Besides making the occasional video, I will soon be expressing myself in the art of editorial cartoons which is my true passion. I’ve featured some great ones on this blog: David Horsey, Tom Toles, and Matt Wuerker. Editorial cartoons are interesting to me because they can give an entire synopsis in one shot, and if done effectively, they will stick in your mind and make you think about the issue. There’s a reason why despotic governments don’t like articulate cartoonists. Without a doubt, the best editorial cartoonists are some of the most informed people. You have to be knowledgable about world events and issues in order to produce art that will convey meaningful social commentary. So this is something I want to start doing since I do have the artistic skills. Let’s see if I can pull it off.
Agriculture and Climate Change is a blog that I just started following. Last night while on the net I was looking at her collection of editorial cartoons and saw one that pretty much sums up the state of modern industrial civilization’s relationship with the Earth. It’s done by Turkish cartoonist Kürşat Zaman whose work I’ve never seen.
It reminds me a little of an M. Wuerker cartoon from several years ago concerning the resource-sucking war machine of the American Empire:
Has anyone checked their wallet recently? For most, that Ponzi-scheming, resource-plundering American war machine, aka Military Industrial Complex, has relieved you of some major coinage over the years. For others, it has exterminated their country, if not their life.
Back to the Turkish cartoonist Zaman, here is another of his that struck me:
I interpret this one on several different levels. The first message that came to me was America’s prison industrial complex and the fact that America is number one in locking people up:
…According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports…
I also thought about the fact that America is basically an open-air prison with this country having become a pervasive Security and Surveillance State and all branches of its government usurped by elite monied interests. As the corrupt Boss Tweed said in the movie ‘The Gangs of New York’, “The appearance of law must be upheld, especially when it’s being broken.”
Since we were on the subject of rent-seeking in our last two posts, I happened to be in Phoenix over the weekend and was reminded of this insidious subject when I saw the following headline at the local newsstand:
This story was covered more in-depth at the Huffington Post. This post is not an endorsement of illegal immigration, but an expose’ of how the relentless and amoral function of profit-seeking in capitalism has taken over our correctional institutions through privatization, becoming another wasteful and corrupt form of rent-seeking. For-profit prisons are one of the more grotesque formations in the annals of capitalism.
According to the aforementioned articles, the for-profit prison industry has grown from just 10% of beds to the present proportion of one half. And this growth has come off the backs of taxpayers who are footing the bill for the expansion of federal facilities to house the roughly 400,000 illegal immigrants jailed each year. The cost to taxpayers will be nearly 2 billion this year. The question is how has this growth occurred in an environment of falling illegal immigration:
Much of the drop in illegal immigrants is due to the persistently weak U.S. economy, which has shrunk construction and service-sector jobs attractive to Mexican workers following the housing bust. But increased deportations, heightened U.S. patrols and violence along the border also have played a role, as well as demographic changes, such as Mexico’s declining birth rate.
If you read between the lines, the answer is in the amount of lobbying that the for-profit industry has carried out in order to milk the system and secure governments contracts:
The industry’s giants – Corrections Corporation of America, The GEO Group, and Management and Training Corp. – have spent at least $45 million combined on campaign donations and lobbyists at the state and federal level in the last decade, the AP found…
…it wasn’t until 2005 – as the corrections companies’ lobbying efforts reached their zenith – that ICE got a major boost. Between 2005 and 2007, the agency’s budget jumped from $3.5 billion to $4.7 billion, adding more than $5 million for custody operations.
