America's Prison Industrial Complex: Locking Up Folks For Corporate Prison Profits is the American Way

The absolute worst president in US history could very well be Richard M. Nixon. Nixon is responsible for de-tethering the dollar from gold with an Executive Order and creating the War on Drugs. Nixon totally destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar and permanently rendered the dollar a fiat paper currency that is manipulated to transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

Nixon's 40 year War on Drugs has cost American taxpayers over $1 trillion dollars and birthed America's Prison Industrial Complex.  The result is that the American prison system is overflowing with folks who are rotting in prison for mostly minor drug offenses.  This has spawned a huge privatized prison industrial complex that lobbies state and federal legislators to criminalize more and more routine human activities.  The results of Police State USA are astounding.  America, a nation with a population of 310 million, has over 2.2 million folks locked up in prison while China, a nation with 1.3 billion folks only has 1.6 million in prison.  America has more folks in prison than any nation on the planet and by a wide margin, here.  The New York Times reported that violent crime in America has been decreasing for 40 years and is now at an all time low, here.

The effects of the failed and costly War on Drugs and its correlation to massive increases in the prison population are graphically illustrated:

Pro Publica has done some outstanding investigative reporting on America's Prison Industrial Complex.

The growth of the private detention industry has long been a subject of scrutiny. A recent eight-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune chronicled how more than half of Louisiana’s 40,000 inmates are housed in prisons run by sheriffs or private companies as part of a broader financial incentive scheme. The detention business goes beyond just criminal prisoners.

As a Huffington Post investigation pointed out last month, nearly half of all immigrant detainees are now held in privately run detention facilities. Just this week, the New York Times delved into lax oversight at industrial-sized but privately run halfway houses in New Jersey.

We’ve taken a look at some of the numbers associated with the billion-dollar and wide-ranging for-profit detention industry—and the two companies that dominate the market...

Two private corporations dominate the private Prison Industrial Complex, Corrections Corporation of America and The Geo Group Inc. They lard up political campaigns with special interest dough to get legislators to pass more insanely stupid laws for the exclusive benefit of prison profits. Only in America do we grow the prison system for private profits and only in America will politicians sell out their fellow citizens for a campaign contribution. If the Prison Industrial Complex isn't horrifying enough because it destroys lives and families, it's also extended to children. Yes, the prison operators want America's children.

The Other Prison Industrial Complex

The U.S. locks up children at more than six times the rate of all other developed nations. The over 60,000 average daily juvenile lockups, a figure estimated by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF), are also disproportionately young people of color. With an average cost of $80,000 per year to lock up a child, the U.S. spends more than $5 billion annually on youth detention. On top of the cost, in its recent report No Place for Kids, the AECF presents evidence to show that youth incarceration does not reduce recidivism rates, does not benefit public safety and exposes those imprisoned to further abuse and violence.

  

But it's not just the politicians who are bribed by the Prison Industrial Complex, the graft and corruption has spread to the judicial system where judges are taking bribes to deliver child prison inmate 'customers' to private prison operators.

U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money

Any nation that tolerates the Prison Industrial Complex is so morally defunct that such nations mirror Nazi Germany. Have we become Nazis? Except for those liberty activists who fight for civil liberties and justice, most of America is oblivious to the massive injustice within our criminal justice system.

But since America is a place that eagerly embraces murdering foreign citizens for defense contractor profits, putting Americans in prison for prison contractor profits is now accepted as routine standard operating procedure.  Such a society is doomed by its own unspeakable evil.