Nationwide Prison Strike Launches in 24 States and 40 Facilities over Conditions & Forced Labor

originally posted by: roadgravel
Slave labor?

I suspect most of these people are there because they have never done a day of hard, honest work in their life.

But the current practice is doing NOTHING for reoffending rates. If anyway thing harsh conditions only make things worse.

Now Im all for harsh conditions for the worst of crimes as they deserve it, plus rehabilitaion should not be a issue as they should NEVER be let out.

But for all the other crimes? Molding them into human being should be a priority. Countrys that treat the prisoners as human beings and treat there underlying issue see a rock bottom reoffending rate.


UK has the same problem as the USA. Just locking them away and forgetting about them and our reoffending rates are similiar to the USA. So obviosly our way is not working is it?

a reply to: underwerks

Ending the drug war seems like an invite for the drug cartels to seize power in Mexico and Central America. They can already challenge the Army in some of these places and have seized total control of come provinces from the authorities. Drug lords have their own private armies with AKs and RPGs throughout Central America.

Unless drug war means something completely different in the US that it does in the rest of the world, in which case I am of course happy to be corrected.

originally posted by: Grimpachi
a reply to: JDeLattre89

they were all convicted by a jury of their peers

That is completely false. It would actually be rare.

Crowded system, plea bargaining due to inadequate defenders. Trumped up charges. The system is broken.

Easy for you to say in New California.

a reply to: Ohanka
To be honest, I'm not sure how much more power they could seize. Their annual profits already outpace the GDP of several large countries combined and drug use in America is at an all time high. Ending the drug war would first and foremost cause prices to drop, which means a huge hit to cartel profits. And to be clear, cartels aren't in the drug business, they're in the money business.

So if profits start declining I can see them moving to other lucrative illegal businesses (oil, etc) instead of something that is now high-risk low-profit. Couple that with higher quality domestic made drugs being offered in the U.S. once prohibition is lifted, and that profit pipeline back to these cartels dries up, along with the violence. The culture of illegality (including the jailing and punishment of addicts instead of helping them) that surrounds drug use in America hurts more people around the world than any of these substances ever have.

originally posted by: JDeLattre89
1) for the riots and strikes - they are prisoners in prison, lock them down in their cells and restrict them to bread and water for a period of three months (all they really need), at the end of the three months most will be begging for the opportunity to work.

Here's the problem. What work do you have the prisoners do? Lots of prisons farm their prisoners out doing things like construction, farm work, and lawn care. All jobs that honest people say they were pushed out of (often because of illegals). Is it right to punish the honest person by using convict labor in those jobs? Convict labor isn't paid, the honest person who needs to be paid at least minimum wage (and more likely, well above that) simply can't compete financially. How is that fair? We could look at other prison labor products too. Did you know that most paint in the US is manufactured using prison labor? That's an entire business manufacturing sector that the honest person is simply locked out of participating in.

2) for the prisoners's conditions - don't get put in prison. I know it is a novel concept, but when you commit the crime, you are forgoing your rights to all these privileges you are demanding.

What do you do about our 3 tier justice system though? If you can't afford a lawyer, chances are you're going to prison for a time on a plea deal (or a crippling fine), it doesn't even matter if you were guilty or not. Public defenders simply can't handle the caseload and take the path of least resistance. Did you know that in some states, you can be charged $500 (despite having no assets to pay for it) for a public defender to spend 6 minutes on your case? Did you also know that over 95% of cases tried by PD's wind up with the person being represented being found guilty?

I understand the idea of just saying people should stay out of prison. But people who aren't guilty are going to prison right now because they can't afford lawyers to defend them. Is it right to have a system where people are found guilty of crimes they didn't commit, and then have to work as slaves for years as punishment just for being poor?

The better argument some will make will be that not all of the people in are guilty. Well, sadly this is true, but they were all convicted by a jury of their peers

No they weren't. Something like 92% or 95% of cases (I forget the exact number) of cases in the US end in a plea bargain where the defendant pleads guilty to something they were never charged of. This results in fines and/or prison time. Of the remaining 5%-8% of cases, only a fraction of those go to a jury, most are only seen by a judge.

Part of the problem is that jury trials are expensive, even if you win you usually have to pay for court costs, not just for your lawyer (usually a PD who will simply refuse to take the case to trial), but for the prosecution. Then if you lose, you pay even more. If you can't pay these costs you will go to jail on contempt of court, until you can pay... and of course, you can never pay because your income in jail is zero, and you had no assets to pay for a lawyer over a PD in the first place.

and under the current system that is the best we can do. Hopefully, those that were wrongly convicted will have the best lawyers to help rectify the situation.

No. Under the current system we could do a lot better. For example, we could start decriminalizing minor crimes until the caseload in the courts is something manageable again. We could increase our spending on the justice system to ensure everyone has access to lawyers. We could prohibit plea bargains and make sure people stand trial only for what they were accused of.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP
What ever happened to breaking big rocks into little rocks all day long, just because? They didn't make songs about chain gangs for nothing.

They found it was a waste of time. They were paying people to secure prisoners who were doing nothing but building up their strength. If they're doing nothing, it's better to have them sitting in a cell. If you want them to leave the prison productive, it's better to try and educate them while they're in there. It's also cheaper to just leave them inside the prison.

originally posted by: Ohanka
Ending the drug war seems like an invite for the drug cartels to seize power in Mexico and Central America. They can already challenge the Army in some of these places and have seized total control of come provinces from the authorities. Drug lords have their own private armies with AKs and RPGs throughout Central America.

