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.

Chris Hedges Interviews Noam Chomsky (Part 1 of 3)

A great interview by Chris Hedges of Noam Chomsky. Nothing much to comment for me on this, except to reiterate that North American & European people think that they are living in a democratic & free society where you are free to speak & think as you wish. But it is what instilled in them through their education system.

Public Relations (PR) system works so well that it subtly sends the message to the public that you are expected to follow the authority, regardless of how wrong that authority is. A large section of the public believes whatever spews out of the governments' mouths. Another section of the public, even if it doesn't believe governments' lies, still follow what the government tells them to do because they are trained to think that that's how the system works.

How can there be any so-called "democracy" in a country when its public is considered as "bewildered herd" & "ignorant & meddlesome outsiders," & are treated as "spectators" instead of active participants in making the internal policies of the country?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwRf5HHm2Mo

CHRIS HEDGES, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Let's begin with a classic paradigm which is throughout the Industrial Revolution, which has been cited by theorists from Marx to Kropotkin to Proudhon and to yourself, that you build a consciousness among workers within the manufacturing class, and eventually you lead to a kind of autonomous position where workers can control their own production.

We now live in a system, a globalized system, where most of the working class in industrial countries like the United States are service workers. We have reverted to a Dickensian system where those who actually produced live in conditions that begin to replicate almost slave labor--and, I think, as you have written, in places like southern China in fact are slave [labor]. What's the new paradigm for resistance? How do we learn from the old and confront the new?

NOAM CHOMSKY, LINGUIST AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think we can draw many very good lessons from the early period of the Industrial Revolution. It was, of course, earlier in England, but let's take here in the United States. The Industrial Revolution took off right around here, eastern Massachusetts, mid 19th century. This was a period when independent farmers were being driven into the industrial system--men and women, incidentally, women from the farms, so-called factory girls--and they bitterly resented it. It was a period of a very free press, the most in the history of the country. There was a wide variety of journals, ethnic, labor, or others. And when you read them, they're pretty fascinating.

The people driven into the industrial system regarded it as an attack on their personal dignity, on their rights as human beings. They were free human beings who were being forced into what they called wage slavery, which they regarded as not very different from chattel slavery. In fact, this was such a popular view that it was actually a slogan of the Republican Party, that the only difference between working for a wage and being a slave is that working for a wage is supposedly temporary--pretty soon you'll be free. Other than that, they're not different.

And they bitterly resented the fact that the industrial system was even taking away their rich cultural life. And the cultural life was rich. You know, there are by now studies of the British working class and the American working class, and they were part of high culture of the day. Actually, I remembered this as late as the 1930s with my own family, sort of unemployed working-class, and they said, this is being taken away from us, we're being forced to be something like slaves. They argued that if you're, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you're selling what you produced. If you're a wage earner, you're selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self. Sounds familiar.

And it was extremely radical. It was combined with the most radical democratic movement in American history, the early populist movement--radical farmers. It began in Texas, spread into the Midwest--enormous movement of farmers who wanted to free themselves from the domination by the Northeastern bankers and capitalists, guys that ran the markets, you know, sort of forced them to sell what they produced on credit and squeeze them with credit and so on. They went on to develop their own banks, their own cooperatives. They started to link up with the Knights of Labor--major labor movement which held that, as they put it, those who work in the mills ought to own them, that it should be a free, democratic society.

These were very powerful movements. By the 1890s, workers were taking over towns and running them in Western Pennsylvania. Homestead was a famous case. Well, they were crushed by force. It took some time. Sort of the final blow was Woodrow Wilson's red scare right after the First World War, which virtually crushed the labor movement.

At the same time, in the early 19th century, the business world recognized, both in England and the United States, that sufficient freedom had been won so that they could no longer control people just by violence. They had to turn to new means of control. The obvious ones were control of opinions and attitudes. That's the origins of the massive public relations industry, which is explicitly dedicated to controlling minds and attitudes.

The first--it partly was government. The first government commission was the British Ministry of Information. This is long before Orwell--he didn't have to invent it. So the Ministry of Information had as its goal to control the minds of the people of the world, but particularly the minds of American intellectuals, for a very good reason: they knew that if they can delude American intellectuals into supporting British policy, they could be very effective in imposing that on the population of the United States. The British, of course, were desperate to get the Americans into the war with a pacifist population. Woodrow Wilson won the 1916 election with the slogan "Peace without Victory". And they had to drive a pacifist population into a population that bitterly hated all things German, wanted to tear the Germans apart. The Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn't play Beethoven. And they succeeded.

Wilson set up a counterpart to the Ministry of Information called the Committee on Public Information. Again, you can guess what it was. And they've at least felt, probably correctly, that they had succeeded in carrying out this massive change of opinion on the part of the population and driving the pacifist population into warmongering fanatics.

