I have to admit that I am feeling sorry for some of the residents of Arizona lately.  I just can’t imagine that the majority of the population could be reflective of their state’s elected leaders.  I want to give these people the benefit of the doubt truly… 

But then I read stories like this one:  Escapes Don’t Deter Private Prison Supporter.  From the article:

The recent escape of three inmates from the Kingman Prison Complex in western Arizona will not deter those who believe privatizing prisons is a good idea, they said.

“There are savings to be had with privatization. We save on daily operations. We save on capital costs. It is not a tremendous savings, but in these troubled times every little bit counts,” said state Rep. John Kavanagh, a R-Fountain Hills.

Kavanagh lead the way last legislative session to expand the private prison system in Arizona.

“Not only are we looking at additional private prisons, we’re also doing privatization of some of the functions within our state prisons, specifically, medical care, maintenance and food services,” Kavanagh said.

The state is currently taking bids for 5,000 additional private prison beds. The state is also taking bids for privatizing medical care and food services.

State Rep. Kavanagh blithely asserts that private prisons save money and yet most of the research about this is inconclusive at best. It is incredibly important that Arizonians look at the connections that their politicians have to these private prison companies. I recently posted an excellent news reportfrom a local station in Arizona which asked the governor about her ties to private prisons. I believe that S.B. 1070 in Arizona’s real aim is to criminalize more people (in this case immigrants) in order to fill the new private prisons that states like Arizona are hoping to build or attract.

Books Not Bars, a project of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, has produced a new film called “Learning from Our Mistakes: Transforming Juvenile Justice in California.” In about 20 minutes, the film lays out information about the disproportionate confinement of minority youth and also highlights effective community-based interventions for addressing juvenile delinquency.

Learning From Our Mistakes: Tranforming Juvenile Justice in California from EllaBakerCenter on Vimeo.

After reading this post at Prison Law Blog, I decided to research the states with the top percentages of inmates over 55.  Below is a chart of those findings:

Boy it’s great to have my laptop and access to WIFI at this tedious conference…

I’ve decided to periodically feature advertisements from businesses who are feeding the prison industrial complex as a way to underscore the profit motive in this system.  In addition, I believe that some of you will be surprised to see the types of businesses who are catering to and supporting the PIC.  This ad appeared in the program book for the 140th Congress on Correction taking place this week in Chicago.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am attending the 140th Congress of Correction sponsored by the American Correctional Association. I spent all day Sunday hopping from one workshop to another waiting for the main event as far as I was concerned which is the Exhibitors’ Open House. None of the workshops that I attended were particularly informative or revelatory. I suspect that most people who attend professional conferences could say the same. Even if I had been attending the workshops wearing a social service hat rather than a community organizer one, I still don’t think that I would have gotten much out of them.  

Anyway, I waited until 4 p.m. when the Exhibitors’ Open House began. The room was huge and there were at least 300 businesses and non-profits hawking their wares. Participants ranged from CCA, The Geo Group, Western Union, and Aaramark to the Salvation Army, Gateway Foundation and Prison Fellowship.

Earlier in the day, during a presentation about Disproportionate Minority Contact, a speaker remarked that he was shocked to see the level of commercialization that existed at the conference. He remarked that this was his first time attending the ACA conference and that he was troubled by the fact that businesses were trying to “pimp” the misery of others. He got a round of applause in the room. Yet I wonder how many in the room would be willing to boycott the products of those same exhibiting businesses.  Are people boycotting Western Union profiteering off the PIC?  I don’t think so.

OK back to the Exhibitors’ Open House, as I made my way through the booths, I picked up materials for an upcoming project that I will share more about in the near future. I was struck by the number of small nicknacks that were available to prospective buyers including pens, stress balls, snacks, etc… From the Geo Group, I was offered a handcuff key chain and from ICS Jail Supplies, I was handed a small clear bag complete with a mini comb, a mini toothbrush, a small packet of shampoo and toothpaste. Presumably these very same packets are handed to prisoners who are incarcerated in institutions supplied by ICS. The very nice woman at the ICS Jail Supplies booth also told me that if I left my business card, I could be entered in a contest to win ‘real handcuffs.’ She was laughing as she informed me of this opportunity; gallows humor, I guess.  I told her that I had no need for handcuffs but thanks just the same.