Dora Schriro, who in 2009 reviewed the nation’s detention system at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said nearly every aspect had been outsourced…
…An AP review of Federal Election Commission data found the prison companies and their employees gave to key congressional leaders who control how much money goes to run the nation’s detention centers and who influence how many contracts go to the private sector…
Besides the fact that it’s your tax dollars being stolen, how does this affect you? You’re not an illegal immigrant, you say. The tentacles of the prison industrial complex have a way of entangling more of the ever-growing ranks of the poor, an increasing number of which are the former members of the crumbling middle class. If you fall off the capitalist treadmill of debt peonage and run afoul of the law, the 1%’ers have a bed in one of their for-profit prisons waiting for you…
I was looking for an analysis of the Wisconsin recall election results of Scott Walker, and the best, most incisive one I found is reprinted with permission below. The bold emphasis and links in the article are mine. The Big Money behind Walker controlled the narrative of the recall election by framing the problem of the economy as a choice between costly, corrupt and selfish unionized state workers versus a wasteful state government attempting to streamline itself and cut costs for the taxpayer. Absent in that polarizing message by the Corporatists was their real agenda of dismantling worker’s rights at the altar of the free market, shipping jobs oversees to exploit the cheapest of labor pools. Also absent was the Corporatist’s agenda of cutting the taxes on the wealthiest of society’s elite while dismantling and privatizing social/public services. Interestingly, the only two unions that backed Walker, the fire fighters and the police, were exempted from Walker’santi-collective bargaining law. Also of note is Obama’s absence from supporting the workers in Wisconsin. As explained in my post, Obama: Figurehead for the Corporatocracy, this betrayal should come as no surprise. Divide and conquer is a very effective strategy to destroy the workers who have been subject to indoctrination of Neoliberal policy since Ronald Reagan. The myth of the wealthy being job creators still works, and the public doesn’t have a clue about the evils of privatization. The class war continues with the wealthy effortlessly manipulating the levers of power and mainstream media to their advantage…
Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-recall campaign sold the lie that greedy public sector workers and their unions were costing the taxpayers exorbitant amounts for high wages and lavish pensions.
The recall election in Wisconsin was won by organized Big Money. Lots will be said by many pundits about various aspects of the election, but the most important issue is how Big Money or the 1 percent were able to shape the electoral environment. Looking at that question exposes how capitalist democracy operates.
It also helps to answer the question being asked by many—why do people vote against their own interests?
In his victory speech, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said he wanted to first of all thank God for his abundant gifts. This was not only an appeal to the religious right-wing but also an attempt to give praise to the billionaires whose gifts brought him the election victory.
On Jan. 18, 2011, Walker told billionaire Diane Hendricks that his strategy was to go after collective bargaining rights for public employees first and then get a Right to Work for Less law, in a strategy which he explicitly described as divide and conquer. She gave him over $500,000 during just a three month period in 2012. Hendricks’ ABC Supply Inc., the nation’s largest wholesale distributor of roofing, windows and siding paid no state income taxes in 2010.
Although pay for teachers had been capped since 1993 and public sector unions were not on the offensive, the goal of Walker and his backers in 2011 was to eliminate these unions. Unions for public employees are the last sources of significant power for organized labor as well as for the interests of unorganized workers.
Tens of millions of dollars were pumped into Walker’s campaign to win the recall election. Much of it came from the super wealthy outside of Wisconsin. This money created the slick right-wing Madison Avenue ads that inundated every household.
The rich put their money into this fight because they saw it as part of their class war against the workers. This was a referendum on slashing workers’ rights, especially public workers. It was played out in Wisconsin but finance capital saw that it would have national ramifications.
Role of the Democratic Party
The recall effort itself was the result of the efforts of hundreds of thousands of workers who gathered one million signatures to recall Walker. When they filed those petitions on Jan. 17, it was crystal clear that they wanted this election to be about basic labor rights—the right to bargain, the right to have a contract and the right to have union recognition including long established union security clauses providing for dues.
The Democratic Party took over the message and shifted it to a blander mixture with a focus on corruption. The national Democratic Party essentially ran away from the Wisconsin battle in a way that once again shows that they have no interest in supporting labor’s cause. President Obama did not come to the state to support the fight for basic rights. His absence served as another example from a long list of unfulfilled campaign promises—that he would walk on union picket lines after he became president and that he would fight to get labor laws passed with fairer terms for union elections—the Employee Free Choice Act—and more.
Role of labor
The ranks of labor were pushing for a battle in the electoral arena. Public unions put significant money and organizational resources into the fight. These unions included the teachers unions, firefighters, AFSCME (state city and county workers), SEIU and others.