And the people on the commission learned a lesson. One of them was Edward Bernays, who went on to found--the main guru of the public relations industry. Another one was Walter Lippman, who was the leading progressive intellectual of the 20th century. And they both drew the same lessons, and said so.

The lessons were that we have what Lippmann called a "new art" in democracy, "manufacturing consent". That's where Ed Herman and I took the phrase from. For Bernays it was "engineering of consent". The conception was that the intelligent minority, who of course is us, have to make sure that we can run the affairs of public affairs, affairs of state, the economy, and so on. We're the only ones capable of doing it, of course. And we have to be--I'm quoting--"free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd", the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders"--the general public. They have a role. Their role is to be "spectators", not participants. And every couple of years they're permitted to choose among one of the "responsible men", us.

And the John Dewey circle took the same view. Dewey changed his mind a couple of years later, to his credit, but at that time, Dewey and his circle were writing that--speaking of the First World War, that this was the first war in history that was not organized and manipulated by the military and the political figures and so on, but rather it was carefully planned by rational calculation of "the intelligent men of the community", namely us, and we thought it through carefully and decided that this is the reasonable thing to do, for all kind of benevolent reasons.

And they were very proud of themselves.

There were people who disagreed. Like, Randolph Bourne disagreed. He was kicked out. He couldn't write in the Deweyite journals. He wasn't killed but he was just excluded.

And if you take a look around the world, it was pretty much the same. The intellectuals on all sides were passionately dedicated to the national cause--all sides, Germans, British, everywhere.

There were a few, a fringe of dissenters, like Bertrand Russell, who was in jail; Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, in jail; Randolph Bourne, marginalized; Eugene Debs, in jail for daring to question the magnificence of the war. In fact, Wilson hated him with such passion that when he finally declared an amnesty, Debs was left out & had to wait for Warren Harding to release him. And he was the leading labor figure in the country. He was a candidate for president, Socialist Party, and so on.

But the lesson that came out is we believe you can and of course ought to control the public, and if we can't do it by force, we'll do it by manufacturing consent, by engineering of consent. Out of that comes the huge public relations industry, massive industry dedicated to this.

Incidentally, it's also dedicated to undermining markets, a fact that's rarely noticed but is quite obvious. Business hates markets. ... Markets, if you take an economics course, are based on rational, informed consumers making rational choices. Turn on the television set and look at the first ad you see. It's trying to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. That's the whole point of the huge advertising industry. But also to try to control and manipulate thought. And it takes various forms in different institutions. The media do it one way, the academic institutions do it another way, and the educational system is a crucial part of it.

This is not a new observation. There's actually an interesting essay by--Orwell's, which is not very well known because it wasn't published. It's the introduction to Animal Farm. In the introduction, he addresses himself to the people of England and he says, you shouldn't feel too self-righteous reading this satire of the totalitarian enemy, because in free England, ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. And he doesn't say much about it. He actually has two sentences. He says one reason is the press "is owned by wealthy men" who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed.

But the second reason, and the more important one in my view, is a good education, so that if you've gone to all the good schools, Oxford, Cambridge, and so on, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things it wouldn't do to say--and I don't think he went far enough: wouldn't do to think. And that's very broad among the educated classes. That's why overwhelmingly they tend to support state power and state violence, and maybe with some qualifications, like, say, Obama is regarded as a critic of the invasion of Iraq. Why? Because he thought it was a strategic blunder. That puts him on the same moral level as some Nazi general who thought that the second front was a strategic blunder--you should knock off England first. That's called criticism.

And sometimes it's kind of outlandish. For example, there was just a review in The New York Times Book Review of Glenn Greenwald's new book by Michael Kinsley, and which bitterly condemned him as--mostly character assassination. Didn't say anything substantive. But Kinsley did say that it's ridiculous to think that there's any repression in the media in the United States, 'cause we can write quite clearly and criticize anything. And he can, but then you have to look at what he says, and it's quite interesting.

In the 1980s, when the major local news story was the massive U.S. atrocities in Central America--they were horrendous; I mean, it wasn't presented that way, but that's what was happening--Kinsley was the voice of the left on television. And there were interesting incidents. At one point, the U.S. Southern Command, which ... gave instructions to the terrorist force that they were running in Nicaragua, called the Contras--and they were a terrorist force--they gave them orders to--they said "not to (...) duke it out with the Sandinistas", meaning avoid the Nicaraguan army, and attack undefended targets like agricultural cooperatives and health clinics and so on. And they could do it, because they were the first guerrillas in history to have high-level communications equipment, computers and so on. The U.S., the CIA, just controlled the air totally, so they could send instructions to the terrorist forces telling them how to avoid the Nicaraguan army detachments and attack undefended civilian targets.

