How Prisons Ripoff and Exploit the Incarcerated (1/2)

Just astonishing to see the depravity of people; exploit anyone anywhere. As I always say in my blogs, that slavery has not been abolished from Western societies, it's been transformed in another format, & the world thinks that Western countries & the "White man" is so fair & honest.

This exploitation of prisoners is one of the major reasons that American governments keep harping that crime is increasing because they need to be tough on crime. They want so many restrictions on the general public that the general public needs to, eventually, get permission to even move an inch. The American government officials, who are in bed with people who are profiteering from this prison-industrial complex, want to pack prisons with latinos & African-Americans, just so, those people can be used, & abused, by the prison system, to help make obscene profits for the shareholders of the private prison owners. Of course, a country's GDP will increase & it will develop when the labour costs are virtually nil for producing products.

Prisons are supposed to be places where an individual, who has committed a crime, & needs to be punished, or sort of given a time-out from society, just so that person can think what he / she has done wrong to the society, & how he / she can become a better person. Instead of rehabilitating that criminal, the prison system of America is actually making those criminals even more hardened criminals. Prisons of third-world countries are in much more abysmal conditions, but, at least, the world knows about it & even the developing countries are transparent about it. Ironically, Americans tout their human rights record a little too much, considering how they treat their own citizens during their incarceration.

A decent person won't even treat an animal this bad in a "developed" country, but these actions are taking place, with official knowledge & assent, in the most powerful, & supposedly, "democratic" & "developed" country of the world. Wouldn't this be called corruption of the mind & body of the general public & their elected leaders? Wouldn't this be called injustice when a person is not given decent food & clothes when that person is wholly dependent on you, since he / she cannot earn a dime by himself / herself, due to the restrictions placed on him / her by society? Wouldn't this be called exploitation of the poor & needy when these people are put into prison system, & then taken advantage by being charged to call family, receive things from family, or never allowed to visit family at the time of their death?

Where's that so-called humanity of the "white man" or good, honest, Americans? As I always say, that the biggest lie the "white man" told to the world that he is fair, honest, & hardworking.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p62BF1apkyY

EDDIE CONWAY, FMR. BLACK PANTHER, BALTIMORE CHAPTER: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Eddie Conway from Baltimore.

Today in the studio with me I have a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Please join me in welcoming Chris Hedges.

CHRIS HEDGES, JOURNALIST, SENIOR FELLOW AT THE NATION INSTITUTE: Thank you, Eddie.

CONWAY: Okay. I have been talking to you earlier about the business of the prison-industrial complex and how it’s impacting the lives of prisoners and their families. And you shared that you had some experience. Can you share a little bit of that with me now?

HEDGES: Yeah. Well, I’ve been teaching in prisons in New Jersey for a long time, almost ten years. And what I’ve watched over the last decade–and it’s probably something you saw when you were incarcerated–is how they increasingly prey on the prisoners and their families to make money. And that occurs by turning commissaries over to private corporations. And because it’s a captive market, they can charge anything they want. So, for instance, we got commissary prices from 1996. We compared them with prices today. And we’re talking about basic staples–toothpaste. We were talking earlier about noodles. What people don’t know is most prisoners live on those noodles that they have to heat up. Price increases as high as over 100 percent, almost everything at least over 50 percent, and yet what they earned has remained the same. So the minimum wage–I’m talking for eight hours of work. And in many of these prisons we have for-profit corporations exploiting prison labor, the neo-slavery under the 13th Amendment, which permits prisoners to work for far below reasonable wages. So their minimum wage is $1.30 for eight hours of work, which is roughly $28 a month. But their commissary prices–and we’re talking about things that they need–deodorant, toothpaste–have risen by over 100 percent.

The other way that they exploit the people under the system of mass incarceration is turning phones over to private corporations. So in New Jersey it’s $0.15 a minute, plus the premium that you have to pay in order to put the money on your account, the surcharge tax that the state puts on all commissary items of 10 percent. So if you have a $0.05 comb–this is an actual example–it costs you $0.06. And then the removal of items that people who, when they were incarcerated, used to get–jackets, blankets–they used to give you two blankets; now they give you one. They don’t give you thermals anymore; you have to buy them from the commissary. And, most importantly, shoes.

CONWAY: Well, I’m just–you know, because I personally have experienced that myself in terms of seeing young guys in the population that are just arriving in the last two, three years no longer get the things that we used to get when we came in the prison. So I see guys walking around in the dead of the winter without coats and without, actually, boots. They’re running around in summer tennis shoes and stuff. Why? What’s this cutback? I thought that the prison-industrial complex was making a lot of money. Why is this happening?

HEDGES: Well, because it forces those who are incarcerated to go to the commissary and buy the item. So let’s talk about shoes. And I don’t know what your experience was, but this is how it is in New Jersey. You’re not issued shoes anymore. You have to buy them. You pay $45. Now, remember, these people are making $28 a month. And we haven’t even spoken about the fines. So a lot of those people get into the system and they owe thousands of dollars of fines, which are chipped out of their monthly salary. So, for instance, one of the students that I teach, who was incarcerated when he was 14–he’s now 39–still owes $6,000 of fines. So if they want to buy a pair of Reeboks, it costs–if they don’t have the $45–and most people don’t get–80-plus percent do not get money from the outside on a monthly basis. They may get over the holidays or something, but they’re kind of on their own. If they can’t afford the $45 Reeboks or the boots, they sell these sneakers with cardboard soles. It’s like something out of Dickens that as soon as you got out into the yard, they’re shredded. Because many of these prisons are quite old, they need the thermals.

And then we haven’t even spoken about bereavement, so that if you want to visit with a dying member of your immediate family, a mother or father or whatever, you can do so for 15 minutes, either a deathbed visit or you can go for viewing, but you have to pay for the guards to accompany you, which is $800. And that immediately–. So what I have seen over the last few years–.

CONWAY: Woah. Woah. Let me just [incompr.] this. That’s happening in New Jersey. In Maryland, they don’t even allow you to do that anymore. They actually cut that out completely.

HEDGES: You mean the bereavement visits?

