Slave Labor; The Prison Industrial Complex; And The Jena Six

'What if every person was a factory and generating money; what’s the incentive to cut people loose, to not criminalize and to rehabilitate behavior?'
—Paul Wright,
spokesperson of Prison Legal News

In light of the recent miscarriages of justice going on in Douglasville, GA, Cobb County, GA and Jena, Louisiana where 6 Black youth are being railroaded into prison for a fight. Not a beat down, but a fight. The white youth was hospitalized for a three hours and released. He attended a ring ceremony at 7pm the evening of the fight. Mychal Bell, Robert Bailey Jr, Carwin Jones, Theo Shaw, Bryant Purvis, John Doe are now facing 15 years, for a fight.

Will Chandler a high school student at Wheeler High School, located in Cobb County, Georgia is now facing FELONY charges. He and two other friends left the school campus for lunch, and upon their return school police stopped him, searched the car and found a Swiss Army knife under the armrest console of the car he was driving. The knife was placed in the car by his mother as a safety precaution as suggested in the September issue of O Magazine.

Genarlow Wilson is sitting in prison now for having consensual sex with a 15 ½ year old teenage female where in the state of Georgia the legal age of consent is 16. So,you may ask what is going on? Answer, SLAVERY.

The Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution;

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction

Slavery is not over. There are 2.3 million people locked away in state and federal prisons in the U.S. to compete with the cheap labor outside of the United States. Prisons are using prisoners to make mattresses, eyeglasses, furniture and much more. Oakhill Correctional Institute in Dan County, Wisconsin crowds 17 inmates into a basement factory to make millions of dollars worth of office furniture. The state of Oregon has been advertising their prison work force and factories claiming that businesses that utilize incarcerated workers would otherwise outsource their labor. Prisoners are paid as little as $.45 to $1.50 per hour, they are taxed on the money paid. In the cases where they refuse to work they are denied canteen privileges, moved to disciplinary housing and “good time” credit is denied that would slice time off their sentences.

It appears to me the push for “prison slaves” is a driving factor behind the increase in long sentences for many minor offences. Companies like TWA, Nike, Planet Hollywood, K-Mart, Target, McDonalds (for uniforms), Dell Computers, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer are just some of the businesses that are using the “slave” labor by the prison industrial complex.

Councilman C.T. Martin of Atlanta is introducing an ordinance to criminalize "saggin" and even the occasional bra strap that may be visible.  This will produce more police contact between police and the young, more arrest records and of course more petty arrest.  Councilman Martin do you have stock in any of the private prisons in Georgia? D. Ray James prison, Coffee Correctional facility or Wheeler Correctional Facility, perhaps?  All of which are part of Correction Corporation of America, CXW on the New York Stock Exchange.  Humm, I wonder about his motivation for this.  I hope this may shed some light on why the United States locks up more people into prison than any other nation on Earth!