Well, ... it wasn't publicized, but it was mentioned. And Americas Watch, which later became part of Human Rights Watch, made some protests. And Michael Kinsley responded. He condemned Americas Watch for their emotionalism. He said, we have to recognize that we have to accept a pragmatic criterion. We have to ask--something like this--he said, we have to compare the amount of blood and misery poured in with the success of the outcome in producing democracy--what we'll call democracy. And if it meets the pragmatic criterion, then terrorist attacks against civilian targets are perfectly legitimate--which is not a surprising view in his case. He's the editor of The New Republic. The New Republic, supposedly a liberal journal, was arguing that we should support Latin American fascists because there are more important things than human rights in El Salvador, where they were murdering tens of thousands of people.

That's the liberals. And, yeah, they can get in the media no problem. And they're praised for it, regarded with praise. All of this is part of the massive system of--you know, it's not that anybody sits at the top and plans at all; it's just exactly as Orwell said: it's instilled into you. It's part of a deep indoctrination system which leads to a certain way of looking at the world and looking at authority, which says, yes, we have to be subordinate to authority, we have to believe we're very independent and free and proud of it. As long as we keep within the limits, we are. Try to go beyond those limits, you're out.

"The Butler" quote

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Laurie Scott calls for Ontario task force to protect sex slavery victims

These kinds of news stories don't usually make the front news. The general public in the Western world is oblivious to these kinds of stories & thinks that these kinds of things, i.e. sexual violence against vulnerable women & sex slavery only happens in law less countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cambodia, & other African & Latin American countries. And these girls & women who unfortunately fall victims to these are not adults or illegal migrants but born-&-bred Canadians & even as young as 11 years old.

Furthermore, this is happening right here in the largest Canadian city; Toronto. But this is not happening only in Toronto or Canada, but happening all over the Western world; US, UK, & other Western European countries.

People who are involved in the rehabilitation of these victims are saying that this problem is not dying down, but actually exploding in major urban areas of North America & Europe. What the heck is going on?

Well, the problem is borne out of multiple factors:

1. Decreasing role of parents: Western philosophy on family, rightly or wrongly, changed in the last few decades that everyone is responsible for their own lives. Parents can, but actively discouraged, to meddle into their daughters' affairs. Heck, the society even gave that kind of parenting a derogatory name, "helicopter parenting."

Girls were taught from schools to general society that you are your own person & should make your own decision. That's all ok when that young lady is old enough (at least in university) to understand her world around her & see what's going on, but telling that to a teen girl is simply wrong. Mix that "independence" teaching with the love-hate relationship a teen has for his/her parents, & you are only going to get a problem.

2. Broken homes: In the latter half of 20th century, more & more homes start to break up. Every one on their own. Parents, when living separately, got more expenses, & hence, working more & more to bring that extra cash. When single parents are working more & more, & looking less & less after their kids, the kids got the free leash on whatever they can do. Well, from dabbling into drugs to coming into contact with the wrong crowd through those drugs to selling their bodies to get those drugs (when out of money) leads these girls to a life of prostitution & sex slavery.

3. Media's objectification of women: Media is an expert in manipulating social values & thinking. People in 21st century have being programmed for the past few decades that women are sexual objects. Of course, internet & easy accessibility to porn only escalated that problem, but media didn't stop there, too. Men & boys are bombarded day & night that women should be used for sexual purposes & then discarded like used tissues.

Movies & TV shows all show women whimpering after men to take them & use them as they please. Young men are being heavily influenced by latest rap & hip hop music videos & these videos don't exactly show men respecting women. Then, on top of that, we got the Kardashian clan, which, ironically, is the young female generation's idol. That idol is effectively teaching young females to rise to the top of social hierarchy through sex.

4. Female dresses: Yes, inevitably, this topic will be breached. Female dresses is pretty much becoming non-existent in the Western world. Men are wearing more & more clothes, while girls & women are encouraged to take it all off ... in the name of latest fashion. Latest fashion trends from the Kardashians is pretty much showing as much as flesh in the public as a female can. Miley Cyrus is showing young females in the West, & effectively, the whole world, that wearing a few strips of clothes, literally, is enough. Heck, we got stories coming out of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, & New York, US, that women are publicly strolling around in the nude (after all, what's the point of those strips, too?)

So, what we can then expect from young impressionable girls, when they are being taught from a young age that do whatever you what to do & it's your body, & nobody in the home is teaching them any proper morals & values, & their celebrity idols are prancing around on the worldwide stages in the nude, & they are seeing that their celebrity idols got their fame & fortunes by baring it all?

They definitely are not going to learn to study hard, don't do drugs, wear proper clothes to school, make good friends, & of course, have good role models in their lives. They are learning, & hence, then actively practicing, with not very good end results, to get what they want by using their bodies as a collateral.

Of course, these factors is not the comprehensive list of all that is causing this problem of prostitution. There are lot more factors. These are just the tip of iceberg. But what I'm trying to say is that this "exploding" problem of prostitution is not so easily resolved by a special vice squad or the close collaboration of a few law enforcement agencies. It may just take the problem underground, which is even more dangerous for the victims. This problem is just a symptom of several other social problems & unless, & until, those problems are handled effectively, this problem of prostitution will not go away.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/18/laurie-scott-urges-ontario-task-force-to-protecting-sex-slavery-victims.html

Ontario is in the grips of homegrown human trafficking, says a veteran Tory MPP, who is calling for the creation of a provincial task force on sex slavery.

