Prisons

[PinkoCommieScum]

I've read that prisons are around to contain the surplus population. Could someone explain this to me? But what about people who actually commit crimes?

[Pawn Power]

You are right, prisons are there to control and hold surpluse population, especially minorities and the poor. You do not see alot of middle class or upper class people in jial. A vast majority of all people in prision are lower class. The courts suck these people up and dump them in prisons.

[Hampton]

I think it has a little to do with controlling the population, but what it really has to do with is what that population does and who amount of power they may have. More than half of the people in prison in America are black, that is not an accident. If you put them in jail at one time or another in their lives, which it has come to the point where they have one in three chance of going to prison during their lifetime, and construct certain laws based around that then you take away a large percentage of economic and political power that they have, which is done of course in not being able to vote, own a gun, and really get a job once you have been in prison.

About the people who commit the crimes there are certain things that need to be looked at. One is that most people in jail are non-violent offenders, meaning that they are probally doing time for seling drugs. And by looking at sentencing rulings, those that commit peoples that commit murder, rob, rape, and other things probally get out faster than those who sell drugs or who are found to have drugs on them at the time of arrest.

http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1999/9950.html

[vivalache22]

No the problem is we don't have good progams to help the poor so they fall into drug dealing and thugery and they get sent to jail because the government didn't care about them in the first place, so they spend their stolen tax money to send the poor to jail.

[Knowledge 6 6 6]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2004, 03:40 AM
No the problem is we don't have good progams to help the poor so they fall into drug dealing and thugery and they get sent to jail because the government didn't care about them in the first place, so they spend their stolen tax money to send the poor to jail.
It's not about programs, its about oppurtunity my friend...

Of all the ppl who've had a rags-to-riches story, it's a small percentile for the entire population who live in or near the poverty line.

There is hope, but its marginal, in fact, its almost non-existent. The chances of ppl making it outta 'the gutter' in the broader spectrum of percentage of ppl who do, is extremely small..

There are many programs indeed, many programs, curriculums, events, etc. that can occupy anyone's mind, it's just that ppl see no hope. If the poor were cut down to 100 people, the ones who would make it out into a more upper-middle class lifestyle could be counted on one hand...

If you dont see oppurtunity, or the lesser likelihood of making it out...why try? I've grown up around ppl who did drugs, and stole because it was a social norm for them - getting harassed at school, and having the cops after them was a constant thing. Of course you can go against it and change, but...why bother? If you even try, you're still labelled most of the time.

[Hampton]

No the problem is we don't have good progams to help the poor so they fall into drug dealing and thugery and they get sent to jail because the government didn't care about them in the first place

Why would they have programs set up to help the poor if the government did not care about them in the first place?

Prisons are big business, you need people to put them in, those people are overwhemingly the poor and black. They do not want to help or save them from that destiny.

[Knowledge 6 6 6]

good point Hampton ;).

[monkeydust]

I doubt that they've ever seriously been a method for "population control", though I suppose they could be used for some more insidious, subtle purposes, for teaching "social norms" by example, perhaps.

What is true - and scary - is that prisons are being ever more privately run and administered. What this means is that private bussinesses are lobbying for ever harsher laws in order to create more demand for prisons and, ultimately, to reap more profit from governments. Adrian Montague, a man involved with such private finance initiatives boasted a few years ago that "The prison sector is becoming a commodity product. It is almost a production line" - chilling stuff, I feel.

[SonofRage]

Y'all should check out this prison abolition organization: Critical Resistance (http://www.criticalresistance.org)

[Erin Go Braugh]

Which country? I know that America has over 600 prison camps around somewhere. I assume they're for troublesome liberals or terrorists or something ;)