BY STUDENT
The United States is a first world country in which 3 million of its citizens are incarcerated. This number alone is staggering but when taking a deeper look into a breakdown of this 3 million, you may be taken aback. With 56% of the prison population being comprised of Latino and African American people, incarceration disparities become evident. As the prison industry becomes heavily privatized and profitable, with laws allowing the exploitation of those imprisoned, prisoners are becoming a hot commodity. This poses the question, does America in 2019, continue to benefit off of slave labor? In my blogpost I seek to prove just why America would want to turn a blind eye to the abuse of imprisoned African American and Latino people.
(This political cartoon demonstrates the life cycle of a minority within America. We are raised with an innate fear of law enforcement and treated as criminals by the time we are old enough to walk along the streets, only to be sent to prison to work for a company which sees us as a paycheck.)
The American prison system can be characterized as harsh, oppressive, inhumane, and lucrative. For many corporations, prisoners are a product in which they are able to easily manipulate to turn quick profit. The industry is quite successful with it being worth roughly 4 billion dollars, the revenues of these private prisons are split with state and federal government for their cooperation. The idea behind private prisons is they bring relief to the government by allowing them to place their money in other sectors rather than spend it on the construction of a new prison facility. These privately-owned prisons are operated at a more cost-efficient rate due to them side stepping the mandates the public facilities face, which results in poor safety conditions. These private prisons are a money grab as they don’t place much money into the bedding, properly training guards, food, and health care to maximize their profit. This industry is built off the backs of those they demean to such horrid conditions, for pennies on the dollar, if that. These backs being those of mainly brown and black people stuck in the never-ending cycle of systematic oppression brought upon them by the judicial and prison system.
America and its capitalist ideals can be directly linked to this exploitation of black and brown people. The United States benefiting off of the detriment of others is displayed time and time again within our history, whether it be the Native Americans, Blacks, European immigrants, or Latinos. In our country we find that minorities tend to be at a disadvantage when it comes to the laws set in place, it seems as though law enforcement over patrol us hoping to find us committing a crime, as we are easier to control if we are kept under their watch. This agenda is supported and pushed by corporate and federal greed, as police arrest us, the more of us become captives behind bars, resulting in tremendous profit growth. America stands to make more money with us imprisoned rather than us free to live our lives, which could explain just why we are arrested at disproportionate rates. After the countless calls for reform and change, the many lives lost to protests, and laws set in place to “protect” us, we still have legal slaves in 2019.
Bibliography
Green, Matthew. “Winners of 2017 California High School Political Cartoon Contest.” KQED, 17 Apr. 2017, www.kqed.org/lowdown/26460/winners-of-the-2017-california-high-school-political-cartoon-contest.
Morín, José Luis. “Latinas/Os and US Prisons: Trends and Challenges.” Latino Studies, vol. 6, no. 1-2, 2008, pp. 11–34., doi:10.1057/lst.2008.1.
Markowitz, Eric. “Making Profits on the Captive Prison Market.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 19 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/business/currency/making-profits-on-the-captive-prison-market.
Haberman, Clyde. “For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/us/prisons-immigration-detention.html.
I think you chose a great topic, one that is necessary to discuss especially in these times when no only are criminals are being incarcerated but kids. Immigrant kids are being detained in these detention centers. Despite the fact that this is completely inhumane because as you stated the facilities lack proper bedding, food, health care, among other things. These kids are dying and are at risk of PTSD, yet the government and private companies only care about the profit they gain by detaining these individuals. Going back to these prisons it makes one question the amount of police brutality in our communities. I remember watching the video of that young boy on the train seat with his hands in the air. Watching how these cops just rush in and tackle him to the ground when he was cooperating. Arresting him just for not paying the train fare, the cop definitely handled the situation completely wrong. It just shows how they find any little thing to arrest our people and make us seem as criminals to the world.
ReplyDeleteWritten by Karina
DeleteThis political cartoon for me is very telling. The government cooperates with privatized prisons to lock up minorities to profit off of their labor. In prison inmates have job for which they work for cents an hour. With the money they earned they afford themselves items that cost 5 or 10 times the amount they cost outside of prison.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the topic you picked. It is surprisingly sad that the U.S is a first world country in which 3 million of its citizens are incarcerated. The demographic is mostly Hispanics and African Americans. The prison industry has become heavily privatized and profitable, with laws that allow the exploitation of those imprisoned, no wonder prisoners are a "hot commodity". I liked the picture you chose cause it demonstrates the prison system and how we are raised with the fear of law enforcement just for when you are old to be sent to prison and this is the life cycle of a minority within America.
ReplyDeleteYour blog post made me think of the school to prison pipeline and how they are already building jail cells for those students that get suspended because of the interpretation that they will flunk out of school and end up on the streets to then end up in prison, but also due to the criminalization of people of color. The cartoon is a perfect representation of a cycle of oppression and the expectations of failure on people of color. Another example is the criminalization of low income people and the MTA raising policing in train stations rather than lowering the cost of train fair.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your blog post a lot as it has always been a topic that I am deeply interested in and one that I think needs to be tackled directly and efficiently. It is always very disheartening to me how these authority figures rob black and brown bodies of their lives and instead place them into these prisons and force them to work under harsh conditions. Many of them are often imprisoned for extremely petty crimes and it is not a coincidence that many of them return to prisons after being released. Black and brown bodies like you stated in your post are policed from the moment they are born and are set up to go to prison for life or to use the revolving door and constantly return. There must be serious work done to our prison systems so that they are built for rehabilitation instead of torture. In order for this to happen private prisons must be eliminated, the justice system must be overhauled, and black and brown bodies must stop be treated like criminals the moment they step into this world.
ReplyDelete-Deandra B.
In regards to the political cartoon, conveniently enough a portion of my final paper speaks about how many of our countries institutions run cyclically. It almost as if the Latinx community is being constantly shoved into this cycle of incarceration stemming from racial criminalization. But it is of course imperative that profits play a role in our prison system since it disproportionately effects the Latinx community.
ReplyDelete