However, two locals in Milwaukee—police and fire unions—endorsed Walker in the recall, while no statewide unions did. It is important to remember that Walker exempted these unions from any of the negative effects of his anti-collective bargaining law. Firefighters, of course, are workers that all of labor should support, and this local union betrayal was especially odious because an African American firefighter and union leader was a candidate for lieutenant governor. Instead of a message that public workers have rights that everyone should have, the anti-labor story is that if anyone has a wage, a right or a pension that others do not have, then we should take it away from them.
While Walker is most known for his initial attack against the public sector unions, the construction trades also joined the recall effort in a more significant way than in almost any other previous fight. The statewide Operating Engineers Local 139, with about 9,000 members, previously had endorsed Scott Walker for governor in 2010 on the promise that he would not support Right to Work legislation while delivering a larger budget for bridges and infrastructure. Walker’s flip on that overcame reservations about the Democratic candidate who, as a Mayor of Milwaukee, bargained hard against them on major contracts.
Union leaders had come together as a coalition and chosen Democratic Party politician Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk as their candidate in the recall primary. The time limits imposed by the state’s election process required quick action, but the union leaders’ lack of involvement among the hundreds of thousands of activists who had put the recall on the ballot was a signal of things to come. Falk was defeated in the recall primary by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (who had previously been defeated by Walker in 2010).
No thought was given to having a truly independent candidate with a real program addressing workers’ needs. Eventually, the labor leaders deferred to the regular Democratic Party pundits and confined the campaign to a shifting message that did not resonate with people.
Support for labor from the most oppressed communities
Organizations and leaders in the African American and Latino communities—some of the most oppressed sectors of the population—campaigned hard to get rid of Scott Walker. Early reports reveal that record numbers were mobilized to vote.
SEIU had organizers working in poor communities for some time to help mobilize action and exert power on a number of issues.
Democrat Barrett’s concession speech
When Barrett took the podium to announce that he had lost the race, he stressed that now is the time to “work together” with Walker. This is typical “good form” for a Democratic Party leader but poison for labor. Now is not the time to work with union busters; now is the time to organize even more diligently against them.
He talked about “democracy”—but not workers democracy. He called on people to stay engaged with city and state politics.
Why did some workers vote for Walker?
Without a doubt some people are wondering: What were they thinking! Why did they vote for Walker?
The Walker campaign focused on taxes and make-believe figures on job creation. Their message was that greedy public sector workers and their unions were costing the taxpayers exorbitant amounts for high wages and lavish pensions that others don’t have.
Walker constantly refers to “union bosses” and his allies frequently refer to “union thugs” or “union goons”. These terms turn reality on its head. If he were speaking the truth, he would be talking about the captains of finance who are his bosses and who are financing and directing his actions.
When Walker’s Wisconsin budget bill was passed, it increased spending in FY 2013 on prisons while imposing $792 million in aid cuts to school districts, $250 million in cuts to the university system and $71.6 million in cuts to technical colleges. In addition, nearly $500 million was cut from Medicaid programs, eliminating necessary important components of health care. At the same time, these financial bosses have gotten Walker and the legislature to approve $1.6 billion in corporate tax breaks over the next 10 years. Profits have increased—but not jobs.
That is their program, and they sell it by vilifying labor. In areas reached mostly by right-wing radio and governed by right-wing elites from the pulpit to the County Board, the Big Lie works. It is a Big Lie that has been in development since the 1940s and especially since the 1960s. As corporations move production overseas, the ruling class spins the story in a way to blame unions here for “pricing themselves out of the market.” They spin the story to divide workers in the United States from workers abroad.
In 2012 so far, General Electric has moved its medical equipment division headquarters from Waukesha, Wisconsin to Shanghai, China. The Thermo-Fisher Corporation is planning to move nearly 1,100 jobs from Wisconsin to Mexico.
In the race for maximum profits at any cost and the race to shove workers down to the lowest level of rights and pay on a world scale, they have refined the Big Lie technique and used it on a mass scale.
The truth about public services such as education, health care, child welfare and transportation is never told. These services are rights that were won through struggle—and which would never be provided by private companies that only care about profit.