Laurie Scott, the member for Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, says women & girls as young as 11 years old are being forced into prostitution here & they are not newcomers from the former Eastern Bloc looking for a better life — they are Canadian-born.

“I’ve heard stories of girls being targeted at the mall food court, the parking lot at their high school or a house party they attended with friends,” she told the legislature last week.

“This province is home to the largest number of domestic human trafficking cases, where victims are born & raised right here in Ontario,” said Scott, who presented a non-binding motion calling on the government to form a special team dedicated to rooting out human trafficking.

It would be similar to the existing guns & gangs unit, in which police officers, Crown prosecutors & social workers work together as a team from beginning to end of an investigation.

“Through this combination of expertise, the task force achieves the dual purpose of apprehending criminals & assisting victims,” Scott said in the introduction to her motion, which passed with all-party support.

Asked whether the passage of the non-binding motion meant a task force would be established, a spokeswoman for Community Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi said the government would continue to work with its partners “to combat this very serious issue.”

Scott said it’s also important to co-ordinate support for women & girls escaping exploitation.

“One aspect where a provincial task force would be immeasurable would be its ability to help facilitate the creation of safe houses solely for the purpose of sheltering human trafficking victims,” she said.

MPPs were told how pimps frequently move prostitutes up & down the Highway 401 corridor both to meet demand & to make police detection much more difficult.

“Young women are lured through personal relationships, systemically isolated from the family & friends, psychologically & physically abused by those who they trusted & in some cases loved,” said Scott.

Human trafficking was recently front & centre at a legislative select committee on sexual violence & harassment against women. Scott is a member of that committee.

Among those that appeared before the committee was Katarina MacLeod, a former prostitute whose agency, Rising Angels, deals with women trying to escape that life. She said modern-day slavery is out of control.

“From what I see working on the front lines it is getting worse … it is really exploding,” MacLeod told the Star, adding many of the women she sees are under 18.

She said she is hearing of more & more women moving from hotel to hotel, in many cases not even knowing what city they are in.

MacLeod agreed a specialized team in the justice system “fighting for these girls” is needed.

Several police services across the province have vice squads that deal with human trafficking & informally share information.

York Regional Police is recognized for its progressive work on human smuggling, especially in dealing with sex trade workers. Det. Sgt. Peter Casey said the force has not arrested a woman on solicitation charges in the past 7 years — but it does throw pimps in jail.

The people behind the smuggling range from organized crime to teenage boys pimping out girls in their schools because there is “huge” money to be made, said Casey.

“Let’s put it this way, if you are a drug dealer … you can only sell that kilo of cocaine once, but if you are a pimp & have a number of young vulnerable women you are exploiting, you can exploit them over & over & over again, day after day.”

Experts said a woman working in the sex trade can generate revenues of $280,000 a year. And that often goes straight into a pimp’s pocket.
...

The Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services says it has provided about $1.4 million in funding since 2003 to 11 projects under the Proceeds of Crime–Front Line Policing Grant, to help police combat human trafficking in Ontario.

3,000 children enslaved in Britain after being trafficked from Vietnam

After I keep hearing news of how adults & youths, of both genders, were keep getting enslaved in war torn countries, where there is no law & order, I came upon this article & thought to put some perspective to this news of slavery ... in a developed Western country. Now, this article is highlighting the problem of slavery in UK, but US & Australia have a similar problem.

These 3,000 children are enslaved in UK. They are being sexually & physically abused & put in domestic labour as a slave. The authorities, as usual, keep saying that they are trying to end it but losing the war against slavery. The reality of 21st century is that the slavery has actually increased in this century.

Slavery is wrong, regardless of whoever or wherever it happens. But, considering, there are almost 10,000 to 13,000 slaves in Britain, then how can the Western developed countries expect people in war torn countries to prosecute people in slave trade (criminal gangs & organizations) & protect people from being enslaved. It's very easy to blame others for their practices & ideologies before judging oneself where he/she is standing.

Furthermore, we need to keep in mind that these criminal gangs are only suppliers of slaves. Supply cannot exist without demand. That means then that people in the West, regardless of their race, education, national origins, ethnicity, religion, are open to knowingly taking in a slave, as long as it benefits them, somehow. Slavery exists because the general public demands it. Now, it might be a small section of the general public who is demanding it, but they definitely are the customers. The public supports slavery by either directly buying the slaves (usually rich elites) or indirectly asking for quality products at the lowest prices possible, which is possible only by businesses paying no or extremely low wages (recall my blog on Thailand's fishing, & Australian & Spanish agricultural industries employing slaves).

