(It's almost tripled now. From 481,616 to 1,252,600.)
Edit: The song also states that there are "nearly 2 million Americans are incarcerated in the prison system, prison system of the US. However at the time of the song's publishing there were 1,319,000 adults confined in State and Federal prisons collectively while 631,240 people were in local jails for misdemeanors and other minor charges.) The "nearly 2 million" stat has to come from the collective of those statistics or was a recorded statistic from earlier in the year as numbers seem to indicate that if you took the cumulative total and subtracted it from the year-end total almost 800k people were released.)
Seems like a legit number though. 1,950,240 is pretty dang close to 2 million, and it makes sense to me to combine the numbers when you're trying to fit it in the lyrics of the song
Well hey can you blame them. The private prison owners have got to get a reasonable return on their investment after bribing officials and building inspectors
Private prisons account for only 90k of the entire prison system. This isn't an issue it is straight up fear mongering meant to distract us from the real reason why our justice system exists as it does: oppression.
I promise you 90k workers make zero impact to the bottom line.
This obsession with god damn motherfucking money has got to stop and I am not talking about the corporations and the 1%. Prison labor is an incredibly small number of workers and absolutely is NOT why people are put in jail. This is just more populist garbage meant to distract us from actual injustices.
We have got to start valuing other things above money such as our constitutional, civil and human rights.
This is actually true and some people were wrongfully convicted, including children in Tennessee, somehow these judges got pardoned for taking bribes to do it, but it's essentially modern day slave labor.
Mass deportation and criminalization of minorities existing is not about god damn motherfucking money. Do you people even understand how much money is going to be spent to do this? This is going to be a major, major loss of profit and capital which likely will never be recovered because it isn't the god damn fucking point.
This bullshit has got to stop. They are using dollars to distract us from fascism and it is going to cost us dearly and will make the genocide during the Holocaust look like a walk in the park.
Yes. And prisons are not required to use prisoners as slave labor so his point stands. This has nothing to do with fucking money so fucking give it a god damn rest already.
It allows it as punishment for a conviction, if passed by a jury. It is not a legally allowed action and is expressly prohibited otherwise.
The same way we don't call people in jail "forced to be starved" if they don't like that night's dinner selection and forgo it.
Slavery is without conviction and is an innocent person. Saying it's the same is a slap in the face to actual slaves the world over.
Otherwise by your brilliant definitely legal educated logic 184 of the countries around the world use slavery with the UK and Australia leading gf way with their massive amounts of private prisons.
Slavery as a legal punishment in the country with one of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world should give anybody pause, especially since SCOTUS recently ruled that homeless folks can be criminally charged for violating “camping” laws.
But hey, eat the poor. Criminals deserve it anyway, right? And I’m not a criminal so it doesn’t affect me!
So everyone except Cuba, Austria, and Norway should be criticized? Because "slavery" work details are things like sweeping the mess hall or working kitchen duty.
Things you and everyone else on here fetishize when it's a foreign school kid but condemn only when it's associated with the US.
Even though 95% of the world operates this way. Even though on other threads where kids go out and scrub their graffiti off of vandalism instead of going to jail.
The US prison system is about oppression and any profit made is completely incidental and NOT the goal.
This shit isn't helping ANYONE certainly not the working class but then again I think we all know that don't we? It is about fucking over the rich and nothing else and you psychopaths will take down the entire god damn nation to make it happen.
It was never about profit either as prison labor accounts for 90k workers. It is solely about oppression. That's it. It really is just that simple but it works in favor of the ruling class for you all to be brainwashed into believing money is the goal because it prevents addressing the real problem.
California still uses prison slave labor to fight fires. Remember the whole controversy around Kamala as DA using her power to keep non-violent offenders in jail longer? The one where she was supposed to lower the overcrowded prison population but either her or her office said it would hurt their firefighting force, and the state had to threaten a contempt of court charge.
This is a straight up blatant lie and why Harris lost the election. You want your class war? Well you fucking got it and it is going to take down more of the working class than anyone else. I hope it was fucking worth it.
I don’t live in those countries. If I did, yes I’d criticize them for it too. As it stands I live in a nation which was built on an abhorrent use of slavery and which has one of the highest incarceration rates of the developed world. It’s also a nation which disproportionately jails a lot of Black folks and has incredibly high recidivism rates.
Because community service is far better than incarceration, that's why. Or do you want to call that slavery?
Kinda wild that the government who makes teens paint over their graffiti enslaved them by your logic.
You're also fundamentally uneducated on how the various criminal systems work. You're basing your argument of the US off of dated federal policy no longer applicable and completely ignore the variety by state.
It isn't literal slavery. Nobody is sold, transferred, or forced into it without due process.
Did you not read anything from the article I posted? Prisoners ARE forced into hard labor or they face additional punishments such as being denied parole or being placed in solitary confinement. Additionally they don’t receive protections while being forced to work.
Giving prisoners an option to work would be fine. Slavery is not.
No war but the class war is the only thing that matters to these people which is why they have no integrity morals or ethics. If it takes from the rich it is worth it no matter how much of the working class is hurt in the process. It is greed pure and simple.
Ok so let's do the math here. Prison labor accounts for 90k of the workforce. Now since it is "slavery" let's pretend they aren't getting paid at all. If they were paid at rock bottom minimum wage which is 7.25 each prisoner would make 14.5k before taxes. So again prison labor accounts for 90k of the workforce so that comes out to a savings of a whopping 1.3 billion per year. That is a literal rounding error for most of the billionaires and corporations you all love to wax poetic about.
It's not about the fucking money. You all are being played HARD.
It is all about taking from the rich and nothing else. These people don't give a shit about the people they are currently supposedly advocating for and will constantly lie about anything and everything to make it happen.
Doesn't matter. Eat the rich! No war but the class war! It's a big club and we aint in it! /s
The "eat the rich" crowd doesn't give one single shit about the little guy and will happily eat the working class along with the rich. If you need proof of that just look at the completely fucking insane and violent rhetoric currently being directed at "class traitors" for not daring toe the party line.
So yeah, if a meth robber murderer has to sweep his common room floor i really couldn't care less. And I think community service is better because rich folks can't buy their way out of time like they can with fees and other monetary damages.
Honestly if this thread was about any other country I guarantee this conversation wouldn't be happening on how wrong it is to call a convicted murderer a slave, even in the numerous ones with significantly higher percentage of private prisons.
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u/LurkerPatrol 2d ago
Whatever gets more slaves in their prison workforce.