Saturday 12 February 2011

Land Of The Free?

In my local Tesco store, they sell jeans for £4. Not particularly nice jeans but they seem popular in these financially challenging times. I'm not privy to how much Tesco pay for these jeans or where they come from, but they obviously pay the distributor less than £4 per pair in order to make a profit, and the distributor pays the factory and the factory pays the jeans makers who by the time the money gets to them, and everyone else has taken a slice of the £4, must be paid a pittance to make the jeans in the first place.
There have been many cases of big name stores and companies being rightly condemned for using slave labour and making huge profits but a comment on a BBC programme about American prisons had me doing some research.
There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the USA.
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, half a million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. The United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people.
So why has America got such a high prison population?
Are Americans just more criminally minded, the police more vigilant or is the justice system just more geared towards jailing offenders?
Whatever the reason why, the prison industry is one of the few areas in the economy doing well during the recession.
There are over 100 private prisons in the USA, the largest provider is Corrections Corporation of America who run 66 correctional facilities in 19 states.
CCA's 2010 Fourth Quarter and Full-Year Financial Results shows 'Total management revenue for the fourth quarter of 2010 increased 3.6% to $430.8 million from $415.8 million during the prior year period, primarily driven by a 4.3% increase in average daily inmate populations'.
Revenue up by $15 million in one quarter but these are good times for CCA who 'during 2011, we expect to invest approximately $113.0 million to $128.0 million in capital expenditures, consisting of approximately $63.0 million to $73.0 million in on-going prison construction and expenditures related to potential land acquisitions'. Big money in running prisons obviously but how do they make there money?
According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens.
Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people'.
So many prisoners create a large workforce and the products made by American inmates are sold through UNICOR who boast on their website 'Made in the USA products and services, supporting domestic jobs and our Nation’s economy'.
So the likes of UNICOR and CCA are making tens of millions from products made by American inmates and buyers get cheap products so everybody wins. Everyone except the prisoners who make 28 cents to 66 cents per hour. The average minimum wage in America is $7.75.
Slave labour? The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution 'officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime'.
Except as punishment for a crime, so it's legal and the more prisoners there are the more products are made and more profits for the private prison providers who are spending tens of millions building more facilities to house citizens of a nation that already imprisons more people than any other country.
Land of the Free?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

lucy,

all you hve to do to stay out of prison in the USA is not break the law. I'm sure there are a few exceptions. but damn few. my dad, uncle, and 3 cousins are lawyers. time and again they said "there are people in prison for crimes they did not commit, but there are no innocent people in prison..."

q

Cheezy said...

"I'm not privy to how much Tesco pay for these jeans or where they come from, but they obviously pay the distributor less than £4 per pair in order to make a profit,"

Not necessarily true actually, because Tesco have an extensive range of loss-leaders instore, designed to draw you in so you spend more money on the marked-up stuff. Some of the loss-leaders have in the past been: bread, milk, (controversially) alcohol, and - yep - cheap'n'nasty garments.

Now... Daddy Warbucks I most certainly ain't, but if I ever reach the stage in my life where I'm seriously having a look at the range of £4 jeans in Tesco, I'd like someone give me a good shake and ask me what the f&ck I'm doing with my life...

Really interesting statistics in this post, Lucy... I did have a vague idea that the USA was putting this 'hidden workforce' to good use, but I had no idea that it was this extent!

Lucy said...

Funnily enough q, a quick google search shows Texas has had more exonerations than any other state. Ssems there are innnocent people and mostly in your state.

It was good old Qi Cheezy that mentioned the USA having 25% of the World prisoners that started me searching for the facts to back it up. You are possibly right and Tesco does use the £4 jeans as a loss leader. A Telegraph piece reckons Tesco buys them at £3.20 a pair but Tesco are not saying.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2872280/How-can-Tesco-sell-jeans-for-4.html

Nog said...

I think you're mostly right on the money here. There are a number of reasons why the US crime and prison rates would naturally be higher than those in the rest of the western world (bordering a developing nation, less homogeneous population, dumb crime-generating narcotics laws, etc), but we are still a bit too prison happy.


all you have to do to stay out of prison in the USA is not break the law.

This argument is circular (all you have to do to stay out of prison is not do something that can get you thrown in prison). We have more laws than we know what to do with and we often implement them very poorly.


