Last edited Tue Mar 17, 2015, 02:35 PM - Edit history (3)

Societies have long tried to make prisons close to self-supporting. Meanwhile, wardens and guards have labored to make them turn a profit, at least for themselves. But, the example of Ferguson, MO may be a prototype for what I will call "failed municipalities", declining post-industrial American cities and towns that have turned to violent policing of their remaining inhabitants, mostly poor and mostly black, to enhance revenues.

As with most such phenomena, there are historical antecedents for this.

Facing serious manpower and commodities shortages in 1942, the Nazis pioneered self-financing state-corporate partnership extermination camps. Auschwitz III and the IG Farbin synthetic gasoline/Buna rubber plants run with streams of slave labor were the highly profitable result. The South Africans demonstrated the modern racially-based model of colonialism - the Bantustan township model of "semi-autonomous" administrative control areas populated by low-wage mine and domestic laborers. Chile was a laboratory for applied Chicago School economics and privatized public functions within a post-democratic authoritarian police state.

Ferguson combines elements of all these predecessor experiments and adapts it to 21st Century American reality of failed municipalities - post-industrial, racially segregated suburban ghettos. In a failed municipality such as Ferguson, the depressed tax base is enhanced by violent police revenue collection from a criminalized racial underclass subject to extrajudicial execution within the confines of a politically isolated Bantustan township. Ferguson is just the latest experiment in racial prison camps for profit.

This is appalling on so many different levels. And the lead cockroaches will all slither away with a great severance package. Onto another town to destroy it and it's people.

Some humans are disgusting and shouldn't ever hold a position of power over the helpless. I knew Ferguson PD and the town leaders were all a bunch of corrupt piles of shit. Sad that they get away with it.

When it comes to racially profiled traffic stops, Ferguson isn't at the top of the list. What makes Ferguson unusual among predominantly black St. Louis suburbs is the high proportion of residents with outstanding "nuisance warrants."

I've seen these numbers thrown around recklessly several times over the last few days. St. Louis is a big city; Ferguson is part of St. Louis, geographically.

It is completely and totally dishonest to promote these numbers as 16,000 of 21,000 residents have municipal Warrants.