Next came the most surreal moment of the day, I saw Bob Barker. Well actually not THAT Bob Barker it turns out, though at first I did think that it was him.  People were milling around him.   I had to look closely because I could swear that he was Bob Barker of the Price is Right fame, same orange tan and brown hair.  I was preparing to be deeply crushed and emotionally scarred since I used to watch the Price is Right with my babysitter as a kid.   It turns out that this Bob Barker was actually the owner of Bob Barker’s detention supplies which included riot gear complete with military style helmets.  I tried to take a photograph of the riot gear but my digital camera seems to have died.  I still have one more day to get the shot though.  Hopefully, I will be successful in that quest.

So yesterday was a day to remember, mostly because I can report to you that Bob Barker from the Price is Right is not currently actively supporting the prison industrial complex.  Good times…

Of all African-American men that were born in 1965 or later with less than a high school diploma, 60 percent already have a prison record (28 months median time served).

Source: ACA DMC Task Force/Symposium (August 1, 2010)

I am exhausted and fried today. I am not at all coherent. So please excuse this post. I spent the day attending the 140th Congress of Correction sponsored by the American Correctional Association here in Chicago. It’s my first and will likely be my only time attending this conference. Since it is being held in my adoptive city this year, I felt that I should attend. After all, it would provide me with a chance to better understand the Prison Industrial Complex from its headquarters.

Since I am too tired to blog about my experience today. I will refer you to the ACA’s daily blog that can be found at here. Needless to say that the experience that I will blog about in a couple of days will be different from the one that you will find on the “official” blog. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, to give you a sense of what I am contending with, here is an advertisement that was in the program book for the conference…

Motor Coach Industries Advertisement

This says it all… Picture a HUGE hall filled with hundreds of companies advertising their wares to corrections personnel and you will have a sense of the sheer wrongness of the entire affair.

The South Carolina Post & Courier has had a couple of articles this week about a working prison farm. I have to admit to being unfamiliar with this concept. How many prisoner farmers do we have in America? Are many prisoners across the country growing their own food?

Journalist Yvonne Wenger reports on the addition of a $7 million dairy to the Wateree River Correctional Institution. Purportedly the dairy is intended to save money for the prison.

Wateree River Correctional Institution is the largest prison farm in the state. Inmates milk the cows and tend to their needs, run a sawmill and gristmill and grow soy, corn and sweet potatoes, among other crops.

Ozmint said the crops produced at the farms, which feed inmates across the state, help the Corrections Department keep the cost of feeding inmates low. South Carolina spends $1.51 a day on food per inmate, the lowest among all state prison systems.

Another article in the series describes the prison farms this way:

Two inmates, dressed identically in tan prison-issued uniforms, sit atop a machine Monday in the farm’s gristmill. They use the machine to grind up the corn kernels while another pair of inmates package the grits in heavy brown paper bags. They produce a bag of grits valued at $35 for just $4.70. The grits will be shipped across South Carolina to feed the state’s 24,000 inmates.

Jon Ozmint, director of the state Department of Corrections, said the prison’s three farms are key to keeping the cost of feeding state inmates at $1.51 a day each, the lowest in the country. The farms produce all the milk, eggs and grits the prisons use, saving the Corrections Department almost $600,000 a year.

The article continues:

The Wateree farm, once segregated, has been in operation since the late 1800s. South Carolina inmates also produce license tags and their own bedding.

Ozmint said inmates in state prisons don’t get paid for their work, but South Carolina’s prison industries provide the inmates with a form of rehabilitation through job training and they can get “good-time credit” to shorten their sentence. [EMPHASIS MINE]

Duane, a St. Matthews man serving an 11-year sentence for a fatal car crash he caused while driving drunk, said he’d rather work in the heat than sit on his duff waiting for the last four years of sentence to run out. Inmates can have little interaction with the media, and they are not authorized to share their last names.

He is a handyman, at one time owning his own contracting business, who is working on the construction of the new dairy. Duane said he is grateful for the opportunity to keep his skills sharp while in prison.

“I enjoy doing this,” he said Monday, as the temperature in Rembert climbed toward 100 degrees.

I have blogged before about my conflicted feelings regarding prison labor. On the one hand, I want to take prisoners like Duane and others at their word that they “enjoy” working because it provides a diversion from their incarceration and in some cases provides some meager but needed funds. On the other hand, I continue to see prison labor as exploitative and as fundamentally unjust. Additionally it serves to further depress the wages of marginalized groups of individuals on the outside. How should anti-prison activists address the issue of prison labor? Obviously if we could abolish prisons then the issue would not exist, however since abolition is not imminent what do we advocate for in the meantime?