The truth about public workers is never told—that their pay is modest, that most do not qualify for social security and their only pension is what the union has been able to win in a contract or through legislation.
Instead of a message that public workers have rights that everyone should have, the story is that if anyone has a wage, a right or a pension that others do not have, then we should take it away from them. And at the same time ignore the vast wealth of the CEOs. Ignore the vast profits made by the banks and the holders of state and local government bonds who get their interest payments first from every state budget while programs for the people get cut.
The principal blame for the election result in Wisconsin is not with the workers of Wisconsin but with the rich who spin this message and who control the levers of power in that state and around the country.
The road not taken: This is what democracy could have looked like
In March of last year, when Walker threw down the gauntlet and signed the “Budget Bill” killing many collective bargaining rights, labor leaders opted to move the struggle from the streets into the electoral arena.
Many experienced labor activists, including some leaders in the Madison area, know that workers have greater power in the streets because of the way money controls elections. On Feb. 22, 2011, the 97 unions of the South Central Federation of Labor of Wisconsin, representing 45,000 workers, unanimously passed a resolution calling for the preparation for a general strike.
A general strike would have electrified workers everywhere. It could have begun as a one day strike in Wisconsin cities with the greatest union strength and then expanded in terms of both days and areas covered. Millions of workers across the country who were upset with cutbacks, layoffs, privatization and more would have been inspired to take action.
Shutting down the state would have been a quicker and more definite blow to Walker and could have resulted in a defeat for Walker as compared to the defeat for labor experienced in the recall election.
General strikes are feared by the ruling class. In reference to a Philadelphia teachers strike—Jan. 8 to Feb. 28, 1973—William Usery, director of the Federal Mediation Service, said that “We came within an eyelash this year of having a test of the effectiveness of the general strike as a weapon in the United States—a weapon that has at times paralyzed the economies of France and Italy.” He went on to say that if labor had engaged in the general strike that many had called for—and if they had won—then “there would have been enormous pressures to do it again—and again—and again.”
That is the fear of the ruling class. If workers exercise their power, there could be no stopping them. No rights would be out of reach.
The Democratic Party is doing all it can to orient people to the November presidential election and away from struggle. Almost without exception labor leaders are focused on that election.
Rank-and-file members can learn a lot from this experience in Wisconsin. Labor’s hope lies not in the electoral arena but in solidarity and action on the job and in the community.”
You better believe that the financial elite who run this country do have OWS and any other social movement under 24/7 surveillance. Anything that strives to change the status quo of neoliberal capitalism will be undermined and crushed, whether through covert actions or co-optive schemes. Social justice, the environment, and the very habitability of planet earth are not on the agenda of the 1%’ers.
Michael Parenti’s son, Christian, gives the methods by which the capitalist power structure controls rising social movements:
Parenti starts by noting a paradox within the capitalist system. “Capitalism needs poverty,”(2) states Parenti unequivocally, arguing that without enough poor people around workers start demanding better conditions and higher wages. However, at the same time, capitalism is threatened by too much poverty. Poverty, he argues, tends to breed dissatisfaction, which makes revolt more likely. The question is “How do you have poverty and manage the threat of poverty?”(3) The answer, for Parenti, is by expanding social control mechanisms through the criminal justice system. The buildup of prisons and policing in the last two decades is not a result, as some might have it, of corporations expanding into the criminal justice system for profits.(4) Rather, the growth comes from an increasing need by the capitalist class (in collusion with the state) for greater social control, a growth necessary to keep the poor from revolting. Prisons, mandatory sentencing, and the “war on drugs” become the means by which the state is able to subdue the working class and keep poverty at a level that maximizes profits while minimizing dissent. Here we see a clear example of “hard-line” social control.