Unless drug war means something completely different in the US that it does in the rest of the world, in which case I am of course happy to be corrected.

Ending the drug war generally refers to the idea that we lower the prison sentences on drug crimes, or to some people simply legalizing everything. With lower risk, or even making it legal we get to bring down the price on drugs. In the best case scenario, we make the legitimate growers so prosperous that the cartels can only make a fraction of the sales they currently do.

The end result is the that profits flow to private citizens and the cartels lose a huge chunk of funding. This would increase tax revenue, which could then go into drug treatment centers (that are now more acceptable by removing the legal stigma of using illegally), and not go to violent criminals.

In response to the prison labor issue, inmates are not forced to work. They can sit in their cells all day if they want to do so while still being offered recreation and library, visits, etc.

Most inmates want to work for the exercise and fresh air and the bit of freedom work provides. There are also perks to working in various areas of the prison and outside of it.

I will list them if asked.

The only gripes I ever heard were about the low pay, which is a legitimate issue, but the layman must remember that the higher the security level the more it costs to incarcerate people. Staff labor costs are huge followed by physical plant expenses. By the time you get down to the inmates there isn't much left.

This is offset by the incredibly low prices for canteen items, prices you would never see in the open market.

One area which concerned me was medical care. The copays inmates pay are ridiculous considering how much they earn inside. I often arranged appointments using some prior health issue as an excuse so an inmate wouldn't have to pay a copay. What is going on in that area is just plain wrong.

Society has a responsibility to care for these people. In the area of medical care it is failing miserably.

Nationwide prison strike enters second week!!!

In the same time period since the strike began, CNN has run stories on Clinton’s “body double,” the New York Times ran a piece on women getting buzzcuts and ABC News had an “exclusive trailer” for its parent corporation Disney’s upcoming film. There was certainly enough airtime and column inches to mention that workers had coordinated a national strike of unprecedented scale, but for these outlets the coverage has been nonexistent.

A handful of national outlets have covered the strike: The Nation, City Lab,Engadget, Money Watch, Buzzfeed, and as of Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, but every other major publication, network news and cable network has thus far been silent.

When we spoke by phone, Azzurra Crispino, media co-chair of Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, one of the strike organizers, was hesitant to be too hard on the press out of hope the strikes would lose coverage in the future. But after some prompting, the four-year prison abolitionist veteran listed a few measured grievances at the media. Her most consistent theme was that to the extent the strikes were being covered, the focus was on spectacle over substance, and in doing so the media was making nonviolent resistance all but impossible.

Wearechange.org

The largest prison strike in history and nothing mentioned in the MSM.

Think the government is feeling some heat? Standing Rock pipeline protest, racial riots , protests and general unrest, Trump!!!!

a reply to: WilburnRoach

Yup, don't see anything from the 'mainstream media' on this in a search of the phrase 'Prison Strike'...Plenty of reporting on it, just none from the msm. This is a big story. Interesting that it has been largely ignored...

Here are a few links to more stories I saw while poking around:
Wired. From Sep. 9th:
www.wired.com...
A quote:

Of the United States’ some 2.4 million prisoners, about 900,000 work. A lot of that work is for the prison itself or for the public sector, but corporations—Walmart, Victoria’s Secret, AT&T—contract work out to prisons, too. The estimated annual dollar value of their output runs in the billions, while prisoner laborers make just cents per hour.

“We want to people to understand the economics of the prison system,” says Melvin Brooks-Ray, an inmate for 17 years and a founder of the Free Alabama Movement, one of the strike’s primary organizers. “It’s not about crime and punishment. It’s about money.”

Strike organizers don’t see this as a concern for inmates alone—they’re quick to point out that relying on cheap prison labor takes jobs away from those outside—but so far response from outside organizations like labor unions has been tepid. So inmates and the activists who support them have sought to arouse outrage in other ways, like strikes.

www.theguardian.com...

In April, one of the main national groups organizing the campaign, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), under the banner of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, announced its call to action.

“This is a call for a nation-wide prisoner work stoppage to end prison slavery,” it said. “They cannot run these facilities without us.”

“Work is good for anyone,” Melvin Ray, who is incarcerated at the WE Donaldson correctional facility in Bessemer, Alabama, told Mother Jones on Friday. “The problem is that our work is producing services that we’re being charged for, that we don’t get any compensation from.”

www.motherjones.com...

• In South Carolina, inmates released a list of demands that included a call for fair wages, restarting GED classes, and "more meaningful" rehabilitation programs.

• In Alabama, inmates who are part of the Free Alabama Movement, an organization that helped launch the strike, released a "freedom bill" that called for the abolishment of free labor from prisoners.

Restarting GED classes...sounds like a reasonable demand to me. You know, so that the guy that can barely freaking read can get some better reading and writing skills, learn how to do basic math a little better, maybe learn a little civics and history...it might even help him figure out a better way to live so that he doesn't wind up back in there.

Of course, why would you want him reforming when you can continue to exploit the cheap labor that he can provide while he is incarcerated? The incentives are certainly there for the labor that inmates can provide to be exploited, so I would be surprised if anyone could actually convince me that it isn't being exploited. I think these incentives exist regardless of whether the institution is publicly or privately run.