Prisons

I am familiar with these "fun facts" email forwards and what not. Just thought I would dig into the prison issue seriously for a moment since there seems to be some interest.

The American prison system is one of the most disgusting aspects of our great nation today.

From this article

According to the report, “Prisoners in 2005,” there were 2,193,798 people incarcerated in the United States as of December 2005. An additional 4.1 million were on probation and around 800,000 more on parole. This amounts to more than 7 million people—or 1 in 32 American adults—who were under some sort of supervision by the US prison system as of 12 months ago.

This is largely due to the fact that caging people is a $60 Billion a year business and the people that are making that money buy senators who write laws that send more people to prison. Just consider that the United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. A little lop-sided, no?

This phenomenon that the prison has turned into is referred to as the Prison-Industrial Complex, a reference to the Military-Industrial Complex coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The people representing the entire industry would suffer huge losses in profits if things like the War on Drugs would finally be abandoned. Hmmm, and I wonder why people get so bent out of shape about marijuana users....