UK AND PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Nothing terribly intense or outrageous to add to "incidents" in London and Glasgow except to say that it has a Cheneyish feel to it. Sort of a snug joining of a "don' fuck wit' me, mon" to Gordon Brown (a Scotsman) with a seizure of the headlines with "homeland security" pictures while a Constitutional showdown looms. Could well be tin-foil hat stuff -- we prefer to call it Richard Condonism -- but funny that nobody was hurt but that burning car plays like a yule-log.
Spent all day yesterday lazing around reading the Human Rights Watch's WORLD REPORT 2007 cover to cover and whaddaya know? The U.S.A. doesn't look all that great as industrialized (and many non-industrialized) nations as far as prison conditions and due process go. This leads to some specualtion as to whether the wave of privatized prisons has anything to do with this. And whether there may be some Constitutional way around it. It seems that if a criminal is sent to a private prison and is paid (however small) for work as is usually the case is there no case for violations of forced or prison labor rules? And if the -- say Wackenhut or KBR -- response is as a private corporation we're not bound by the same rules as federal or state governments, then aren't conditions of parole kind of null and void as to state or federal enforcement, meaning that a state cannot impose any restrictions on the paroled ex-inmate of a private prison such as restrictions on freedom of association, regulation of schedule, "forced" community service, etc.? Wouldn't the "private" vs "public" argument take the "public" competely out of the equation? Moreover, if a corporation is a legal "person" wouldn't its forced warehousing and forced work upon the inmates constitute slavery? Or at the least false imprisonment?
K's not a lawyer but has lots of questions and zero answers.
Kelso's Nuts love you.
2 comments:
I'm not sure how the regulations differ with contract prisons, but apparently they do. I recall last year getting a copy of that report, really an eye opener.
Can't believe no one's challenged any of this. Effectively, prisoners in a private prison are like baseball players; they are both employees and the product the prison sells. If you want to look at it another way, using Michael Porter's 5-forces model they are suppliers to the private prison company. If the private prisons were to make an argument the state and federal government are the suppliers that would make the prisoners chattel, which is all kinds of unconstitutional.
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