CONWAY: Yeah, the bereavement visits. And that’s very harmful to the prisoner, because you don’t get a chance to kind of, like, make your peace with that person that you love who’s departed. So you end up suffering that loss and no way of figuring out how to grieve, right? But go ahead. I’m just curious.

HEDGES: Well, it’s just all the ways they have found mechanisms to economically exploit prisoners and their families. It used to be that you could send up to 50 pounds, I think it was, a year of goods like sneakers and stuff, which they’ve now abolished. And that, of course, makes it harder, because now the prisoner has to buy the items from this kind of in-house Walmart. And it also hurts the families, who are unable to feel, in a way, that they can care for their sons or their daughters or their husbands or wives or whatever.

But what I find most disturbing is there seems to be every year some new mechanism to squeeze more money out of the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. And I think that probably is something you saw within the system as well.

CONWAY: Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that they turned–the state, the state of Maryland, actually was responsible for supplying all the items in the commissary. So toothpaste, deodorant, food, something to drink, that kind of stuff, they turned all of that commercial stuff over to a company that–it’s out of Ohio, I believe, called Keefe. And that company operates commissaries in several states, including Florida. And they were up, in fact, for a class-action suit because of the way they changed the prices.

And one example is the envelopes. We used to get a pack of 50 envelopes for $0.99. They would come in a box. If you want to write, you would buy a box of envelopes, and it would last you for 50 letters. What Keefe took over, you could only get single envelopes, and they cost $0.10 apiece, so that the price of that 50 envelopes turned into $5 just automatically and you did not have a choice. You either buy from them or you didn’t send out any mail. And they did that time and time again with the basic foodstuff that they knew we needed to eat. They upped the price 200, 300 percent. You know. So yeah, that, and the state of Maryland in turn gets a fee for that.

HEDGES: Right.

CONWAY: You know. So just like they get a fee from the phone company that, as you were saying, exploits the families and the prisoners because if a prisoner calls home and the person accepts the phone call, it’s extra money for accepting that phone call above and beyond what it would be if it was [incompr.]

HEDGES: Well, and they have to put money on the account, and they have to pay a fee. So if you’re putting–I can’t remember the exact figure, but if you’re putting $10 on the account, you’re paying $3 or $4 just for the privilege of putting the $10 on.

And then we get the whole issue of privatizing the way money is sent into the prison. So it used to be that you could send a money order or something in and you could put it on a prisoner’s account. Now it is all done through a company in Florida, where, again, if you want to put $20 on the account, you’re charged quite a draconian fee. And, again, I don’t have figures right in front of me, but again, I think it’s up to $5. And that $5 evaporates, at least from your pocket, into the pocket of the for-profit company that’s handling this. So this has been a kind of momentum that we’ve seen internally within the prison system. I think it reflects the kind of predatory nature of unregulated capitalism throughout the society, because those corporations, which are in essence kind of squeezing all of us, will squeeze the defenseless. And that’s what prisoners are, in essence, a captive society. They will squeeze the defenseless in ways that are just inhuman, because they can.

CONWAY: And let’s look at it from the other side, because while I was in the prison system, they made chairs, they made clothes, they trained dogs. There’s all kinds of industries or, obviously, the license tags. There’s–.

HEDGES: Military industries. Kevlar.

CONWAY: Yeah. Yeah. So while they’re squeezing the prisoners and fleecing the population for whatever pennies they can get, aren’t they making a tremendous amount of money by using that slave labor to produce stuff? I mean, what’s–.

HEDGES: It’s neo-slavery, which under the 13th Amendment is legal. You can force people under the 13th Amendment to work without adequate wages as part of your punishment, in essence. And so we have seen, along with this exploitation, a growth of for-profit industries, private companies that are going in there and exploiting the prison labor. So, on the one hand, they’re using the prison labor to make profit, and on the other hand they’re taking that underpaid–you know, I mean, we can’t even call it underpaid when you’re making $1.30 for an eight-hour day. They’re taking that. And they’re taking what little money they have. And that’s not a new phenomenon for African Americans. It replicates precisely what sharecroppers went through, where they had to borrow to buy the seed and often the farm implements and pay the rent. And by the end, especially if the crop didn’t do well, they can work a whole season and end up in debt. So now you’re seeing people released from the prison system and they owe money to the state. And if they can’t pay that money, they get picked up again.

CONWAY: Yeah. You know. And there’s something–even as you were talking, there was another aspect that I was thinking of. Early on, several decades ago, I can clearly remember that there was this huge campaign to stop prisons from being built in certain neighborhoods, in certain counties, and there was a desperation. The population was exploding in the prison system, and the state needed places in which to build prisons, and they went to different counties and whatnot, and they could not get authorization to build prisons. And so at some point they start de-industrializing America and jobs disappeared, not only just out of the black community, but jobs disappeared out of the rural communities. And then, all of a sudden, in all of these counties, there were requests like put a prison here. And when you talk about that economic slavery thing, just remind me of Hagerstown and it reminds me of Cumberland. And in Cumberland, Maryland, there’s a massive prison complex up there now, and it’s the source of jobs and economics in that region. And inside those prisons is population from the urban centers, a black–the population is mainly black, the guard forces mainly white, and it’s an economic arrangement similar to slavery that you were saying.

HEDGES: Right. Of course. Well, the students that I teach often refer to prison as being a plantation, having the dynamics of a plantation, including which is something writers like Richard Wright, Baldwin, and others talk about, understanding the demeanor by which you can comport yourself in front of the guards who are all-powerful. And when you get up to these communities–and Mumia Abu-Jamal is up in Frackville, Pennsylvania. And when you go into the prison, you will see on the list of the corrections officers who work in the prison three, four, maybe up to eight of the last names, because their brother’s in there, their cousin’s in there, maybe even their spouse is in there.

CONWAY: Their sons.

HEDGES: Their son’s in there. It’s–.

CONWAY: And daughters.

HEDGES: And daughters. It’s the only business going. And I think what’s so heartbreaking–I’ve driven up and see Mumia a couple of times–is those buses that leave at about midnight or one in the morning from places like Newark or wherever or Philly, you know, bringing the families and bringing the kids. And we haven’t even spoken about how visitors are treated.