Since, we also know that criminal gangs would not be involved into this business without making a good return on their investments, they charge high prices for these slaves. So, their customers must be well-heeled to be paying such high prices for these slaves, which, in turn, means that they themselves are earning handsomely. So, the "respected" rich elites of our society don't hesitate from slavery. Hey, I thought, that happened in 1800s in the Western countries. So, after all, it seems like that the society hasn't developed, at all.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/may/23/vietnam-children-trafficking-nail-bar-cannabis

Hien was 10 when he arrived in Britain. He did not know where he was or where he had been. He knew only that he was here to work. Since he emerged from the back of a lorry after crossing from Calais 7 years ago, his experience has been one of exploitation & misery. He has been a domestic slave, been trafficked into cannabis factories, been abused & beaten & was eventually prosecuted & sent to prison. It has been a life of terror, isolation & pain.

... . He is one of an estimated 3,000 Vietnamese children in forced labour in the UK, used for financial gain by criminal gangs running cannabis factories, nail bars, garment factories, brothels & private homes. Charged up to £25,000 for their passage to the UK, these children collectively owe their traffickers almost £75m.

While there is growing awareness of the use of trafficked Vietnamese people in the booming domestic cannabis trade, child trafficking experts are now warning that the British authorities are unable to keep up with the speed at which UK-based Vietnamese gangs are recruiting & exploiting children for use in other criminal enterprises such as gun-smuggling, crystal meth production & prostitution rings.

“By our calculations there are around 3,000 Vietnamese children in the UK who are being used for profit by criminal gangs,” says Philip Ishola, former head of the UK’s Counter Human Trafficking Bureau.

“The police & the authorities are now aware that trafficked children are being forced to work in cannabis farms but this is really only the tip of the iceberg. Often the same child will be exploited not just in a cannabis farm but also in myriad different ways. This is happening right under our noses & not enough is being done to stop it.”

Police admit that they are struggling with the speed at which Vietnamese criminal gangs are diversifying & expanding their activities across the England & into Scotland & Northern Ireland. “Right now we are just fighting in the trenches, fighting in the nail bars,” said detective inspector Steven Cartwright, who heads Police Scotland’s human trafficking unit. “It is vital that we that we understand new methods being deployed by the gangs because we need to stop demand at one end or limit their ability to make money at the other.”

Hien’s journey to the UK started when he was taken from his village at the age of 5 by someone who claimed to be his uncle. As an orphan, he had no option but to do as he was told. He spent 5 years travelling overland, completely unaware which countries he was going through, from Vietnam before being smuggled across the Channel & taken to a house in London. Here he spent the next 3 years trapped in domestic servitude, cooking & cleaning for groups of Vietnamese people who would come in & out of the property where he was held.

The men in the house beat him & forced him to drink alcohol until he was sick. Other things happened to him that he still cannot talk about. He was never allowed out of the house & was told that if he tried to escape, the police would arrest him & take him to prison.

During his time in that house, Hien says, many other Vietnamese children were brought in. They told him that they were here to work & to pay off debts for their families back home. They would stay for a few days & then be taken away, & Hien never saw them again. He became homeless after his “uncle” abandoned him. He slept in parks & ate out of bins. He was eventually picked up by a Vietnamese couple, who offered him a place to stay but then forced him to work in cannabis farms in flats in first Manchester & then Scotland.

In his testimony to police, he says he still does not understand exactly what the plants were, although he understands now that they are worth a lot of money. He looked after the plants, using pesticides that made him ill, & only left the flat when he helped transport the leaves to be dried elsewhere. He was locked in, threatened, beaten & completely isolated from the outside world.

“I was never paid any money for working there,” he says. “I did not stay there for money but because I was afraid & I hoped the whole thing would end soon.”

When the police came, they found Hien alone with the plants. He told his story to the police, but was still sent to young offenders’ institution in Scotland, where he spent 10 months on remand, charged with cannabis cultivation. He was released only after the intervention of a crown prosecutor led to him being identified as a victim of trafficking.

Vietnamese children such as Hien are easy pickings for the increasingly sophisticated trafficking gangs operating between the UK & Vietnam. Children make up nearly a quarter of the estimated 13,000 people trafficked into the UK every year, & Vietnamese children are the largest group of children trafficked to the UK. The United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime estimates that 30 Vietnamese children arrive illegally in the UK every month, on well-established smuggling routes.

“Children are an increasingly valuable assets to criminal gangs because they are easy to get hold of, easily intimidated & exploited, & easy to keep isolated & unaware of what is really happening around them, which makes it far less likely for them to be able to disclose anything of use to the police,” says Ishola.

When it comes to Vietnamese children, he says, the culture of seeing a child as the “golden egg”, who will be sent to work abroad & provide for their families still prevails. This attitude is exploited by gangs, who deceive families into believing that there is legitimate work in Britain for their children.

