December 1, A Day of Reflection

I am sort of recovering and reflecting on my first and not last research/investigative piece that I did on the prison profit centers.  I do believe that the best things in life come by accident, as this last post did.  The feedback has been tremendous, I thank you, the reader.

As I was writing out how SecurePak is basically a small company under the Enterprise Holdings umbrella, I had some strong visceral feelings, and forced myself to ask hard questions to myself, to society, and to you dear reader.  One over riding theme is that there is a tremendous amount of tax dollars going into the pockets of private companies for not the housing of convicts, but basically everything that the convicts and their families need.  They have figured out a way to make money on music for convicts.

I also wondered why many of the services that these companies provide cannot be done by the convicts themselves?  Why can't convicts do their own cooking, why can't they do administration work?  It seems that the convicts who truly want to "rehab" and find a skill could easily be trained for a job, and then when they get out, they have learned a skill besides lifting weights and watching television.  There goes my idealism again.

Many of these services and products come with a small fee.  When you multiply that small fee by 3 million, that number quickly becomes quite big.  It is when you start to reflect on the fact that some corporate worker was told to come up with the "name" of any particular product and service, and how to market it best.  The one that stunned me was the "Offender Management Suite."  It really does sound like the new software package from Microsoft. I will concede that at times I am a bit too idealistic and a dreamer, but it really is because I believe that people really do want to do the right thing.  There are times that circumstances will provide the impetus for someone to commit a crime.  But I also a realist, and realize that there are some bad ass criminals, and there always will be.

There is something seriously wrong when you have a sector, a group, a gang of investors who actively root for the crime numbers to go up.  I find this absolutely disgusting, and at the crux of this prison profit system.  There are VICTIMS of crime.  This must be lost on these assholes. I would gather that if one of these investors daughter, wife was raped and murdered, they would not be so enthusiastic about making a profit. But, I could be wrong.

MORE CRIME = MORE CONVICTS = MORE PROFIT

What sick twisted society we live in where this is permissible and accepted.  I wonder whose pockets were lined with cash for this to happen in the first place. There had to be some kickbacks, some golf outings, for congressmen and senators to create loopholes and pathways for these profit prisons to start in the first place.  Here is a judge that caught sentencing kids to prison for cash

How do we stop this? I have no idea, I really think unless there is a massive groundswell this is only going to grow as the police state just rounds up people for cash.