This endless quest for growth will see Greece self-destruct

Although, this article is focused on Greece & its financial & economic woes, I really liked the author's view on how there is an "inherent contradiction of capitalism". I, myself, don't have a problem with capitalism, but the modern capitalism in itself does have a problem of continuously trying to make profits (which are essentially, surpluses -- gross revenue less costs = profits), which are not being re-invested in the economy but are being filtered up to few wealthiest individuals. Profit then stops there & more profits have to made for the other 99% to survive. Of course, since, the other 99% are making minimum wage or barely scraping by in life, the economy will eventually grind to a halt. Paragraphs 6 & 7, in the opinion piece below, very succinctly summarize this.

Think of it like a machine (for example, your car engine). If you keep driving your car for longer & longer distances & keep trying to extract as many kilometers (or miles) you can extract out of it before you need to service your car, or try to slowly reduce your frequency of regular car maintenance, you will eventually destroy your car engine & its related machinery, because your car's machinery is working harder for fewer servicing. It's the same case for human labour.

Anyway, so then the government is faced with only 2 choices (kind of being stuck between rock & a hard place) that it either try to juice up the "dead" economy through stimulus (like US did) or try to save billions through harsh austerity programs like Southern European nations did or are still doing. These two solutions are interlinked & become sort of a catch-22 problem. Government's primary source of revenue is taxes, but it can't really tax the public which in itself is not earning enough to survive. So tax revenue falls off the cliff. If tax revenue is insufficient for the government to institute stimulus programs, then it's only option is to bring more money from outside; either print more or borrow more. Either of these options will reduce the value of the national currency (assuming it's not part of a regional monetary bloc), & the price of everything essential in the marketplace for the public will rise, which will cause the general public to save more, instead of spend, which is required to revive the dead economy. Hence, we are back at the start of the problem, where the economy is still dead, & neither austerity nor stimulus is working to their full potential.

However, while the government is either cutting social spending or reducing the value of the currency, few individuals in its country are still becoming wealthier by the minute. That's why, the recession didn't hit the hardest all those wealthy 1-percenters. Heck, in their own little world, they didn't even feel it. Their wealth actually grew multiple folds during the recent recession.

Problem is that this inherent problem of modern capitalism & the social inequality it causes is only going to grow until there's chaos & anarchy on the national & global levels. There's no way to resolve this problem since the governments are now controlled by those same wealthy individuals who love this "inherent contradiction of capitalism," since it makes them wealthier & wealthier, & frankly, why would they care if a few millions of the general public suffers because of inequality. Prepare yourself for much more pain & suffering if you are one of those 99%.
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http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jul/07/this-endless-quest-for-growth-will-see-greece-self-destruct

...
For many following the crisis for ... months, it has become clear that it is not just about Greek debt. Beneath the cultural tensions & ugly stereotypes, an ideological war is taking place. This battle is happening because the current economic system has only 2 answers to debt crises, recessions & slow economic growth: stimulus & austerity.

Stimulus is about the government pumping money into the economy to encourage consumer spending, which will theoretically lead to economic growth. In recent times, stimulus efforts have taken the form of the government spending money on infrastructure & other socially beneficial projects (think the New Deal) & quantitative easing. Austerity is a set of measures that aim to cut government spending & shrink the public sector to make the economy less dependent on it, which in theory should make room for & encourage a burgeoning free market (ie neo-liberalism).

The argument against government-led stimulus asks how the economy can grow if the government has to keep expanding its debt &/or money supply in order to start new projects & stimulate the economy. Surely the stimulation it provides will never compensate for growing levels of debt? Anti-austerity advocates, on the other hand, ask how the economy can grow if people make less money & taxes are higher – people will save, not spend, & economic growth is based on consumer spending.

The issue of austerity versus stimulus is often framed as the entire debate – if you don’t support one, you must support the other, because there are no alternatives. This is the same binary debate that has been going on for more than 100 years between the state versus the market. Yet, these dichotomies distract people from thinking about what’s really important – the goal of these policies, which is to grow the economy.

No analysis I’ve read thus far has questioned the damaging role that the endless quest for economic growth plays. Neither austerity nor government stimulus will ever be able to address the debt crises & recessions of the twenty-first century because what we’re dealing with here is an inherent contradiction of capitalism.

This contradiction comes from the surplus of the system (profit) being taken out of the real economy (the economy of physical goods and services) and put into the financial sector to generate more wealth for people who are already wealthy. This requires the economy to continually grow to compensate for the extraction of profit, which is essentially the extraction of the economy’s surplus.

However, this extraction of profit is the same mechanism at the root of soaring levels of inequality. A recent Oxfam report estimates that, by 2016, the richest 1% of the world’s population will own more than the other 99%. If the average person is making relatively less every year, or struggling just to maintain the same financial state, they can’t afford to buy ever more products & services, so the economy can’t grow as it did when we had more financial equality. Thus capitalism has always carried the seed of its own demise.

We are seeing this self-destruction in Greece. The ... Syriza government wants to go back to the negotiating table & create a new bailout agreement that will cut the debt to a more manageable size & reform the public sector in ways that won’t affect the most vulnerable. This would still be austerity, albeit a much milder version than that of the past 5 years. ...

If an agreement can’t be reached, Greece might well go back to the drachma. However, the government has no clear plan for this & an unplanned exit from the euro would be painful, with the poorest hit the hardest.

In all of these scenarios, the government’s goal would still be to re-start economic growth, even at the cost of creating more inequality. None of these options gets to the roots of capitalism’s inherent contradiction. There’s no way to grow ourselves out of this crisis; not for Greece, not for the rest of the world. What we are witnessing is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism.

So what is a sustainable path forward for Greece? If the Greek government could see that it won’t be able to re-start growth, and that GDP growth is a means to an end, not an end in itself, there are steps it could take to start paving a new path to prosperity for its people.

In addition to the basics – restructuring the Greek debt, deep reforms in the public sector to make it more transparent & accountable, & the strengthening of the solidarity economy – I suggest the following:
...

2.The government should nationalise the banks & encourage people to start credit unions. This will re-align the banking sector with the needs of citizens & make the banks more resilient. Credit unions would empower people to take financial matters into their own hands.

