Since the mass incarceration of the
past decades, there has been an auction going on in many state and
federal prisons that resemble those days of slavery and the misery
that goes along with such practices. Today's prisons are filled with
masses of human beings auctioned and sold to the highest bidder on
the profit margin determined by Wall Street and stockholders of
private prison contractors. People must become aware that human lives
have become a commodity and that not humans are equal in value or
importance. It appears that many in society are either oblivious to
the concept or are joining in the profitability of selling mankind.
One main reason for concern on this
current trend is with stockholders there is only one priority; money
and money means greed, corruption and the need for more power to make
more money. Selling a human being would appear to be immoral in the
past but today's stock market has placed a higher value on some and a
lesser value on others. The food chain has been altered to indicate
that people can be sold according to their societal value and purpose
in how they fit in the economy. Greed and corruption, along with the
inequalities and inequities of such goods makes it important to sort
mankind out according to class or ability to make money for others.
You might even say that because of the commodity market, morals have
been devalued in order to conduct the business at hand.
Not all goods are valuable thus not all
people have value. One must sort this out and determine which have
the most value and which carry the lesser value of the trade and
transformation that turns people into goods. Therefore, the
economists must use a political continuum of significance to
determine those that are worthy to sell and worthy to buy. The trade
is not new. Human trafficking is common in most foreign countries and
it has finally arrived in the United States in a perfectly legal
concept. Politicians have transformed the need for goods to the needs
for people and the prison industrial complex has been most
accommodating by selling its prisoners for less than a dollar a head.
Everything is for sale these days. It
has been said if you have the means to buy you have the means to
possess. The use of human trafficking in our economy has reached its
peak and society has not winked an eye while it is happening.
Directly or indirectly, they all profit from selling human beings on
the market under the prison tag. It is fair to say that public
interest has turned into private interest as public value has changed
into private values. Judges, law enforcement and the criminal justice
system has been accommodating to the private prison industries as
they turn over their incarcerated masses to those that promise to
feed them, put a roof over their heads and keep them for prolonged
periods of time in order to receive maximum returns on their
investments.
One must not fool themselves if they
are not incarcerated as the chances of them becoming a victim of a
crime and charged as a criminal has increased blindly. Prosecutors re
focusing on those low on the food chain and unable to defend
themselves with an attorney or worst, unable to comprehend or
understand what is happening because they are severely mentally ill
and taken for granted as another commodity sold to the prison
industrial complex to fill a bed regardless of what their treatment
needs are. Once can easily see that these type of people are
expendable and deserve no second thought about placing them in jails
or prisons for a long term so profits are high and acquired to the
fullest extend of the law.
The irony is that there are people
between the mentally ill and those that have skills and an
education that makes them more valuable than others. Skilled workers
and intellectuals do well in prison and are well taken care of in
sense of housing, medical care and employment. They are exactly what
the prison contractors are looking for as they can make money from
their fruits of labor that resemble slavery wages and confined living
conditions that stifle independence and freedom. They are however,
more fortunate that those illiterate and physically or mentally
disabled. The prison complex is much kinder to those that can walk,
think, use their hands and stay of sound body and mind. It reduces
their overhead and custodial costs to keep them and all they have to
do is keep them longer and uses quantity as a guide to profitability.
The rest are discarded and devalued and
at the same time their existence has no urgency for treatment or
other expensive overhead costs thus largely neglected or ignored for
their routine, chronic or acute needs of food, medical and mental
health treatment, dental and other commodities now identified within
the proper definition of the environment. One can be proud of
supporting those politicians that have managed to guide state and
federal laws to accommodate such a prison industrial complex and
ensure their growth has been successful and profitable for everybody
that is a stockholders in the business of selling human beings to the
highest bidder.
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