posted December 15, 2012 09:44 AM            

Welcome to the US, land of the FREE!

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The United States has the highest reported rate of incarceration of any country: about one in 100 adults, a total of nearly 2.3 million people in prison or jail.

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^ The legacy of slavery lives on; discrimination against blacks in the courts is still rampant.

Plus, look at the situation from a fiscal point of view:

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State spending on corrections, after adjusting for inflation, has more than tripled in the past three decades, making it the fastest-growing budgetary cost except Medicaid. Even though the prison population has leveled off in the past several years, the costs remain so high that states are being forced to reduce spending in other areas.

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Non-violent drug offenders are filling the prisons, and I don't think we can afford to be apathetic about that. If selling a bag of marijuana can carry a sentence equal to first degree murder...isn't something terribly wrong?

posted December 23, 2012 05:01 PM            

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Originally posted by PixieJane:
This is just one of the reasons I'm bemused when I hear how the USA is the freest country in the world.

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Indeed. Our prison system is a corporate operated for profit industry. And business is business, after all.

posted December 25, 2012 08:53 AM            

Then they came for the illegal aliens, and I didn't cry out because I wasn't an illegal alien.

Then they came for the whistleblowers, journalists, and reporters but I'm none of those either.

Then they came for the people they wanted to incarcerate "preventatively" with preventive detention...and they never stopped coming for them because you can't get a cheaper labor force than slaves.

posted December 25, 2012 10:23 PM            

anyway, great thread & recently met a lady who doing work in this area. So, I felt I have to post my fave links etc...

~~~

Human Kindness Foundation / Prison Ashram Project http://www.humankindness.org/prisonashramproject.html

(Bo recently died in a motorcycle accident) So, sad. I love this guy & his wife, Sita. They have been doing great work for so long)

******

One of the best things i've ever posted on LL

(thank you, Bo!

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum13/HTML/000522.html

posted December 25, 2012 10:29 PM            

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The Engaged Zen Foundation is dedicated to alleviating tangible suffering in the world. Where Zen Buddhism encourages the careful investigation of an individual life, EZF underscores the inescapable need to take that understanding 'into the marketplace.'

EZF was founded in 1992 with a focus on prisons. Incarceration and its depredations continue to be a focal point in our mission, but EZF also concerns itself with human rights violations and human needs in whatever form they may occur. We are grateful to all those who have aided our efforts and those who may join us in future.

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I've been preaching this for so long, and it's fallen on deaf ears.... I hesitate to share anything anymore. You and your loved ones are automatically judged and it becomes a rougher road. I'd just like people out there with loved ones who are incarcertated, to know that there is help out there....other options, if they are open to it.

posted December 25, 2012 10:38 PM            

The Real Secret Is a Dark One http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000024.html

lol

RIP, Bo.

Well said.

posted December 25, 2012 10:46 PM            

http://www.rta-arts.com/tag/art-behind-bars/
http://artbehindbars.tumblr.com/

~~~

posted December 25, 2012 10:50 PM            

However important it is or is not. It's an outlet, so it's good. It might help someone in a similar position.

posted January 01, 2013 09:47 AM            

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Originally posted by T:

I'd hate to think they are limited to Western religions and philosophies. Because they dont work for most people.

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^ True.

I'm going through your links and being happily blown away. I can understand your appreciation for Bo Lozoff.

Listening to him singing now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTyCmzFG2I

I'll post again when I get time to do more research.

posted January 02, 2013 06:08 PM            

Hope you are well. I don't get here much anymore.

Take care.

x

posted January 04, 2013 01:31 PM            

I realize you might not even be back to read my response but I'm gonna keep replying anyway

I'm so touched by this whole topic. I have more interest than time to talk about it. But I'll just give a sampling of my thoughts..

I have no idea why, but thinking about the prison system always hit a nerve with me.

In college, I was working late at the front desk of the library one night. Somehow, by clicking around the internet, I landed on a long article about prison rape. It was a real eye-opener. I could hardly believe that this situation is tolerated within our prisons. It is so barbaric and runs completely contrary to what I thought our country was about.

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Recent studies indicate that 75-80% of prisoners have some sort of sexual encounter --- usually violent --- between themselves and their fellow prisoners. Much of it is enforced pleasure, eg, assault. The irony is that it is considered by many street kids to be "manly" to serve time --- yet once behind bars, they either get raped by their fellow inmates, or become rapists.

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And one wonders why people coming out of prison might be more dangerous than when they went in?

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And not long ago, a series of articles in salon.com showed that violent sex becomes a means whereby the guards can punish the incorrigible. By putting intransigent prisoners in cells with acknowledged brutes --- violent and bloody rape becomes the punishment of choice.

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That ralphmag article is excellent. I agree with this grave paragraph near the end:

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A huge, overcrowded and arbitrary apparatus of prisons is not peculiar to America. There was another prison system in the world as large and as ugly as our own. You guessed it: it was in Stalinist Russia. Which all says a great deal, perhaps too much, about the similarity of governmental processes, our standards of justice, our mutual concepts of "wrong." It demonstrates a similar willingness to purge the body politic by putting away so many anti-social elements. Punishment in both countries was and is built on intolerance and dehumanization.

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'Would like to get more involved with these projects to help prisoners but will have to figure out how. It might be many years before I have the time and means to devote myself to the cause.

Anyway...I'm really happy you are paying attention to this, T. Thanks for sharing these links. I love when people have substance, and compassion for people that some would say don't deserve it.

posted January 05, 2013 02:11 PM            

and of course the current push to PRIVATIZE prisons round the country will only make this worse, and put more people in jail.

posted January 05, 2013 02:44 PM            

I don't know how privatizing the prison industry affects it...I see corporations and the gov't so much in bed over everything already, there's not much room for making distinctions.

We've already seen judges being bribed by prisons to supply more inmates...in my own county, a judge was convicted of this crime. What makes it worse is, he was putting children in juvenile detention for very trivial misdemeanors.

http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/former-luzerne-judge-conahan-sentenced-to-17-5 -years-1.1207994

posted January 10, 2013 06:54 PM            

Thanks for sharing info & i have some thoughts that I will get back to at some point.

Sometimes I have to leave this topic alone as it can be a sensitive and depressing one for me.