British game show asks question about American prisons.

Run time: 03:39 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE   Posted on YouTube: February 07, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 07, 2010 By DU Member: Joanne98 Views on DU: 3644

 

The British game show Quite Interesting hosted by the comedic actor Stephen Fry tackles the subject of the American gaol (the Oxford Dictionary spelling of jail) population. As always, the erudite QI uncovers some statistical gems demonstrating how insane our criminal justice policy is.

•The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world with nearly one percent of the US population behind bars. One in ninety-nine adults are behind bars. No society in history has imprisoned more of its citizens than the United States.


•There are more black 17 year olds in prison than in college.


•As a percentage of the population, we imprison more than twice as much as South Africa. Our rate of incarceration is more than three times higher than Iran's and more than six times higher than China's.


•As Stephen Fry notes, prisons are a big business going as far as suggesting that we have re-invented the slave trade. Perhaps, that's a bit much but it's also hard to ignore that prisons are a big business in the United States. While it is illegal to import manufactured goods made by forced prison labor, it's not illegal to produce them domestically. Take the Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a self-sustaining, self-funded corporation established in 1934 by executive order, who employs more than 30,000 inmates in over 100 FPI factories in prisons across the US. UNICOR's "employees" have grown by a third in the last decade. FPI, who manufactures under the trade name UNICOR, manufactures products such as office furniture, clothing, beds and linens, electronics equipment, and eyewear. It also offers services including data entry, bulk mailing, laundry services, recycling, and refurbishing of vehicle components. Twenty-one percent of US manufactured office furniture is produced by prison labor.


•Minimum estimate of annual value of prison and jail industrial output exceeded $2 billion dollars in 2006 with FPI accounting for over a quarter of that amount. In 2009, FPI reported sales of $885 million. The minimum wage paid at a UNICOR plants is $0.23 an hour. By way of comparison, the minimum wage paid in Haiti is $0.30 an hour while the average hourly earnings of a non-prisoner U.S. worker making office furniture: $13.04.


•Nevada pays its prison work force $0.13 an hour. Georgia and Texas do not pay a wage at all.

Continued>>>
http://mydd.com/2010/2/7/a-nation-incarcerated-the-amer...

Thanks for posting this.

The Barbarians weren't as well organized in their exploitation of the world & its peoples as we are.

Huh.

would love a direct comparison to Canada and Mexico - on both our borders, to see the differences in dramatic terms

.....I will say this, it is amazing the difference between the three No American neighbors.

I never thought of that!

Oregon is one example. There have been several ballot measures over the last 15 or so years that have changed how prisoners are treated. That combined with spending cuts (which of course prisons are one of the first to be cut), have made actually reforming people more difficult.

I have a relative who is in prison and know how difficult it is for families dealing with an incarcerated family member.

...........just so happens handles the prison inmates calls to the outside for a nice little rip off return. My son called me once when I lived in the Chgo area from a state prison in southern Illinois (Ina, Il) and when I rec'd my phone bill I almost shit my shorts. Just another way for a nice capitalist company to fucking rip off the poorest people. If murder would be legalized for one day, that fucking phone company would be close to the top of my list.

legalizing murder weakens your argument a bit.

..............about what I am talking about you would agree wholeheartedly. You obviously don't REALLY know or are related to anyone in jail/prison. The next time you attend your weekly meeting of liberals and yuppies, make sure to bring it up for discussion. And, yeah I'll use the "thingie".

.......or at the VERY LEAST staying the same, we have been regressing since the 70's. I would argue that there never was a "rehabilitation" regime in this country. At best it was housing a person w/o any freedoms for however long the sentence. But since the 80' (Reagan's fault again?) the food (Bologna dinner), healthcare (wanna die? May as well die in prison), and general training/education programs available has receded to fucking nothing. And "trust me", I do have experience here, and not liberal meetings or as a fucking cop or prison guard.

After all, the Chinese have no reason to report the actual numbers of its population locked up to the rest of the world.

He prepares to be executed. END OF ARGUMENT! We really need to rethink our approach to this problem.

primary school.

No Child Left Behind = all children left behind

Patriot Act = taking your liberties away

Land of the Free = Home of the imprisoned

Liberal Media = corporate controlled propaganda

Health Care Reform = giving insurance and pharma everything they want

Cant think of any others but I'm sure there are more. Ever since * I've really noticed this trend - but it's been going on for a long time and both sides are guilty.

Hmm, to bad we dont have 3 strike rules for bankers. Fail three times go to trial and lose your cushy job.

Cheers
Sandy

BIG business here in this country, which to outsiders, it's revealed a farce. This is what most states should look at very closely to try to figure a way to end what is there mostly to incarcerate "the people." It's a huge part of state budgets.

Maybe China will declare war on us and save us.

36% of appliances? I had no idea!

........and it's "three strikes" for you.

I think I just found my next favorite show.

Thanks DU!

I never thought of it that way before, but now I can see the incentive corporations - and governments - have for the cheap labor.

a new form of slavery. It was when they were really outsourcing the jails to corporations and you have to think, if a corporation is buying a jail - what's in it for them? Profits.

My son was in a facility at 17 - a total corporate run dump. The kids really suffered in there - it was medium security. Thankfully, when he did his 9 months he came out OK. He finished school inside there came out went to college and is working now at a nursing home.
He's one of the luckier ones.

Cheers
Sandy

grand scheme for total control.

But white collar crims keeps getting home runs. Even our Supreme Court aids and abets.

Take as many able bodied men that you can get away with and get them off the street. We did it in Iraq. We are doing it here. We even yank the Presidents of other countries out of their lives on earth or we let them live as in the case of President Aristedes.

I was completely ignorant about the manufacturing statistics.

And the host didn't say that x % of the prisons are now privatized - owned by friends of politicians.

I think we should come up with a new name for our prisons.

Within slave walls for stealing cookies or for murder.

To get furniture from any other company, you have to prove that you can't get equivalent furniture to your needs from them.

In the South as soon as Reconstruction ended we white southerners began imprisoning newly freed slaves on bogus charges. Once under state control those poor men and women were rented out to private business interests for a pittance. We re-invented slavery in 1866.

Made in US prisons. Then see how many products they sell. That would put a crimp in the style of these ruthless prison corporations with folks like Prick Cheney at the helm, that are aided and abetted by our "government of the people" and ain't that a joke. Is it fascism yet?, yes it is fascism.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

"Slavery through the back door." -and the usual suspects prosper from it!

Run time: 03:39 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE   Posted on YouTube: February 07, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 08, 2010 By DU Member: pundaint Views on DU: 3644

 
Repeat until blissful.

Repeat until blissful.

The dark-haired guy on the right is Jimmy Carr, who had a show on cable here at one point.

The bald man is Clive Anderson, who hosted the original UK version of "Who's Line Is It, Anyway?".

Not sure who the others are(other than Stephen Fry).

Davis is a regular QI panellist who also starred in the comedy drama Jonathan Creek, which used to be shown on BBC America when I lived over there. Ravens is a writer and impressionist best known for providing many of the voices (and scripts) for the satirical British puppet show Spitting Image in the '80s and '90s. Hope that helps.

n/t.

It's legalized slavery based on our constitution.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

this is too true for US TV. Far too true.