3.Greece should keep for-profit interests from buying up its common wealth. This could be done via land trusts, not-for-profits & amending the constitution to make it unconstitutional for the government to sell off the commons.

4.The Greek government should start using a wellbeing or happiness index to measure success, as Bhutan does. In this age of inequality, working class people & the unemployed can easily slip through the cracks of GDP growth.

5.Businesses & the government should shorten the working week & encourage job-sharing, so more people can have part-time employment. This would counter the current problem of some having no work while others work 50 hours a week.

6.Finally, the government should create legislation & encourage not-for-profit enterprise in every sector to prevent the extraction of profits from the real economy & encourage social entrepreneurs & innovators to start up their own not-for-profits. These enterprises would help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Greece, create a more stable economy & keep the financial surplus in the real economy. By building an economy around social purpose, Greece could usher in the post-capitalist era, rather than fall victim to the unavoidable collapse of capitalism we are witnessing.


Jennifer Hinton is the co-author of How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not-for-Profit World by 2050, which will be published in October 2015.

DfID accused of heightening inequality through support for private sector

A great article highlighting how Department of International Development of UK is investing millions of aid money, in poor / developing countries, in private health & education projects. Although, the article is focused on UK's department of international development, I am very certain that Canadian, American, Australian, & other European countries' departments of international development use their aid money to invest in similar private projects in developing countries.

This way, not only, these countries show to the world & their own public that they are heavily investing aid money in developing countries. But what they don't show that that aid money is not actually helping any poor person but a few people are becoming rich with that aid money. This is evident in the end result of all these millions of aid money is still unable to fight poverty & millions of people in developing countries are further falling into poverty.

The article also confirms what I've been saying about Malala for quite a few years now. Malala is the poster child of private education industry. It's a huge industry on a worldwide scale. Education keeps getting unaffordable for the masses. But the society is being programmed to think that education is necessary if you want your descendants to do better economically (which is, in itself, is hogwash, since your network will get you a good job, not your education or qualifications).

Malala wants more & more girls to be educated in Pakistan. That, in itself, is a very noble idea. But, companies like, Pearson, has taken that noble idea & made it that more & more Pakistanis should get their kids (boys & girls) into education, which, is private education & not free & affordable public education. Private education businesses increase their businesses.

Private education is an exploitation business. When a poor family has only enough money to send a few kids to school, the sons are preferred over daughters. Is it fair? No. Is it necessary? Yes.
 
Sons in countries like India, Pakistan, China are considered bread winners for the family & will, most likely, take care of their old parents & their own families. Daughters, on the other hand, are married off to another family & will, most likely, cannot take care of their old parents.

The best way to provide affordable & quality education to ALL kids in the developing world is to provide them with FREE education; not private & fee-based, regardless of how low that fee is. If you are going to provide fee-based education, you are either going to exclude a large part of the public from ever accessing that education level or you need to uplift the economic conditions of the masses through jobs & livable wages.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/24/dfid-private-sector-support-inequality-global-justice-now-report

The UK government is driving inequality in the world’s poorest countries by “dogmatically” funding private sector health & education projects instead of using aid money to boost public systems, a report has said.
 
Rather than addressing the needs of the world’s poorest people, the Department for International Development’s (DfID) close relationship with the private sector is filling the pockets of big corporations, according to Profiting from poverty, again, a study published on Friday by the campaigning group Global Justice Now (GJN).
 
Nick Dearden, director of GJN, said: “Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK. So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health & education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality & endangers access.”

The report also questioned DfID’s appointment of Sir Michael Barber, a senior executive at Pearson, the world’s largest maker of textbooks & academic materials, as its chief advisor for education in Pakistan, saying it presented a conflict of interest. DfID oversees an ambitious £350m health & education programme in Pakistan & has partnered with Pearson on a project in Tanzania & Zimbabwe.

“It seems highly inappropriate that executives from a company like Pearson can be acting in an official capacity at DfID, while their company provides commercial services that would directly benefit from the type of decisions being taken by DfID,” Dearden said.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “We have firm policies in place to prevent any conflict of interest in our work.”

Pearson, which operates in more than 70 countries, launched its affordable learning programme in 2012. The initiative is a for-profit venture fund that uses capital investment “to help millions of children in the world access a quality education in a cost effective, profitable & scalable manner”, according to the company.
 
On Friday, a group of US, British & South African NGOs & teachers’ groups issued an open letter to John Fallon, Pearson’s CEO. The letter read: “By supporting the expansion of low-fee private schooling & other competitive practices, Pearson is essentially ensuring that a large number of the world’s most vulnerable children have no hope of receiving a free, quality education.”

The open letter was released on Friday to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting. It was signed by the American Federation of Teachers, the UK’s National Union of Teachers, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the Association of Teachers & Lecturers, Action Aid UK & the National Education Association.
 
The UK has invested more heavily in private sector projects than other rich countries, drawing criticism from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai). “DfID often seems to behave more like a hedge fund [than an aid agency], investing capital alongside banking partners like JP Morgan,” GJN said.
 
DfID is working with companies including Coca-Cola, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) & Adam Smith International & is promoting the role of private sector partners in its biggest health & education projects, according to GJN.
 
The GJN report said DfID’s efforts to promote low-cost private schools in poor countries are “misplaced & dangerous”.

The Girls’ Education Challenge, a £355m DfID programme designed to get more girls in school, is managed by PwC & includes a partnership with Coca-Cola in Nigeria.
 
In Kenya, DfID has partnered with Adam Smith International in a £25m project that seeks to get 5,000 Kenyans enrolled in low-cost private schools.
 
DfID has also channelled millions of pounds into the harnessing non-state actors for better health for the poor (Hanshep) scheme, which promotes private sector investment in the health sectors of poor countries.
 
Kishore Singh, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to education, is among those who have expressed reservations about private education. “I see [the growth of private education] not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all,” said Singh.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “The UK strives to get the best possible outcomes for poor people & takes a pragmatic stance on how services should be delivered. In some circumstances (parts of India, Kenya, Nigeria & Pakistan, for example), this includes developing partnerships with low-fee private schools.