“During their journey to the UK, the traffickers keep charging the children more & more money, & by the time they arrive, the pressure to pay back this enormous debt is a key factor in their vulnerability to ending up trapped in forced labour,” he says. “Upon arrival the children are faced with a highly organised system of criminal activity, with methods of control ranging from extreme physical brutality to debt bondage. Before they even arrive, that trap is set for them.”

Members of the Vietnamese diaspora in London told the Observer that they had seen an explosion in child trafficking by criminal gangs operating on the peripheries of their communities in recent years. “Some of these children & victims have told me that it cost them £25,000 to get to the UK,” said one Vietnamese community leader in London, who did not want to be named. “They come with a debt & they are not allowed to leave until the debt is paid. That is slavery & exploitation.”

Like Hien, many of the children end up working on cannabis farms. The link between child trafficking & the UK’s domestic cannabis industry has been increasing, with Vietnamese children the main group at risk. According to a 2014 report by the NGO AntiSlavery International, almost all potential victims of trafficking linked to cannabis are Vietnamese, & more than 80% are children.

Many of these children are subsequently prosecuted by the UK justice system, despite many being identified as potential victims of trafficking. This has led to Vietnamese children becoming the second-largest ethnic group held in youth detention centres across the UK.

Vietnamese gangs have historically dominated the UK’s £1bn cannabis trade & have been instrumental in the proportion of domestically grown cannabis in Britain rising from 15% in 2005 to about 90% now. While the trade remains enormously profitable – the number of Vietnamese cannabis factories in the UK has grown by 150% in the past 2 years – their grip has been weakened thanks to increased law enforcement & under competition from British growers. Now they are finding new & more efficient ways of doing business.

“In terms of law enforcement, I think we’re about 2 years behind the curve,” says Daniel Silverstone, a criminologist at London Metropolitan University who has written extensively on Vietnamese gangs in the UK.

“Traffickers have changed their modus operandi in recent years in direct response to the attention & interventions of law enforcement. A few years ago it was almost exclusively cannabis farms, but their business interests have now become much more diverse. So we’re seeing an expansion into Scotland & Northern Ireland, the use of nail bars for forced labour & money laundering, & moves into drugs like crystal meth.” This means that children, who are an integral part of the gangs’ business operations, are also now being moved into other areas of exploitation. “As their grip on the domestic cannabis trade slips a little, they are looking to maximise their profits from these children in whatever way they can,” he adds.

The Metropolitan police say that there is now much more awareness of the complexity of tackling the UK’s child trafficking problem but that the closed nature of the Vietnamese community has made things difficult. “What has persistently been a challenge for us is making inroads into this community,” says Phil Brewer, who heads its new human trafficking & kidnap unit. “We usually only find out about a child when we make a raid & find someone in a cannabis factory or nail bar, but often this person has been through multiple forms of exploitation before we reach them.”

Parosha Chandran, a leading human rights barrister & UN expert on trafficking, has represented Vietnamese children charged with cannabis cultivation who have gone through many different trafficking situations before being moved into cannabis farms.

“Trafficked Vietnamese children have rarely faced just one type of forced labour,” she says. “I’ve come across cases where young people have been subjected to a spectrum of exploitative practices. In one of my cases, for example, the child was forced to look after people’s homes & care for their children, when he was just a child himself, then he was taken to work cleaning a nail bar, then moved to another place where he was forced to sew labels on to clothing – & all of this happened before he even arrived in the cannabis factory.”

In March the UK passed its first Modern Slavery Bill, designed to increase the prosecution of traffickers & give better protection to victims of modern slavery in the UK. However, Chandran says that Vietnamese children continue to be prosecuted for cannabis cultivation while their traffickers remain free.

“The Modern Slavery Act’s central focus on prosecution is misguided & its provisions fail to fully protect the rights of trafficked children,” she says. “We as a democratic country need to find durable solutions to ensure these children remain protected from harm for the rest of their lives.”

...

Methods used to lure children from Vietnam to the UK are also becoming increasingly sophisticated, including use of social media. “Vietnamese children are brought to the UK, taken in by Vietnamese adults & put to domestic work,” says Swat Pandi, from the NSPCC’s child trafficking advice centre. “The child feels indebted to the adults for food & shelter & is told they need to return the favour by looking after cannabis plants. These children suffer high levels of neglect, emotional abuse &, in the absence of any protective factors, are highly vulnerable to physical & sexual abuse.”

Despite the government’s pledge to end modern slavery & the UK’s first modern slavery bill, passed in March, Chitty says she has seen no change in the numbers of Vietnamese children coming through her charity’s services. “It’s very much business as usual,” she says. “We still have a problem with immediate safeguarding & appropriate placements for trafficked children. And young people are still being criminalised by the courts.”

