Incarcerate Inc.

I've always felt that "Incarcerate Inc." or "Incarcerate Incorporated" is a far better way to describe what's usually called the "Prison Industrial Complex". It just has a nicer ring to it, and is a perfect representation of the reality; various prisons formed into a legal for profit corporation, or transforming the act of imprisonment into a profitable business...

As a general matter of fact it can be stated that it's impossible to have a society based on morals when everything in that society is infected with money and the need to make a profit (that's us). There's absolutely no reason for poverty, homelessness or medical bankruptcy to exist, other than the capitalist economy, which not only is incapable of preventing those things, but even depends on those things to exist. There can't be rich people without exponentially more poor people under capitalism, and that's regardless of how hard those poor people try to not be poor. I need you all to understand and internalize that simple truth, for without that it's impossible to understand our reality as it exists today. We can argue about whether this is a good thing or not, if you believe some people deserve to be poor (most people actually). What we can not argue about however, is the truth of this statement, nor is it helpful to accuse people who recognize this reality of some "victim mentality"; this is just another popular right wing talking point meant to obscure the truth about their preferred socioeconomic model.

We are that society in which everything is measured, judged and defined by its impact on the capability to turn over a profit. We've made "money makes the world go 'round" a literal truth, and have thereby given up on the possibility to organize our societies on a basis of morals, truth and civility. Instead we do as the capitalist economy demands from us, we do what's profitable with increasing disregard for what that does to individual lifes or society as a whole. When everything is measured on a scale of monetary costs and benefits, lies will prevail if they prove to be more profitable. And they are, which is why we now find ourselves in an age of nihilism where truth is looked down upon as a weakness, and why polarizing click-bait headlines litter the online and offline public squares. It's also why presidential debates have nothing to do with policies, arguments or truthfully informing the public, but instead have degenerated into a sporting-contest in which each candidate says anything to score a point, and their respective supporters cheer each time their side does so.

Gandhi once said: "The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members", meaning that how a society treats its most vulnerable is the measure of its humanity. We score abominably poorly on that scale because we measure everything on capitalism's scale of profitability; our most vulnerable lack the capacity to contribute enough to economic growth and are therefore left behind, but only after every drop of revenue is extracted from them. Insulin is cheap, so why do we as a society allow people to die because they can't afford said insulin? When society fails to take care of its most vulnerable we see the rise of so called fundraising platforms like GoFundMe where individuals can beg for the money they need to not die. I can vividly remember a case where a man died from a lack of insulin because he could only raise 750 of the 800 dollars he needed to get it. Some things, like human lifes and human dignity, should be excluded from the capitalist equation of costs and benefits, preferably ALL things; to say that this is impossible is to deny all progress we've made as a species.

Imprisoned people qualify also as society's most vulnerable, especially the overwhelming majority who are imprisoned for non-violent offences. But since we, as a society, have imprisoned ourselves into the capitalist mindset, prisoners and prisons are now also part of the capitalist equation. The video I'll leave you with today, dear readers, is a cost-benefit analysis of the incarceration industry. It focuses on America, and does so for good reason; worldwide approximately 10 million people are in detention, and America has 2.3 million of them. The U.S. locks up more people per capita than any other nation, at the staggering rate of almost 700 per 100,000 residents. As a result of this mass incarceration 113 American adults have an immediate family member who has at one time been to prison or jail. This affects the poor disproportionately, as everything does under capitalism. Just think of bail: the median felony bail bail bond amount of 10,000 dollar is equivalent to 8 month's income for the typical detained defendant. I don't think that I have to elaborate on the racial implications in this period of mass protests against police brutality and systemic racism.

The statistics mentioned in this post are taken from an article from the Prison Policy Initiative, and you can read that article right here.

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