| > It's been really eye-opening to start realizing just how many people refer to a collective as a unit. And how many beliefs are dependent on not inspecting that fallacious thinking. This is the top comment in a chain of siblings that are dogpiling on the parent for no good reason. I'm replying because I think it's a case of pointing out a distinction without difference, which is a low value response up there with "But correlation isn't causation!" In this case there are many different groups that benefit from a higher prison population. Private prisons are perhaps the most commonly cited, but they hold a tiny percent of the total prison population. But there are many, many private businesses that sell to prisons. Sudexo-Marriott makes millions selling services to private and public prisons. I once toured a "super max" prison in Ohio and saw that they had tens of thousands of dollars in commercial Hobart restaurant equipment. The knee jerk response here is, "Of course a prison pays for commercial dining services and equipment! That's not surprising, it's inevitable!" But that's my point. It's inevitable that there's billions of dollars being made off the US's prison population. And that's not including industries based specifically on exploiting prisoners, like prison phone and teleconferencing services that overcharged the incarcerated and their families by billions of dollars. There are many utterly conventional businesses that use slave labor from prisons. This is not hyperbole -- prisoners are often forced to work for $1 a day or less. They are punished with solitary confinement or even additional prison time if they refuse. The final rebuttal would be, "Well not everyone in America benefits from a large prison population!" But if you read carefully, that's exactly what the parent comment is saying. But enough different and powerful stakeholders do benefit from a large and growing prison population that it's difficult to enact reforms to make that number smaller. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sudexo-Marriott+prison+sales&t=ffa... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prison+video+conferencing+business... https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=who+uses+prison+labor&atb=v... |
It’s completely unfair to express surprise that Americans would come up with a way to reduce their prison population because of the notion that they’ve all been captured by the private prison industry.