Private Prisons, Human Trafficking and the American Way of Punishment

A
Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"The
crimes of the two judges are informed by the logic of a political
culture born in institutional theft, murder and kidnapping for
profit."

The
case of the two Pennsylvania judges who conspired to funnel juveniles
into for-profit detention centers in return for kickbacks, is an
example of whole flocks of American chickens coming home to roost.
The Pennsylvania abomination's roots are as ancient as the bounties
placed on Native American scalps and on the living bodies of persons
who might, or might not have been, escaped slaves. The crimes of the
two judges are informed by the logic of a political culture born in
institutional theft, murder and kidnapping for profit. It is a
political culture whose essential moral depravity survives - and
thrives - in an ever-expanding, nationwide system of privatized
prisons whose very existence is an indictment of American society.

At
its core, a criminal justice system that provides financial
incentives to capture, incarcerate, humiliate and stigmatize other
human beings, is an incubator of the most evil potentialities of the
species. Bounty-hunting and for-profit prisons share the same
underlying morality as cannibalism. No one should be surprised when
such a state-sanctioned perversion of morality results in the system
devouring its young, as occurred in Pennsylvania.

The
two judges are alleged to have taken $2.6 million in kickbacks for
maintaining a steady flow of juvenile prisoners to fatten the coffers
of two private youth detention centers. One judge used his influence
to secure contracts for the private jailers; the other kept the
bodies coming, sentencing five thousand young people during the
five-year course of the conspiracy. For this crime of mass kidnapping
of children, the judges have been allowed to plead guilty to the
relatively minor charges of wire fraud and income tax fraud, for
which they will serve a little over seven years in federal prison.
And there are no plans to prosecute executives of the two private
youth detention centers that reaped tens of millions of dollars from
the crimes of the two judges.

"The
overlapping crimes against potentially thousands of young victims,
creates a huge mosaic of pain stretching into the far distances of
the century."

Federal
prosecutors defend their leniency with the judges, claiming the case
is so "complex" it would take years to litigate. Well, of
course it is complex. The overlapping crimes against potentially
thousands of young victims, the consequences of which will touch
additional tens of thousands over the course of lifetimes, creates a
huge mosaic of pain stretching into the far distances of the century.
The "complexity" that prosecutors worry about involves the
precedent that would be set if the judges and the private prison
owners they worked for were charged with offenses suited to their
real crimes: kidnapping and human trafficking for profit. Kidnapping
is a federal offense punishable by life behind bars. Human
trafficking can get you 30
years in a federal prison.

With
the expansion of private prisons all across the country, the
"incentive" to harvest a bounty of captured human beings is
as powerful today as it was when the Fugitive Slave Act was the law
of the land. When the profit motive infests the criminal justice
system, justice doesn't stand a chance.

For
Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to
www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR
executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
[email protected].

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