Wait, prison labor is still a thing?

I don’t know if I should be ashamed to admit it, but I thought prison labor was illegal. I thought those black and white movies featuring chain gangs and inmates stamping out license plates were a quaint throwback to a more barbaric time.

You can imagine how surprised I was to learn that prison labor isn’t just still “a thing” but it has moved well beyond merely stamping out license plates (though apparently this still is done). In fact, what percentage of all military helmets, id tags, bullet proof vests, canteens, night-vision goggles, ammunition belts, tents, shirts, bags and pants would you say are produced by the inmates of Federal Prisons? 10%? 30%? 50%? How about 100%. And what company is there to oversee production of all these items? UNICOR. Previously known as Federal Prison Industries. A name that was a bit too on-the-nose I suppose.

Let’s just be clear about what we’re doing

Step 1: Psychologically accepting that it is OK for millions of people to be imprisoned because we believe it serves some function like rehabilitation (a myth that was debunked in the 70s)

Step 2: Drastically increasing the number of people in prison by tolerating a “War on Drugs” and using force to punish nonviolent offenders so that as of now over 1 million people are in prison for nonviolent offenses. Yes, many people are coming around on marijuana legalization, but only about 40,000 Americans are imprisoned for marijuana related offenses which means that legalizing this substance will have a negligible impact, and in fact, many people will continue to be imprisoned for violating the new laws and regulations governing the sale and consumption of marijuana. It may very well wind up being a "wash."

Step 3: Giving prisoners the “choice” to work for $0.23 an hour, or make $0 while they waste away in a cell

Step 4: Use this slave labor to make it economically impossible for free Americans (still dealing with the aftermath of a massive and arguably ongoing recession) to compete for jobs while bringing down the costs of maintaining a massive military which is used to wage war on others and whose weapons eventually make their way into the hands of local police officers who can then use that weaponry against the people they claim to protect

Step 5: Offload the cost of care for these slave laborers onto the American public.

One can only imagine how the war-calculus would change if there wasn’t a massive pool of slave-laborers manufacturing the tools of war. Maybe that’s why, despite everyone's willingness to virtue-signal a desire to lower the prison population, far fewer are actually willing to discuss what exactly we are willing to stop imprisoning people for. And I haven't even addressed the fact that countless corporations from Bank of America, to Walmart, to Victoria's Secret also take advantage of the low-cost goods produced by the Prison Industrial Complex.

Ending the War on Drugs is not enough

Ending the War on Drugs alone would only lower the prison population to a still-stratospheric 1.6 million. Still more than twice the prison population of China. I guess preventing people from competing in the open labor market by locking them in a cell is certainly a good way to keep wages down, profits up, and political "contributions" flowing.

For more on this:
The Atlantic: Prison Labor in America
Return To Now: Prison Labor is the New American Slavery
From Steemit user @dwinblood: Stop Sending Our Jobs Overseas, OK We'll Stop, How About The Prison Industrial Complex