“DfID works with the private sector in situations where the public sector is not sufficiently present (the slums of Nairobi for example) or where state provision is so weak that the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap. Recognising that fees are still a major barrier to access for the poor, DfID’s support includes voucher schemes that subsidise access to low-fee private schools for the poorest.”

Land of the free? The US has a prison problem

Although, it was good to read this article that US has started to look into reforming its prison system, I don't have much hope of something actually happening. Reason being that US prison system, similar to its medical system, is becoming profit-driven.

Some states have contracted out the prison system to private contractors. Those private contractors benefit from prison population's almost-free / "slave" labour & they also get subsidies / tax breaks from the government (similar to several other companies / industries). Of course, if the contractors are profiting from the labour, they need more of that "free" labour. So, of course, they lobby hard & get the judiciary (judges, attorney generals etc.) on their side of the table.

Result is harsh sentencing laws, e.g. minimum mandatory sentence, are then passed. By the way, there was a good crime drama 2013 movie on this issue, "Snitch," starring Dwayne Johnson, & based on a real story. Anyway, so contractors need to keep a certain level of beds fill in their prisons. They may even be getting tax breaks or subsidies based on prison fill-rate (sort of like how hotels operate their business). On top of that, attorneys' successes are measured based on their conviction rate. So the more they put people behind bars, the more they are considered as making the public safe. That perception comes in very handy if those attorneys are dreaming of getting into government one day.

So who suffers in all of this self-serving agendas, fiasco & corruption? The Public.

1. Taxpayers: As the article states, millions of taxpayer $$$ are spent in housing these prisoners. Those same millions which could have been spent on improving infrastructure, putting food on the poor family's table (by increasing the budget of food stamp program, instead of cutting it), improving schools in poor, urban areas so kids of disadvantaged families also get the same quality of education as the kid from an elite family.

2. People: Those people who get snared in this prison system. As recent incidents have widely shown how much racism is still existent in the American society; African-Americans, who are usually on the disadvantaged spectrum of the general population, face the brunt of these harsh laws. They get locked up for minor offences, assuming they did commit an offence in the first place.

Once they caught up in that cycle, there is no exit out of that maze. Even when they do get out, they have a hard time securing employment and/or housing. Result is they may not have enough money to pay alimony or provide a suitable place to live for their kids or live in a safe & secure place just by themselves.

So, if, due to unemployment, that person, who was not a violent offender in the first place, but has an "ex-con" label now, doesn't pay child support, then he is put into prison. If that person, due to unemployment, can't secure housing, & starts living on the streets, where he/she can easily become a drug addict, & if he gets caught with a drug, he/she visits the prison, again. What happens with all these prison visits? That person is labelled a multiple offender, & has much longer sentences.

Essentially, that person, who was wrongly / perhaps, harshly convicted of a minor offense, becomes a hardened criminal. Who gets the blame then? That person him/herself.

My solution:
1. Be extra careful in sentencing a person in the first place. Don't make stupid harsh laws, which, in effect, make the net bigger, so more "fish" are caught.

Try to make laws which focus on catching violent criminals in the first place, rather than, making one out of a non-violent offender.

2. I'm a proponent of capital punishment. That's why, I said in point one above, that try to make laws to catch violent criminals in the first place.

Once those hardened criminals are caught, the hopes of those criminals ever becoming good guys again are slim to none. So, execute them swiftly.

What these two points will do in tandem?

1. Improve relations between the public & law enforcement, since the law enforcement is focusing more on violent criminals & not catching any & all people. Arresting violent criminals will be looked at appreciatively by the general public, since then, the perception would be of a just society.

2. Law enforcement will also become more efficient & their efforts more effective, since their conviction rates will go up, since they are focusing on violent criminals, who will, most likely, get convicted, & since, they are focusing more on few people, they will get more efficient.

3. Law enforcement agencies will focus more on less people, so they may also need fewer cops, which in turn, will result in decreasing the tax burden on the public.

4. Decreasing tax burdens from keeping few people, if any, in prison, fewer cops, fewer prisons, & a less clogged judicial system, where cases are moving faster.

5. Seeing the end result of what happens to a violent criminal, other people, e.g. misguided youths in the public, will also avoid pursuing that lifestyle. Currently, they see that the worst happening to them, if they do pursue that lifestyle, is going to jail & perhaps, staying in there, & in return do some work & get free housing & food, & make friends with life-minded individuals. Life is sweet.

That mindset will get a jolt that no, if you commit a serious crime, you will get the lethal injection. No free lunches & friend with a gang leader.
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http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/criminal-justice-in-america-home-of-the-free/

Since 1990, Missouri’s Hedy Harden has been lobbying for criminal justice reforms in the Midwestern state. On March 11, the 70-year-old chair of the Missouri branch of CURE­—a national criminal-justice-reform organization founded in 1972—joined other like-minded activists for a lobby day in the state capital of Jefferson City to pressure lawmakers to pass a handful of bills aimed at reducing the state’s mandatory-minimum laws & other reforms.
 
Missouri’s prison system cost state taxpayers some $680 million in 2014—up from $220 million in 1994 after the state brought in harsh sentencing legislation that curbed early prison release. Its prison population has since increased nearly 9 times over the past 3 decades, mirroring similar trends across the US.
 
And while Harden has 25 years under her belt advocating for changes to Missouri’s justice laws—& is growing increasingly skeptical that proposed legislation will ever make it into law—the case for criminal-justice reform is riding a wave of support across the US.
 
That support has been spurred by a combination of budgetary constraints, prison overcrowding, shifts in public attitudes & a media spotlight trained on events such as the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August in Ferguson, Mo., by police officer Darren Wilson, & the subsequent nationwide protests & scrutiny of policing & the criminal justice system. “Definitely, we all had some really high hopes because of Ferguson,” Harden says, “& we know the legislature has to deal with the whole issue of Ferguson.”

The results of the federal justice department’s investigation into the Ferguson police force in the wake of the shooting ... uncovered a municipal justice system rife with racial bias & geared more toward generating revenue for the St. Louis suburb than any concern for public safety. The federal probe found that, according to the police department’s own statistics, between 2012 & 2014, blacks accounted for 85% of traffic stops, 90% of citations, & 93% of arrests made by Ferguson police, despite making up 67% of the city’s population. They also faced significantly more citations for minor offences & bore the brunt of documented force by police. The municipal court, meanwhile, routinely ordered arrest warrants for residents who failed to pay fines for minor infractions such as traffic tickets & parking violations.
 
