------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Sept. 12, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
PRISON NEWS KEEPS GETTING WORSE: U.S. SUBSTITUTES JAILS FOR SCHOOLS By Heather Cottin In an Aug. 28 report titled "Cellblocks or Classrooms," the Justice Policy Institute, a think tank located in Washington, found that spending for prisons accelerated at a criminal pace over the past 17 years. Overall, state spending on "corrections" grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education. Between 1985 and 2000, the increase in state spending on prisons was nearly double that of the increase to state colleges--$20 billion versus $10.7 billion. The total increase in spending on higher education by states was 24 percent, compared with 166 percent for prisons. The report also highlighted the prison-industrial complex's institutionalized racism. A disproportionate number of Black youths, who would be better served by expenditures for education, health care or housing, are instead locked up in penal colonies. Reuters reported recently that about 3 percent of the U.S. adult population is in the prison system. The Electrical Workers union (UE), fighting the racist/capitalist depredations of the prison-industrial complex, notes that while African Americans make up 12 percent of the total U.S. population, they compose 51 percent of prisoners. (www.ranknfile-ue.org) Angela Davis has written: "More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color. ... The fastest- growing group of prisoners are Black women and Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita." (Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex) According to the Justice Policy report, "In 2000, there were an estimated 791,600 African American men in prison and jail, and 603,000 in higher education." In some states the ratio is more appalling. In Pennsylvania, where Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row for 20 years, spending on higher education has increased by 25 percent since 1985 while spending for prisons has skyrocketed by 413 percent. In New York state, spending for higher education decreased by 25 percent, while spending for prisons increased by 137 percent. PRISONS ARE BIG BUSINESS In a depressed U.S. economy, prisons are still big business. Westinghouse, AT&T, Sprint, MCI, Smith Barney, American Express, General Electric and Corrections Corporation of America operate 48 correctional facilities in 11 states, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom and Australia. They are raking in billions of dollars by cutting corners, which harms prisoners, for instance through providing substandard diets, imposing extreme overcrowding, and employing abusive and often racist prison guards. (See the www.prisonactivist.org web site.) Corporations are raking in more billions of dollars by paying prisoners 22 cents per hour and creating a new form of slavery. Major corporations are contracting prison labor. The UE points out: "Prison-industry partnerships are up 200 percent since 1979. Thirty-seven states participate in these arrangements, which put prisoners to work in a variety of manufacturing and service jobs. "For years prisoners in California booked flights for TWA. Microsoft uses convicts to ship Windows software. Honda pays $2 an hour to prison labor in Ohio to do jobs that UAW members once did for $20 an hour. In Georgia, a recycling plant replaced 50 sorters with prisoners." The JPI notes that between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. prison and jail population quadrupled from 500,000 to 2 million prisoners. During that time three times as many African American males were added to the prison population as were enrolled in state university systems in the United States. Costs of colleges soared at the same time, so that student tuition and fees for higher education rose at eight times the rate of the state's input. For a low-income family, the cost of tuition at a four-year public institution increased from 13 percent of their income in 1980 to 25 percent in 2000. The racist prison-industrial complex is kidnapping Black youths onto the wretched galleons of a new slave system. A new breed of plantation owners--corporate business owners-- benefit from racism, state funding and protection, and the super-exploitation of captive labor in the prisons of the United States. As the economy tightens its chains around the poorest and most exploited workers in the United States, the young are rotting away in the dank dungeons of the prison-industrial complex. The terrible contradictions within the system make the truth more obvious. As one of the signs at the reparations rally in Washington said, "Money for schools, not jails." - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