Parenti also describes a second, softer tactic of social control, mainly co-optation. He briefly describes the way that workers’ movements in the 1960s were co-opted by turning their leaders into administrators of low income housing and social services. This co-optation happened at a time when the Unites States was economically strong enough to absorb the poor in order to legitimize the system. However, the economic crisis in the 1970s put an end to this tactic and brought with it the harder modes of social control. Parenti concludes that, “In a class society, rule comes down to two things, as Machiavelli said. The prince has two choices. He can either treat men [sic] well or crush them. . . . Sometimes economic conditions are plush enough that people can be treated well, but more often then not, in a capitalist society, the ruling class, through the state, must crush and intimidate people to reproduce their system. And that is what the criminal justice system is all about.”(5)
And tying together the previous post about Drones and the earlier post about the State’s oppressive security and surveillance apparatus, we have this essay which contains a perfect example of how the Corporate State crushes dissent:
“…I see other things coming even sooner, caused by the same ruling elite’s insatiable greed and lust for power, and by the same political system’s actions in support of their goals.
First there is the accelerating march towards a police state, which began in earnest during the first year of the Bush/Cheney administration with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the passage of the cynically named USA PATRIOT Act, and the launching of the so-called War on Terror, but which has been carried forward to a place I could never have imagined by Bush’s successor, Barack Obama. Today, police in America ride around with fully automatic M-16s in their squadcars, routinely taser people, including children, the elderly and the disabled, for minor offenses, and when confronted with a peaceful and permitted political demonstration, respond in full military SWAT gear, complete with guns, pepper spray, clubs, tear gas, and undercover agents who deliberately try to incite violence.
Just yesterday, long-time Latino activist Carlos Montes, 64, was arrested in Los Angeles during a joint LAPD/FBI SWAT-team midnight raid on his house. The charge: possessing illegal weapons. But Montes possessed only licensed guns in his home. The catch was, the FBI, which was clearly after Montes, a retired Xerox salesman, for political reasons, conveniently told local police that he was not allowed to register firearms because of a (get this!) 1969 felony conviction for allegedly throwing a coke can at a cop (Montes says he never threw such a can). Note that the police knew all about that conviction when Montes first registered his guns. He has not been in trouble with the law since then. Clearly he could have simply been informed that his gun registrations were invalid, and the guns had to be turned in. Why Montes, who has remained politically active and a critic of the government, was really arrested in this Gestapo-like manner became clear when an FBI agent hopped in the car with him right after he was picked up, and said, “I am from the FBI and I want to talk to you about the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation.” Montes is now facing a possible 22 years in jail for possessing legally registered guns that the LAPD has known for years that he had in his home, and that nobody ever cared about before. (I had to learn about this from the British newspaper the Guardian. The corporate media in America have covered up this outrageous political bust.)
America today is crawling with secret police–local, state and federal. They’re all connected too, through 72 so-called Fusion Centers that receive federal funds, but remain insulated from any kind of public oversight. Our phones and our internet communications are monitored automatically by National Security Agency super-computers that look for key words like “airport, exercise, flu, blizzard, bridge, or fundamentalism,” any of which prompt closer attention to what we are saying or writing.
Meanwhile, the president has claimed the right to detain–in secret, without charge–any American he deems to be a threat, and to hold such people indefinitely, without any recourse to lawyer or trial. He is even claiming the right to execute such captives. So much for the Fourth Amendment, as well as the First, Second, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth!
While I don’t think we live in a police state yet (having lived in China for two years, and visited there as a journalist over four other years, I know what a real one looks and feels like), but all the elements for one have been put in place and await only the throwing of a switch.
In the vision I clearly have, I feel strongly that someone, whether Obama or Romney, or whoever follows him, will throw that switch. When power is available to political leaders, they inevitably avail themselves of it. It’s just a question of time.
But there is another vision I have too. It has to do with America’s increasing international lawlessness and bellicosity. As the nation turns increasingly to technology for its aggressive purposes, through the use of armed robotic drones, and through internet attacks on purported “enemies,” it not only opens the door to others to do the same to us; it virtually assures that we will be attacked ourselves in like manner to what we are doing.
It was one thing to be the world’s superpower when being a superpower meant having the biggest ICBMs and the most nuclear warheads — weapons that required an enormous military budget and a massive industrial base. Drone technology and internet “weapons” are something else altogether. As Israel has demonstrated with its Stuxnet virus, a very small nation can easily construct a weapon of tremendous destructive power. Iran demonstrated its own capability in that area by using computer savvy to take control of a sophisticated US surveillance drone flying over its airspace, actually stealing it electronically, landing it, and now, apparently, back-engineering it. And remotely-piloted drones are not particularly complex technologically. Basic ones can be purchased off the shelf in any hobby shop.