President Barack Obama cited Ferguson—as well as other recent high-profile police-related deaths in New York & Cleveland—in his March 7 speech in Alabama on the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches. “We can make sure our criminal justice system serves all, & not just some,” he said. “Together, we can address unfair sentencing & overcrowded prisons, & the stunted circumstances that rob too many boys of the chance to become men, & rob the nation of too many men who could be good dads, & good workers, & good neighbours.”

In Washington, Obama isn’t alone in calling for change in how America handles matters of crime & punishment. Criminal-justice reform has turned into a rare point of bipartisan consensus in a Congress that’s become synonymous with partisanship, gridlock & division.
 
The US is currently the world’s largest jailer, with roughly 2.2 million people behind bars. According to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), maintaining that prison system cost American taxpayers $80 billion in 2012. In 2013, the US had an incarceration rate of 716 prisoners for every 100,000 Americans. (By comparison, according to stats from the Sentencing Project, Canada’s incarceration rate is 118 per 100,000.) And, since 1980, the federal prison system grew nearly 800%, with some 219,000 people behind bars.
 
Policy-makers such as outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder are now increasingly likely to talk about being “smart on crime” instead of “tough on crime,” & there is a raft of proposed legislation meant to fix the system. The Smarter Sentencing Act, introduced in February in the Senate by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee & Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, & in the House by Republican Raul Labrador & Democrat Bobby Scott, would reduce the mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, along with other measures.
 
A prison-reform bill also introduced last month by Texas Republican & Senate majority whip John Cornyn & Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, aims to shrink the federal prison population by offering incentives to low- & medium-risk prisoners to participate in recidivism-reduction programs. And, last week, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul (a potential presidential candidate), along with New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, introduced the Redeem Act. That sweeping legislation would reduce the collateral problems former prisoners face when voting & seeking housing & employment. It would also make it easier for juveniles & adults convicted of non-violent offences to seal their criminal records, among other provisions. These & similar bills have been introduced in prior sessions of Congress in the past few years, but failed to gain real traction.
 
Groups such as the ACLU say increasingly harsh sentencing & parole policies, the war on drugs & rising parole revocations are behind the spike in the US prison population over the past 3 decades. Recently, however, sentencing reforms at the state level have helped to spur the first drop in prison populations in decades—a modest overall decline (2.8%) between 2009 & 2012.
 
Those state-level successes ... mean advocates for criminal-justice reform are optimistic. “I do think something significant will happen this year. I think the stars are really aligned,” says Marc Levin, co-founder of the advocacy group Right on Crime, & a prominent voice in the conservative criminal-justice-reform movement. “[It] is such a rarity in a gridlocked system [to find] actual agreement. I think there’s a desire on the part of many Republicans, & many of the consultants to Republicans, to show they’ve got a positive agenda, that they can govern & get something done. There’s a real breakthrough, where there’s something in it for everyone.”

Levin also has prominent conservatives lined up behind him: Big-name Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, presumptive 2016 frontrunner Jeb Bush, & Arkansas governor & former US Drug Enforcement Administration head Asa Hutchinson have all signed on to his organization’s statement of principles. Jesselyn McCurdy, who works with the ACLU in Washington to get members of Congress on board with criminal-justice reform, agrees the timing is right. “Any successes we have at the state level we’re hoping to translate to the federal level,” she says.
 
In November, the ACLU netted $50 million from liberal billionaire benefactor George Soros’s Open Society Foundations to push at the state level to reduce prison populations. Soros has also joined forces with the conservative Koch brothers & other groups (including the ACLU & Right on Crime) to form the new Coalition for Public Safety, billed as “the largest national effort working to make our criminal justice system smarter, fairer & more cost-effective at the federal, state & local level.”

... in a January op-ed in Politico magazine, Charles Koch made the case for reform, writing: “Overcriminalization has led to the mass incarceration of those ensnared by our criminal justice system, even though such imprisonment does not always enhance public safety. Indeed, more than half of federal inmates are non-violent drug offenders. Enforcing so many victimless crimes inevitably leads to conflict between our citizens & law enforcement.”

Still, while there’s broad agreement that the current prison system isn’t sustainable, not everyone agrees on the proposed blueprints for reform. In Congress, those skeptics include Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who, as head of the Senate judiciary committee, holds sway over which reform bills end up on the legislative agenda. On the Senate floor this past week, Grassley voiced strong opposition to the Smarter Sentencing Act, saying the arguments for it “are merely a weak attempt to defend the indefensible,” & pointing to examples such as growing heroin use in states such as Vermont. He also expressed misgivings that the legislation could impede efforts to curtail major drug-trafficking operations, or that it would allow repeat offenders to avoid serious jail time.
 
In California, Proposition 47—a ballot initiative passed last November with nearly 60% support that reclassifies some drug & theft crimes from felonies to misdemeanours—is also facing opposition from critics who argue it’s a flawed & dangerous measure. David Bejarano, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, argues that Prop 47 has: scrapped felony charges for possession of substances such as the date-rape drug; created a loophole for handgun theft; & removed a legal tool used by law enforcement to force people into drug rehab in lieu of jail time. “Other states are watching what California does. What we’re trying to do now through our legislature is correct some of the most obvious concerns we have,” he says.
 
In Missouri, there’s another campaign building to pass House Bill 657, which would reduce the state’s so-called “85% law.” The Republican-sponsored bill would lower the threshold of time served before being eligible for parole for certain dangerous felonies (arson, robbery, & assault) from 85% of the sentence to 50%. Even with that push, & a slew of bills aimed at reforming everything from those mandatory minimums to juvenile justice & the death penalty, Harden called the state legislature “a tough nut to crack.”

The evil genius of airlines

A very interesting article, indeed. Not surprising for someone who knows how corrupted CEOs' minds are & how companies are operated nowadays. Rich keep getting richer ... by squeezing ever more so ... the poor. On the other hand, more fees & uncomfortable travelling may translate into people travelling less, which in turn, might be beneficial for the environment.

