped the shark, it outdoes itself pic.twitter.com/jc62NmQgar
— Amazon Piss Jugs (@JeremyWard33) September 23, 2023

Voting Rights for Felons - Where Each State Stands Heading into the 2020 Presidential Election

Pregnant and shackled: why inmates are still giving birth cuffed and bound (1/24/2020)

If You Build It, How the Federal Drug War Fuels Rural Jail Expansion (1/10/2020)

The Prison Industrial Complex: Mapping Private Sector Players (4/2019)

Trump's Executive Order Rewards Private Prison Campaign Donors: (6/28/2018)

Report: Private prison corporations primed to cash in on Trumps immigration executive order (6/21/2018)

USA: President Trump signs order on Guantanamo and sets stage for first new detainee arrivals since 2008 (2/2/2018)

Jeff Sessions enacts harsher sentencing and charges in criminal justice overhaul (5/12/2017)

Mass incarceration contributes significantly to the racial achievement gap (3/15/2017)

Violent crime represents less than 5% of all arrests. Surely there are better ways to deal with nonviolent crime (i.e. drugs, sex work, drunkenness) than throwing people into prisons? pic.twitter.com/WFmOicLm2w
— Sankara Media (@SankaraMedia) November 1, 2020

If we were to judge the US by its penal policies, we would perceive a strange beast: a Christian society that believes in neither forgiveness nor redemption: George Monbiot

117 Rights Groups Offer #VisionForJustice2020 Roadmap to Transform the American Criminal-Legal System https://t.co/MMWUGQx79c
"It is time to remove the stain that has lingered on our democracy as a result of an excessively punitive system."
— Common Dreams (@commondreams) September 5, 2019

No other country in the world disenfranchises people who are released from prison in a manner even remotely resembling the United States. In fact, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has charged the U.S. disenfranchisement policies are discriminatory and violate international law. In those few European countries that permit limited postprison disqualification, the sanction is very narrowly tailored and the number of people disenfranchised is probably in the dozens or hundreds. In the United States, by contrast, voting disqualification upon release from prison is automatic, with no legitimate purpose, and affects millions. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow pg 154.

A sweeping investigation into prison labor tied hundreds of millions of dollars to hundreds of popular foods brands.

Prisoners are largely uncompensated and are often excluded from protections.

"You can't call it anything else. It's just slavery." https://t.co/5S1koKzSEK pic.twitter.com/vsZKfrbI1v
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 29, 2024

We're locking up 1 in every 100 American adults—and going bankrupt in the process. Are there alternatives to a total meltdown? Inside America's broken—and broke—prison system. Slammed: The Coming Prison Meltdown (Mother Jones)

High levels of incarceration... have exacerbated social, economic, and political inequalities. Punishment has been extended beyond prison by laws and practices that restrict the rights of former felons and render them second-class citizens. The disenfranchisement of felons and ex-felons and the way in which prisoners are enumerated in the U.S. census have combined to weaken the political power of low-income and minority communities. Enumerating prisoners in the jurisdictions where they are serving their sentences—and not in the communities to which they will return—dilutes the votes of those urban and rural areas that do not contain prisons." Growth of Incarceration in the United States (464 page report from the National Academy of Science. (2014)

People have said to me that the criminal justice system doesn't work...I've come to believe exactly the opposite – that it works perfectly, just as slavery did, as a matter of economic a political policy. How is that a fifteen-year-old in Newark who the country labels worthless to the economy, who has no hope of getting a job or affording college, can suddenly generate $20,000 to $30,000 a year once trapped in the criminal justice system ? The expansion of prisons, parole, probation, the court, and police systems has resulted in an enormous bureaucracy which has been a boon to everyone from architects to food vendors, all with one thing in common – a paycheck earned by keeping human beings in cages. The criminalization of poverty in a lucrative business, and we have replaced the social safety net with a dragnet.” Bonnie Kerness (AFSC Prison Watch) quoted in Wages of Rebellion, the Moral Imperative of Revolt: Chris Hedges pg 120

Scholars Behind Bars (2/23/2017)

The US is number 1 in prison population, mostly people of color who become slave labor are very profitable, and in mostly red States lose the right to vote. A great form of voter suppression.