Even when a child has been taken out of trafficking & come under the care of a local authority, he or she is likely to return to the control of the traffickers. In 2013, a report by independent thinktank the Centre for Social Justice concluded that 60% of trafficked children in local authority care go missing, nearly a third of them within a week of arrival. Most are never found again. There are increasing reports of children being retrafficked from foster homes or when they have been given asylum status.

“I don’t think we understand the entire enterprise,” says detective inspector Cartwright. “Despite our best intentions I think we’re not offering them anything that would persuade them to stay. Many will get retrafficked because we didn’t offer them a better alternative to what the traffickers are providing.”

Hien is trying to rebuild his life after being given asylum in Scotland, but is struggling to find peace after years of trauma. “I still worry that the traffickers may find me & come to my house. But I know this time that I will ask for help,” he says. “I think they have justice here but I wish they hadn’t kept me in prison for so long. By telling my story, I want people to understand what I have experienced here.”

Have police departments across the US declared war on black people?

A great opinion piece. Simply fantastic. Left me speechless. Some points in it were similar to what I've been saying all along in my blog posts (for example, I've always said that slavery has not ended but immigration in the developed world is a form of slavery when migrants are considered second-class citizens, & regardless of how much US & the developed world lectures the developing world on human rights abuses, the developed world itself has a far worse continuing record in human rights abuses). A must-read piece.

Only thing I will add here is that although, this opinion piece is focused on African-Americans, I will add all minorities in it; be it South Asians or Latinos. Any & all minority, which is "coloured", is very adversely affected by North American racism on a daily basis. If you see there that I mentioned "North American," because racism is as much in US as in Canada. We, Canadians, may think there's no or far less racism in Canada than US, but ask any minority in Canada how they are faring in Canadian society, & they will tell you how racism has affected them.

A great line from the piece: "Rather than the land of the free, the United States of America is the land of cruelty & barbarity, a corporate dictatorship under which the poor & dispossessed are locked out of society, denied healthcare, housing, education, & life chances compatible with a humane system of government & economy."
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http://www.rt.com/op-edge/255829-police-brutality-black-us-rights/

Organizers from the group, Ferguson Action, declared recently that, “The war on Black people in Baltimore is the same war on Black people across America. Decades of poverty, unemployment, under-funded schools & police terrorism have reached a boiling point in Baltimore & cities around the country."
 
The scenes of civil unrest in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray – the latest in an alarming number of young black man to end up dead at the hands of the police or while in police custody – broke with a recent pattern of non-violent protest & attempts to gain justice & redress through the system. Despite 6 of the cops involved in the Freddie Gray case being charged with Gray’s homicide, it remains to be seen whether the unrest in Baltimore is a one-off event or a deepening of a developing crisis that appears to have no end in sight.
 
According to figures compiled by the Free Thought Project – a US justice advocacy group – 136 people had been killed by the police across the country. It’s a figure that makes sober reading when we break it down into 1 victim every 8 hours, or 3 per day. No other industrialized nation compares in this regard, highlighting the extent to which social cohesion in a country that extends itself in lecturing other nations around the world on human rights is near non-existent.
 
That said, those included in the aforementioned number of victims of police violence are not only black people, & it is a fact that more white people have been killed by the police than black, until of course we break that statistic down to factor in the proportion of black victims from the population as a whole.
 
It would be a mistake to put this crisis down to a few rogue & racist cops. It runs much deeper than that, exposing the ugly truth of a society that operates according to the maxim of all against all. In other words, the culture of racism & brutality that pervades increasingly militarized police departments is a symptom of the foundation of injustice upon which the nation & its institutions rest. Rather than the land of the free, the United States of America is the land of cruelty & barbarity, a corporate dictatorship under which the poor & dispossessed are locked out of society, denied healthcare, housing, education, & life chances compatible with a humane system of government & economy.
 
The corollary to this is a male prison population of over 2 million that is disproportionately black, making the US, a country that makes up just 5% of the entire world's population, home to a quarter of the entire world’s prison population. This in itself is a withering indictment of a nation that extends itself in claiming exceptionalism based on its self-appointed status as the land of the free. This view is based on a belief that the majority of crimes are a product of poverty, alienation, & social exclusion. The black American novelist, Ralph Ellison, in his most famous novel – ‘Invisible Man’ – opines that, “Crime is an act of unconscious rebellion.”

In the US in 2015 there is much to rebel about.
 
I saw it for myself during a recent visit to Los Angeles, a city where the sheer number of homeless human beings is simply staggering. Everywhere I went I came across them shuffling up & down the street mumbling to themselves, carrying their earthly belongings in plastic bags or, if they’re lucky, pushing them in a shopping kart.
 
This huge colony of homeless people exists in the entertainment capital of the world, home to Hollywood, where the mythology of the American dream projects the lie that poverty & social exclusion are products of individual failure rather than systemic failure, while material wealth & success is a measure of human worth & moral rectitude. It is of course a lie, one that has succeeded in acting as a smokescreen to conceal the widening & deepening cracks in the nation's foundations.
 