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Last fall, Air Canada & WestJet followed Toronto’s Porter Airlines & most US carriers by charging economy-class passengers on domestic flights $25 to check a single suitcase (a charge to check a second piece of luggage had already been in place for several years). The move amounted to a doubling-down on the industry’s new fee-based business model, which, at times, appears designed to make parts of the travel experience so uncomfortable that passengers will pay to avoid them. A term has even been coined to reflect what airlines are inflicting on their customers: calculated misery. Want to sit with your family? Pay extra for advance seat selection. Uncomfortable in your economy-class seat? Pay to upgrade to a larger one that was only squeezed in because your original seat was shrunk.
 
But nowhere has the strategy been as lucrative for airlines’ bottom lines as the decision to charge for checking bags. In addition to asking passengers to pay for a formerly free service, the new fees have helped spawn a whole new family of optional charges related to advance boarding privileges—all the better to beat the rush of passengers lugging swollen carry-on luggage into the cabin & tying up precious overhead bin space.
 
Of course, all of these new fees & strategies to separate passengers from their money come at a time when the airlines are already benefiting tremendously from falling oil prices. And they’re not planning on passing on the savings if they can help it. “Our plan is not to pass any of it on,” WestJet’s CEO Gregg Saretsky said during a recent conference call to discuss the airline’s record fourth-quarter profit, in 2014, of $90 million. Likewise Air Canada’s CEO Calin Rovinescu—on the heels of recording his airline’s best financial performance in 77 years, with $531 million in profit in 2014—told investors: “We’ll use whatever tools we have at our disposal to drive profitability.”

While the new business model appears to offer the salvation that cash-strapped airlines have been seeking for years—baggage & other fees contributed to nearly US$50 billion in so-called “ancillary” revenues globally in 2014—it also risks unleashing a whole other dimension of hurt down the road, as flying becomes more miserable & cumbersome. In particular, the carry-on crisis spawned by checked-bag fees has bogged down already snail-like boarding times, tied up security screening lines at airports & forced unwilling employees to play the role of reluctant bag police. Even aircraft manufacturers have been dragged into the mess as they rush to redesign their planes to accommodate extra carry-on cargo. Meanwhile, all those kilometres of airport conveyor belts—financed by airport improvement fees, & designed to get planes on their way as fast as possible—threaten to go underutilized. All of these things add hidden costs—both monetary & psychological—to the already trying experience of modern air travel. And, as always, it’s passengers who will ultimately pay the price.
 
US air carriers now rake in about US$3.5 billion annually from bag fees, based on figures compiled by the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That makes it the largest source of ancillary revenue for US airlines ... . In Canada, meanwhile, airlines aren’t required to disclose how much the fees add to their annual sales, but analysts have estimated it’s in the neighbourhood of $50 million to $75 million a year each for WestJet & Air Canada. More important, that cash goes straight to the bottom line since, with the exception of Alaska Airlines & Porter, which now both promise guaranteed bag-delivery times upon arrival, there are no additional services being added.
 
At the same time, checked-bag fees have reduced the number of bags per passenger, helping airlines save on fuel & manpower. Though it’s difficult to find statistics on the overall impact on luggage volumes, a 2010 US government study suggested that US airlines saw a 50% drop in the amount of luggage being checked through onto their planes after the fees were introduced. (Air Canada says there’s only been a slight decrease in the number of checked bags after implementing the charge on domestic flights, “certainly much less than when we first introduced the policy on [flights to the U.S.] in 2011.”) At Toronto’s Pearson, domestic passengers checked an average of 1.2 bags each 5 years ago; now that figure is just one. “There’s certainly a cost savings by carrying fewer bags,” says Jay Sorensen, the president of Wisconsin-based airline consulting firm IdeaWorks. “When you apply a price to a good, economic theory says people will use less of it.”

The notion of putting limits on passengers’ luggage isn’t necessarily a bad one in principle. Sorensen, for one, recalls a trip taken in the era before baggage fees with his brother, who insisted on dragging around two giant suitcases for a week spent in a well-appointed hotel. Why? Because that was how much the airline permitted. ... Airport baggage employees, meanwhile, had their own horror stories—quite literally—from when passengers more or less had a free pass on checked luggage. ...
 
But while charging for a second checked suitcase helped clamp down on the worst abusers, expanding fees to all checked luggage seems to have created more problems than it solved. Air travellers, predictably, rushed to buy the biggest rolling suitcases permitted in airplane cabins, only to find insufficient room in the overhead bins. To make matters worse, the extra baggage showed up in the cabin just as airlines were in the process of cramming more seats into their planes in a bid to boost profits on busy routes. Air Canada, for example, has squeezed in 109 extra passengers on some of its Boeing 777s by adopting narrower seats that are just 43 cm across, rather than the usual 46 cm. WestJet, meanwhile, has also moved seats closer together to make room for its premium economy section. With more passengers hauling more luggage into cabins than ever before, Air Canada implemented a trial program at Pearson last fall aimed at cracking down on those passengers with oversized carry-ons, but the backlash was swift. Airline employees reportedly complained about angry & abusive passengers & demanded they not be forced to enforce the rules.
 
The net result is the already painful process of herding passengers onto their planes has slowed even further, continuing a trend under way for more than 40 years. A 1998 study by Boeing found that the rate at which passengers board a commercial jet has fallen steadily since 1970, thanks in part to more carry-on luggage & “airline service strategies.” In other words, the way airlines now board planes—business class, frequent fliers, back-to-front—makes little sense from an efficiency perspective (some studies have shown that just letting passengers board at random ends up being faster). But airlines are reluctant to change their practices because it allows them to sell early-boarding options. Air Canada’s new zoned boarding system gives priority to business class customers & certain “Elite” Aeroplan members, followed by those with lesser Aeroplan status & certain credit card holders. Then come families with young children & mere ticket holders. WestJet has a similar boarding system that gives priority to its premium economy ticket holders & frequent fliers. Those who are unable to find a place to stow their bag once they’re finally on the aircraft may be forced to check it at the gate, creating more work for staff &, apparently, the opportunity for mistakes. That’s what happened to an Edmonton groom on his way to his wedding in India recently. Vishal Shah told CBC News this week that Air Canada lost track of his carry-on & the $2,000 worth of valuables inside it. Air Canada responded by noting that passengers on international flights are permitted at least one free checked bag, & that “baggage fees are an industry reality worldwide.”

