RE: The US injustice system punishes the poor, excuses the wealthy.
I read a post on the BBC website a few months ago about a man who had been jailed for murder in the 1980s. He was eventually freed. I'm not commenting on the justice of the actual case, but this sentence stuck in my mind:
All he has in the world is a debit card with $978.33 on it and a plastic tub filled with personal items. The money comes from three decades spent making furniture in the prison for 30 and later 80 cents an hour.
The man came from Compton in LA. It occurred to me that with street violence rife in that area in the 1980s and beyond, many young black men living there and participating in gang culture were effectively signing up for a lifetime of way below minimum wage cheap labour.
It makes me wonder who the actual gangmasters are, if you get my drift!
It's a hard knock life. People create systems which justify these institutions. We can create better systems.
The use of prison labor to extract value from people has become the standard in many industries. I feel like it represents the modern face of enslavement.
Absolutely - it is the modern face of enslavement. It's happening in the UK too.