I've just been viewing a series on mass incarceration, and was shocked to learn that in 2009, if you were younger than 35 and a black male who dropped out of high school, your probability of imprisonment was 68 percent.
Let that sink in a minute.
In 1979, that probability was only 15 percent.
How could this happen? It's systemic. We have a perverse set of priorities, incentives and structural dynamics that have created and perpetuate this obscene situation.
Another statistic: If you fail to choose your parents wisely and are born as a black male in the U.S. today, the odds you'll spend time in prison are almost one in three.
I'd like to think anyone who considers themselves intelligent and fair-minded would find this appalling, and feel moved to change it.
But how? That's the question. Robert Reich's latest book, Saving Capitalism, discusses this.
Another tiny detail that had (until recently) escaped my attention, is that slavery is actually legal in the United States today.
You probably think I'm wrong... but look closer.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in the punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Today, private, for-profit U.S. prisons often pay their captives about the same as the current daily minimum wage in Mexico ($5 per day).
U.S. corporations have arrangements with these for-profit prisons that greatly reduce their labor costs.
Are these arrangements unfair? Do they undermine the financial opportunities of those in the U.S. manufacturing sector who are not in prison? Do they provide a systemic incentive to continue policies that result in incarceration of blacks?
If you think so, you must not be a stock holder of Corrections Corporation of America or Wackenhut (CEO Group). Federal and state expenditures on prisons have mushroomed by 72 percent over the last decade, and these two largest private prison companies have together made over $2.9 billion in profits since 2000.
I wonder why.
Matthew Hine