That's right, it seems that in this day and age of convoluted values and hidden agendas your government desires the population of incarcerated offenders to be maintained at a certain level.
First, some clarification, it's really the the private corporations that budget-conscious state governments have increasingly outsourced their corrections departments that are demanding an offender level...
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Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), owner of the largest private prison system in the United States, recently sent a letter to 48 states offering up to $250 million to manage government-owned detention centers. The letter lists the criteria of eligible purchases, which include an assurance that state corrections agencies "have sufficient inmate population to maintain a minimum 90 percent occupancy over the term of the contract."
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Think about that in rhetorical environment of social reforms and rehabilitation that is traditionally endorsed by leaders in the facade given to the population where the actual motivation is to maintain a level
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* CCA manages approximately 75,000 inmates including males, females, and juveniles at all security levels, in more than 60 facilities under contract for management in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
* CCA partners with all three federal corrections agencies, almost half of all states and several municipalities.
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From the
Corrections Corporation of America website. Now there's an interesting site to browse. 75,000 may not be a very significant number nationally but considering that its presence is in the bible belt- whose demographics is associated with being receptive to "tough on crime" campaign rhetoric backed up by arrest and incarceration statistics as much as (if not more than) crime statistics actually decreasing then it seems easy to draw an inference of a subtle emphasis on warehousing offenders as being the ultimate solution to a social crisis being maximized by economic crises- both in terms of individual desperation through the effective denial of the means of self supporting as well as state budget deficits through lagging tax revenues necessitating moves to cut costs and the privatization of government services- including corrections.
I write this from the perspective of my own jobless situation that- save for a two week blip in January has lingered for six months. The process seems calculated to breed desperation... particularly with the parallel "news" of the "recovery" underway... only seen by those who have television. I hear about the recovery now and then because I turn on the radio but except for the media hype I do not see any recovery whatsoever. If there were in fact any sort of recovery underway there would be an increase in employment opportunities and from the MULTIPLE sources I browse there has been negligible increase in employment if any at all. Put a person in a financial bind and perpetuate it through ineffectual policies sold as economic rescue then systematically lie to them via news items a political press conferences and one can easily see how an individual might begin to hemorrhage respect for those who are supposed to be seeing to their interests through legislation.
It has become increasingly obvious to me as time has passed that the government does not act in the best interests of the "little people". However it continually sells itself otherwise... spinning its toxic business as though it were intended to serve the public's needs and address problems. It's usually something of the wording that enables the sales pitch but the public is rarely served by laws. Just look at how we as an economic sovereignty were able to cough up multiple trillions of dollars to rescue big banks and automobile manufacturers from folding but apart from perpetually extending unemployment benefits nothing to help the jobless... to substantively mitigate their need for those benefits.
Meanwhile, the jobless numbers get cooked for political expedience. the numbers fall because it has become statistically permissible to stop counting people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and have given up looking... yet when the numbers decline mainly as a result of people giving up our leaders STILL spin the change as a reflection of increased employment. Clearly they do not care the least about actually solving the problem- only that they can find a way of making it invisible. That way they can make themselves out to be heroes... for guiding us out of an economic crisis that we're in reality not the slightest bit out of... and on the state as well as federal level they can extoll their record of trimming budgets- through various means including the privatization of the prison business- enabling the corporate community to profit from it.
The unemployed are a desperate lot and desperate people do desperate things... acts that will perhaps land them in prison. The privatization of managing the corrections system has the state leasing bed space from the privately managed facilities. Undoubtedly a bed is only leased when it is filled... the agreements are contractual which means it is the responsibility of police departments and prosecutors to furnish offenders. It seems that an economically desperate environment is a fertile one to precipitate offenders who have been effectively deprived of a means to support themselves and it's beginning to become more obvious to me that the situation is being kept purposefully desperate. Can you say, "quotas"? Can you get your head around the concept? Welcome to the conscript of the 21st century in the United States, the offender.
