The profit raked in by private businesses on the prison industry comes at the expense of the tax-paying public who support the private prison industry and also at the expense of the largely minority and poor population that is disproportionally incarcerated when compared to whites.

Furthermore, the guards, or correctional officers, of these institutions are typically unable to unionize and generally paid very poorly for the dangerous job they do, ultimately leading to widespread corruption throughout the prison system; from the guards to law enforcement to the judicial system.

In 1993, while apartheid still existed in South Africa, the incarceration rate of black men was almost 1/6 what the current incarceration rate of black men in the USA is today. Yes, the racism in the USA today is actually worse than that of the South African apartheid.

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In the USA, Our Congress passes legislation that is guaranteed to add human fodder to the prison system and most of it will be poor and black.

Cocaine is not just cocaine.  There is cocaine for the rich and there is cocaine for the poor. And accordingly, the laws passed by the millionaires in our Congress discriminate to favor the rich and punish the poor.  Crack is cocaine in a base form.  Crack can be sold in smaller and  cheaper units, thus making it available to poor segments of the population.  It is an outgrowth of an intentional marketing strategy undertaken by the drug cartels in Colombia to sell more drugs to the USA.

U.S. Congress made the penalties for possession and distribution of base cocaine (used by the poor) more than twenty times greater than that of powdered cocaine (cocaine hydrochloride) despite the fact that they are the exact same drug,

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ILWQ COMMENTS

The laws created during Ronald Reagan’s good ole white boy days regarding the difference  in penalties between using crack cocaine vs. powdered cocaine should 1) be struck down as unconstitutional or 2) changed so that the penalty for powdered cocaine is the same as that for crack cocaine because it is the same drug.

As a legislator, I would work to legalize all drugs with the same controls on them that we currently see placed on the tobacco industry.  If we haven’t learned by now that throwing people in prison will not solve the drug problems of our nation, then stubbornness is not our problem:  stupidity is.

The legislative “War on Drugs” began with Nixon in 1970.  Forty years, and what do we have to show for it  in the USA other than crowded prisons and profits for the Prison Industrial Complex?

A  report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy issued in June of 2011, argues that the decades-old worldwide “war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”

Instead of punishing users who the report says “do no harm to others,” the commission argues that governments should end criminalization of drug use, experiment with legal models that would undermine organized crime syndicates and offer health and treatment services for drug-users in need.  I agree.

As for ending both the Military Industrial Complex and the Prison Industrial Complex:  Until we the people remove the profit incentive from both, don’t expect any significant change.

When these bastards can’t make a nickel off exploiting other human beings, that’s when they well stop and not a day, not an hour, not a minute before.

Proclaim the Queen!

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