I don't think it really has much to do with labor stuff (although prison unions lobby hard against shortening sentences for anything).

-Nog

Cheezy said...

Fair enough, I'm prepared to take the Telegraph's word for it that Tesco are actually selling those dodgy jeans at a profit. That paper did such a great job during the MP's expenses scandal that they've still got some credit from me :)

Anonymous said...

Cheezy,

bullshit huh. Well, the lawyers in my family were all defense attorneys. I'll stand by their observations. My dad retired at 41 so he only practiced for 18 or 19 years. My uncle practiced law for 50 years and my cousins have all been in practice over 20 years.

I don't mean innocent in the eyes of God. My family was very clear. For example, my dad said that when he represented a car thief they typically had stolen over 100 cars before they got caught (kind of high but san antonio is only a 3 hours from the mexican border and a lot of san antonio cars end up being exports - if you get my meaning).

I think today most people are in prison for drug violations.

I'm a little surprised that you and Lucy are taking this stance on crime in America (well maybe just Lucy) since we hear about all of America's violence on a regular basis... especially all of the rampant gun violence!

Once again the left wants to play both sides of the data to suit their purposes...

q

Anonymous said...

lucy,

remember exhonerated doesn't necessarily mean innocent... it most often means innocent of the crime that put them in jail...

q

Cheezy said...

"I'll stand by their observations."

Fair enough. I'll stand by logic, common sense, statistical likelihood, and empirical evidence.

Here's your original point:

"There are no innocent people in prison."

That's "no", is it? As in none. Nada. Zero. Nobody in prison who doesn't deserve to be? Is that what you're saying?

Hmmm... Maybe you could say that all of them would have committed some sin during their lives, like coveting their neighbour's wife's ass or something... or even actually broken some law, like not returning library books or going 30 in a 20mph zone...

If, however, what you're saying is that everyone in prison deserves to be, then you're having a laugh, mate... a disturbing sort of laugh maybe, because this is a very 'police state' kinda thing to say: "Yeah, maybe he didn't do it but he's a scumbag anyway"...

It must be nice to trust your government so much that they'll only put the baddies away, huh? Myself, I don't trust them quite so much...

PS: I ain't 'the left', by the way. I toyed with it once, and 'the right' too. I don't enjoy the confines.

Lucy said...

I didn't think i was making a stance or if i was it was about legalised slave labour in US prisons.

It was the sweeping 'no innocent people in prison' line and i'm not sure i go along with the thought that if you commit one crime, you must have committed others. I would be interested in how you think the 3 strikes law inflates the prison population though.

Anonymous said...

cheezy, i didn't mean zero. lucy made it sound like almost all of them are innocent. i thought her statement was as outragous as zero sounds.

odds alone say that when you have millions in prison there has to be at least one just becuase of human error. then there are set ups and bigotry.

my "none" is not wilder than lucy's millions...

lucy - the three strikes doesn't get any press here except when someone talks about making it a law. people against it say that it just leads to bad guys going berseker on crime three others say it is a deterent. i think for some it is a deterent and for others if leads to a big crime. i would vote against it if it was on a ballot.

i don't care what reports say. based on what my family knows and what i've seen from prison minitries the people in prison have done bad things.

i think one thing you are missing here is that i'm the blacksheep in the family. the others in my family sound like you. my dad was a lefty. my uncle very left. my cousins are lefties. back in the 60's my dad defended blacks and hispanics for free becuase of bigotry. but times have changed. drugs have changed things. organized crime has changed things.

q

Cheezy said...

"my "none" is not wilder than lucy's millions..."

I didn't realise Lucy had said there were 'millions' of innocent people in US prisons (and I still can't find it, to be honest)... but... if she did, then - you'd be right! - she is at least as wrong as you are.

Anonymous said...

cheezy, implied only.

oh yeah, you've enver shared ideas that indicated you are a lefty. in fact, i have a hard time predicting where you will stand on most topics...

q

Cheezy said...

I'm glad about that; hopefully it shows I'm thinking about issues on their merits, and not just trotting out the 'party line'. Long way to go though. As Socrates said, the man who knows he knows nothing is the smartest man of all. I'm not smart enough to know exactly what that means, but it encourages me to keep on looking...