I’ve been reading about our prison system. Who runs them, who’s in them, what politicians have an interest in them. I’ve come across some pretty interesting stories. In this time of economic downturn, the private prison firms are turning a nice profit. One article I ran across is by Catherine Austin Fitts, a woman who worked on Wall Street. It’s a long read, but very interesting. She writes of the privatization of our prisons, Wall Streets hand in it, our governments hand in it…..and how our prison population has risen with it’s privatization. From the article:
If you want to see a bi-partisan system at work, follow the money. In the middle of a Presidential election, a Democratic administration engineered significant equity value into a Republican firm’s back pocket. If you step back and take the longer view, however, what you realize is that many of the players involved appear to have connections to Iran Contra and money laundering networks. A surprising number of them went to Harvard and other universities whose endowments are significant players in the investment world. And as it turned out, while the U.S. prison population was soaring from 1 million to 2 million people and US government and consumer debt was skyrocketing, Harvard Endowment was also growing — from $4 billion to $19 billion during the Clinton Administration. Harvard and Harvard graduates seemed to be in the thick of many things profitable.
You can read her story here. The passing of mandatory sentencing laws have increased the time that people remain in prison. The longer terms people serve, the more profitable they are to the people who run the prisons, and the people who hold stock in those companies. Our prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970.
From Senator Webb’s website:
Growth in the prison population is due to changing policy, not increased crime. Many criminal justice experts have found that the increase in the incarceration rate is the product of changes in penal policy and practice, not changes in crime rates. Changes in sentencing, both in terms of time served and the range of offenses meriting incarceration, underlie the growth in the prison population.
I think I’ll send Senator Webb Catherine Austin Fitt’s article.
Today I ran across the story of a man named Scott Walt. An example of why we have more prisoners than any other nation on the face of the earth. It’s all about the money. Here’s another site with links to articles and books about our prison system. If nothing else, make time to read Fitt’s story. Well worth the read.
A 14-year military interrogator has undercut one of the key arguments posited by Vice President Dick Cheney in favor of the Bush Administration’s torture techniques and alleged that the use of torture has cost “hundreds if not thousands” of American lives.
CHICAGO (AP) — Sen. Roland Burris 