It’s not only passengers who are complaining. Shortly after US airlines began enforcing fees for all checked luggage, former US secretary of homeland security Janet Napolitano pleaded with them to reverse course because all the extra carry-on bags were slowing down screening times at US airports, adding an estimated $260 million a year in extra security costs. Mathieu Larocque, a spokesperson for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) said the crown agency doesn’t share statistics on how much luggage its workers screen, but nevertheless said its workers handled 54 million passengers last year, including about 4.6 million passengers during the month of March, a particularly busy travel period because of March break. “We expect that number to be higher this year as passenger volumes continue to grow,” Larocque says.
 
At times it appears the different arms of the industry are working against each other. Airports have invested heavily in new technologies to speed up their luggage handling so planes can get away faster, only to watch airlines slow down the process with their unwieldy boarding schemes & all the extra carry-on baggage. Airplane manufacturers, meanwhile, are spending millions to re-engineer ingenious overhead bins to carry more bags, even though there’s a massive cargo hold directly under passengers’ feet. The largest version of the venerable Boeing 737, for example, will soon be able to accommodate 194 standard-sized carry-on bags, more than double the capacity of the same plane in 1998. The new “Space Bins” are deeper & wider, each capable of holding 6 bags placed on their sides. But there are limits to plane manufacturers’ ability to build their way out of the problem. Brent Walton, the manager of 737 interiors for Boeing, says adding any more weight overhead threatens to compromise the structural integrity of the fuselage. “I think this could be the limit,” he says of the latest upgrade. With the industry rapidly approaching peak carry-on, something will inevitably have to give.
 
For passengers, the mounting inconvenience of it all is supposed to be offset by the promise of lower airfares. In a Sept. 15 blog post, Bob Cummings, WestJet’s executive vice-president of sales & marketing, explained the rationale behind charging for a first checked bag as follows: “Not everyone travels with a checked bag—yet effectively, everyone is paying for one. The purpose of a first-bag fee is to offer you another choice. Rather than hiding the fee, this allows you to personalize how you want to fly by paying only for what you want or need.” Yet, while there is some evidence to suggest average air fares have gone down in Canada since the new checked bag fees came into force last fall, it’s not clear whether that’s because airlines are passing the purported savings along to customers (who don’t check bags) or because fuel prices have plummeted alongside the price of oil. Ben Cherniavsky, an analyst at Raymond James, says the bottom line is that it’s difficult to measure the overall impact of the policy without more financial disclosure from the airlines themselves.
 
What is clear is that, by charging for checked luggage, airlines are hoping to fundamentally redefine air travel as we know it. Implicit in the new checked-bag policies is the assumption that the average passenger should now resemble George Clooney’s character in the 2009 movie Up in the Air—an unattached, well-organized businessman, suit jacket draped over the shoulder, who only flies with the bare essentials in his Travelpro carry-on. Most real-world families, by contrast, tend to travel more like minor league hockey teams, with giant bags stuffed full of diapers, folding playpens & all manner of toys & other convenient distractions.
 
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that airline policies seemed capricious or unfair ... . But what makes the industry’s sudden infatuation with checked-bag fees troubling is that it’s not altogether clear whether airlines are any further ahead by inconveniencing their customers. Some U.S. studies have suggested that charging passengers for a first checked bag may actually be costing airlines money because of the additional time needed to “turn” planes at the gate. That’s because planes are giant, depreciating assets that only earn money when they’re flying. The potential hit to on-time performance—& therefore profitability—is among the reasons cited by Southwest Airlines for sticking with its “bags fly free” policy even as all of its peers adopt checked-bag fees. After all, the Texas-based airline pioneered the idea of quick airport turns in a bid to squeeze a few extra daily flights out of each of its planes. “You can definitely experience delays with excess carry-on bags,” spokesperson Brian Parrish says.
 
Air Canada, for its part, says charging for checked luggage has had no impact on its on-time performance, with a spokesperson citing a top-five ranking in last year’s FlightStats awards for the 79.6% of its flights that arrived on time. Southwest, by contrast, barely made the top 10 with a 74.3% on-time performance. But there’s an important caveat. On-time performance is judged against an airline’s own schedule, which can easily be padded to take into account factors like airport congestion & boarding times. And the main reason Southwest saw its industry-leading on-time performance briefly sag (it’s now back around 79%) is because it tried to squeeze 16 extra flights into its schedule in 2013 without adding new aircraft. In other words, Southwest made a misstep by trying to do more with less, not charging more for the same.
 
In some respects, the industry’s current fee-based business model threatens to unravel the ultra-efficient focus that Southwest & other low-cost carriers ushered in during the 1990s & early 2000s. It also resurrects memories of the hated & arbitrary roadblocks airlines used to foist on their customers—Saturday-night stay requirements, round-trip fares priced more competitively than one-way flights—in a bid to extract more money from them. What remains to be seen is whether the current approach continues to generate unwanted side effects, or eventually becomes the new normal with passengers falling in line. That’s what ultimately happened in Europe, according to Nick Gates, a portfolio director at European airline IT consulting firm SITA. “Slowly you will get to a point where the initial effect of the introduction of the baggage fees wears off,” he says. “The average number of bags checked in per passenger will start to creep up again. Everyone gets used to the idea of paying for it.”

If they don’t, airlines still have the nuclear option: charging for carry-on bags, too. The ultra low-cost US carrier Spirit Airlines infamously charges $26 to bring a carry-on bag when booking online (as much as $100 at the gate) & the result, experts say, is one of the smoothest boarding processes in the North American industry. On the other hand, Spirit Airlines also ranks down near Tajik Air & Turkmenistan Airlines when it comes to customer satisfaction scores, which may be a step too far for most North American carriers—even those that staunchly believe making their customers uncomfortable is a winning strategy.

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/carry-on-chaos-the-evil-genius-of-airlines/