Society has evolved into a prison state. The poor, the unwanted, and the great unwashables are put out of sight. The true predatory criminals are usually not caught. They are too smart. This system is set up in favor of the great white collar criminal, a badge of honor in these United States. If there is no specific law against a thing, money can be made from it until the barn doors are nailed shut.
More and more prisons are built every year. The United States just cannot get enough of them. According to the New York Times on April 23, 2008, the US has less than 5% of the world’s population, but nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. The numbers of the poor have been growing astronomically in recent years, pretty much since the Bush administration gutted the country. Bush stood back and played the idiot while his cronies stole every last thing there was to steal, thereby crashing an economy that was on the brink of disaster. When a system is set up on lies, half-truths, and greed, it is already pretty shaky and on its way down.
Apparently the big money people like to invest in prisons. If small-time investors are interested in cash income from this enterprise, they can always get jobs as prison guards. But only if they’ve managed to stay crime free. These jobs are reserved for poor stupid white people and new immigrants.
The prisons are filled with drug offenders; and the police and courts are in the business as well. Most drugs are readily available and so is alcohol. There’s a combination for you, teenagers and drugs and alcohol. The white kids will walk away from trouble repeatedly, while the other kids take a large statistical loss. Wink, wink.
Take a Native American teenager, or a black teenager, or a Mexican teenager getting himself in trouble for the first time. There’s a good chance this kid will do time, but if not, society takes comfort in knowing that this child of color now has a record. There will be no voting or good jobs for this child of color as the system is now slanted against them.
This might be a perfect opportunity to educate and train the youngsters, but the United States does not work that way. What these inmates will certainly learn is how to be a better criminal. Drugs are only illegal in the United States because they put so many people to work, cops, lawyers, judges, and prison employees. And of this elite group, what percentage is white?
Historically, prisons are hellholes and the United States has done little to reform them. In the early years various Christian sects involved themselves in a hobby near and dear to their hearts and that was forcing everyone to walk the Christian walk and talk the Christian talk. Torture was what happened, isolation, ice showers, and other assorted horrors. To this day the mentally infirm and the crazies are included in the United States prison system.