Those suffering under the weight of this system should not expect to receive any succor from Washington anytime soon.
 
On the contrary, here resides a political culture & political class slavishly devoted to the rights, interests, & advancement of corporations & their very rich executives, shareholders, & investors – i.e. the rich. The by-product of this culture has been the normalization of social & economic injustice, which as mentioned is the foundation of a foreign policy of war, military intervention, & the blithe disregard for international law & national sovereignty as & when those aforementioned corporate interests dictate.
 
Some may question the validity of linking US foreign policy to the state of its society at home, but they'd be wrong. Both are inextricably linked, forging a circular relationship of injustice, violence, leading inexorably to atomization & crises. Malcolm X put it best when he said, “You can’t understand what’s going on in Mississippi if you don’t understand what’s going on in the Congo.”

In the US class & race constitute two sides of the same coin. Black people make up around 13% of the population, which translates to just over 30 million people, the majority of whom can trace their roots in the country to slavery, with the argument gaining traction that the plantation still exists for young black males today in the shape of a vast network of Federal & State correctional facilities.
 
No justice, no peace & black lives matter are the clarion calls of a movement that has emerged in response to a wave of violence committed by police departments viewed increasingly as forces of occupation rather than law & order.
 
Who will guard the guardians?

Australia to probe foreign labour

There have been stories of "slave-labour" being used in American agriculture sector. There have been stories of migrant workers being used as slaves in the European agriculture sector (fruits & vegetables grown on Spanish & Portuguese farms were being sold in British supermarkets). Then, we also have stories of slaves working in Thai's fishing industry, which ultimately supplies seafood products all over North America & Europe. Now, we have "slave labour" on Australian farms.

Who says slavery is no more in this "modern" world?

Is it surprising that slavery still exists? (not to me, at least). Heck, that's why, immigration exists.

On one end, we have big supermarkets like WalMart, Costco, Aldi, Lidl etc which demand low-cost supplies of produce from their suppliers, because after all, they need to sell those at a low cost, too, to their customers (who are themselves are earning meagre wages, thanks to automation of their jobs).

Anyway, so, if the suppliers need to reduce their costs, then, after automating whatever processes they can automate, they will start hiring migrants & using them as "slave labour", which only means long hours of work at meagre wages with no benefits, whatsoever.

So, you can decide for yourself, where's the problem lies in this whole supply chain?
- Customers are always looking for the cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Retailers are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Distributors are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Producer is pressured to produce at as low a cost as possible.

Problem actually lies at the top; the business persons & owners of companies who are always looking to cut costs, & the biggest component of their costs, is always going to be their labour costs. It also includes all those shareholders / stockholders, esp. the large institutional ones, who pressure companies to lower their costs (to maximize their profits & ultimately, dividends to shareholders).

Companies have only one way to reduce labour costs, by automating whatever they can automate & reduce the workforce to as few a people as they can, to the point that the labour public has a choice to either accept working at meagre wages with no benefits or no job at all. So, that public will obviously go for the cheapest produce it can find in the supermarket, because, after all, that labour public needs to eat.

So, can we really blame the agriculture producer / farmer to hire migrant workers & use them like a "slave labour" when owners, like, Sam Walton's family (WalMart owners) are becoming billionaires?
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-32586779

Allegations of unethical treatment & underpayment will be investigated by the state government of Victoria.
 
Victoria will also push for a national inquiry into what it has described as "a national shame".
 
Claims Australia has an underclass of foreign workers treated like "slave labour" were made by ABC TV ... .
 
The report by ABC's Four Corners programme detailed widespread abuses of Australia's 417 visa.
 
The visa is for people aged 18 to 30 years of age who want a working holiday of up to 12 months in Australia.
 
The investigation uncovered abuses of the popular visa, including what were described as "slave-like conditions" at farms & factories across Australia.
 
"No employee should ever be exploited, harassed or deprived of their basic liberties", said Victoria's Minister for Industrial Relations Natalie Hutchins.
 
"This is not just about the underpayment of wages; this is about creating an underclass of foreign workers," said Ms Hutchins in a statement.
 
Foreign underclass
 
"It's clear that Victoria needs a better system in place when it comes to regulating labour hire practices," she said.
 
The food being picked & processed by exploited workers was reportedly sold to consumers across the country by major supermarket chains & fast food outlets.
 
Queensland MP Keith Pitt last month called for an investigation of exploitation of foreign workers in the horticultural sector.
 
He said many farmers were at risk of prosecution because they were using labour hire companies that underpaid backpacker workers.
 
Migrant workers are essential to Australia's agriculture sector, according to the National Farmers' Federation (NFF).
 
"Without them, there would be a chronic labour shortage at peak harvest times of the year," said NFF President Brent Finlay.
 
But he said all farmers had a responsibility to adopt employment practices & use labour contractors that did not exploit workers.
 
"And it's not just farmers, this is a whole of supply chain issue," he said.