Who’s Counting on Blacks to Fill Prisons? Those Making a Profit

By: Tonyaa Weathersbee

Black men who shrug at incarceration as the cost of doing business in struggling communities might want to know that some folks are counting on them to cling to that warped notion.

I mean, literally counting on them.

Just the other day, I received this investment e-mail titled “Turning Prison Into Profit (Without Going to Jail).” In it, it comes breathtakingly close to extolling the prospect of unemployment hitting 10 percent and ratcheting up the crime rate.

And it advises investors to bet bucks on that dismal future.

“Readers might want to capitalize on this nascent trend by looking into shares of commercial jails,” it reads. “Florida-based Geo Group [a prison-management corporation] comes to mind as a prominent up-and-comer in this field of endeavor, with some 53,144 ‘beds under management…’”

Now, the definition of capitalism isn’t lost on me. Yet when I see unemployment and mass incarceration coldly reduced to a matter of dollars and cents; when I think of how someone may be putting his or her child through college with money made on speculating that someone else’s child will wind up in jail, I get angry.

I just wish more black people would get angry – because the people who’ll invariably make up a disproportionate number of the inmates who’ll fill those jails and prisons and fatten the pockets of private investors will look like them.

Who’s Counting on Blacks to Fill Prisons?....

Commentary: For Dozens of Million-Dollar Companies Contracting Prison Workers, Crime Really Does Pay

By: Tonyaa Weathersbe

For some, it seems that crime really does pay.

Mother Jones, a progressive news magazine, recently reported on how prisoners are no longer just laboring at making license plates and other state-mandated busywork. Inmates in some states are now doing manufacturing chores and other tasks for corporations who have, undoubtedly, found a way to profit from America’s prison explosion.

Each month, prisoners in California process hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef, chicken products, milk and bread. In Texas, prisoners make furniture and mattresses, brooms and brushes, toilets and sinks. Boeing subcontractor Microjet once used prisoners to cut airplane components at $7 an hour; on the outside, that job would have paid $30 an hour.

Some inmates have even been subcontracted out to sew lingerie for Victoria’s Secret. According to Mother Jones, one contractor, Unicor, outsources call center work to inmates.

Predictably, advocates of paying prisoners minimum wage or pennies for their work on behalf of corporate America say that it’s important because it gives them training. And yes, this wouldn’t be so bad if these inmates, a disproportionate number of them black males, could take those jobs and parlay them into real work once they are released.

But chances are that won’t happen.

COMMENTARY....