Who owns the prisons?

Did you know that there are facilities being built in Texas right now to house people who are rounded up as part of the mass deportation that is being bandied about now? Did you know that all across the south, the prisons are majority for-profit? Did you know that there’s a 9 billion dollar industry (approximate, as exact numbers are difficult to determine) around prison labor?

Did you also know that the prisoners who work often make less than $5 a day? Sometimes nothing? And you know what jobs they’re taking? It ain’t executive offices.

That’s right, manufacturing jobs and service industry jobs. So let’s connect those dots, shall we? A new influx of prisoners, working at slave-wages, taking manufacturing jobs to the tune of producing the equivalent of $9 billion in goods and services? You do the math. What does that do to manufacturing salaries?

The only way to keep American salaries high is to remove prison labor from the equation, and while we’re talking about it, pay immigrants salaries that are consistent with Americans in the same job. The only reason you’re competing with immigrants, if at all, is because of the systems in place to pit them against you. Think about it. The uber-wealthy want two things: more wealth and power. They don’t care about you. If they can get cheaper labor from slaves in prisons, that’s what they’ll do. It’s win-win for them: their wealthy buddy who owns the prison gets more business, and they get cheaper labor hence more profit. The only people who lose out are the prisoners, turned into slaves, and you, who now have to compete with labor rates you can’t possibly compete with.

Think about this when it’s time to go to the polls. Who owns the prisons?