How long will it be before foreign predator drones begin flying over US airspace, taking out targets without leaving any clue as to who was the attacker? How long before other countries begin destroying American power systems, industrial sites or military command centers using internet-based computer viruses?
This is a game that many people can play, and I predict that it will not be long before we Americans will rue the day this country began playing it….”
One of the more loathsome trends that has taken root since Neoliberal policies were embraced in the last few decades is the commodification of the imprisoned to line the pockets of prisons-for-profit corporations. In our deteriorating economy, this predatory business model has been a lucrative venture, especially for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) which is the largest Wall Street traded company of its kind extracting profit from our prison-industrial-complex.
With states desperate for cash, CCA has taken advantage of the situation and swooped in to offer this deal:
Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for “challenging corrections budgets.” In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.
The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of its own or managing state-controlled prisons. It also represents an unprecedented bid for more control of state prison systems….
And Corrections Corporation’s offer of $250 million toward purchasing existing state prisons is yet another avenue for potential growth. The company has billed the “corrections investment initiative” as a convenient option for states in need of fresh revenue streams: The state benefits from a one-time infusion of cash, while the prison corporation wins a new long-term contract. In addition, supporters of prison privatization have argued that states can achieve cost savings through outsourcing, as prison corporations give fewer benefits to employees.
“We believe this comes at a timely and helpful juncture and hope you will share our belief in the benefits of the purchase-and-manage model,” reads the letter from Harley Lappin, CCA’s chief corrections officer, who was a former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
CCA made almost 2 billion in profits in 2010.
You can bet that when such a capitalist model gets applied to the handling and rehabilitation of prisoners, strange things happen. Louisiana is one state that has embraced the prisons-for-profit business model at the local level. Charles Blow’s article in the New York Times entitled “Plantations, Prisons, & Profits” talks about a devastating eight-part series published in The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and identifying Louisiana as the prison capital of the planet. Here are some shocking facts:
“Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.”
• One in 86 Louisiana adults is in the prison system, which is nearly double the national average.
• More than 50 percent of Louisiana’s inmates are in local prisons, which is more than any other state. The next highest state is Kentucky at 33 percent. The national average is 5 percent.
• Louisiana leads the nation in the percentage of its prisoners serving life without parole.
• Louisiana spends less on local inmates than any other state.
• Nearly two-thirds of Louisiana’s prisoners are nonviolent offenders. The national average is less than half.
The incarceration statutes in that state were purposefully strengthened (10 years for writing a bad check) so as to keep the prison cells full and the revenue stream from state tax dollars flowing in. Consequently, more money is spent on imprisonment, thereby leaving less funds available for prisoner rehabilitation programs. The for-profit incarceration business is thus assured a steady stream of profit from a revolving door of recidivism.
Louisiana is the starkest, most glaring example of how our prison policies have failed. It showcases how private prisons do not serve the public interest and how the mass incarceration as a form of job creation is an abomination of justice and civility and creates a long-term crisis by trying to create a short-term solution.
As the paper put it: “A prison system that leased its convicts as plantation labor in the 1800s has come full circle and is again a nexus for profit.”
Today, the U.S. prison system delivers profits to both government corporations and private enterprises in several ways:
1) Through the use of inmate labor to produce goods and services in federal and state prisons
2) Through the contracting of this labor to private companies at below-market wages and
3) By privatization of the prisons and detainment centers themselves. Given these perverse incentives to maintain a high inmate population, is it any wonder that the number of prisoners and the length of their sentences — Americans comprise 5 percent of the world’s total population but 25 percent of the world’s prison population — have skyrocketed since privatization began in 1984?
Number of inmates. 1920 to 2006.[1][2] (absolute numbers) General U.S. population grew only 2.8 times in the same period, but the number of inmates increased more than 20 times.
