According to one recent article I saw, the United States has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners. How they are being treated is perhaps the most important human rights issue in the United States today. And because there are so many laws against things that should not be crimes, and government agents often go after innocent people and government is so out of control, we are all at risk of being the prison industry's next victim to be incarcerated.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
noon8window.pdf (36 Bytes)
The prison-industrial complex was one of the only economic sectors that actually grew under Bush/Cheney. Many prisons were 'contracted out' to for-profit corporations not bound by constitutional restraints and eager to exploit prisoners for profit. The media glorification of the 'crimial justice' system encourages the unaccountable police to incarcerate as many people as possible, as they often benefit economically as well.
In some states like Arizona, where the prison system is run by the psychopathic Joe Arpaio, inmates are housed in temporary forced-labor camps, often chained together with leg irons and crowded into tents (not buildings). If this was happening in some Latin American Banana Republic, the media would howl about 'human rights violations'. Instead, Arpaio is held up as a national hero for 'get-tough' approach. Shows the depth of denial most Americans live in.