Not only are private prisons the new profit bonanza and growing exponentially, but Obama's most recent budget also requests massive increases in spending for the public prison system.

Obama 2013 Budget: Grow Prisons, Keep Gitmo
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002392306

"President Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2013 includes cuts to everything from Medicare and Medicaid to defense and even homeland security. But federal prisons are among its "biggest winners," according to an analysis by the Federal Times. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is seeking a 4.2 percent increase, one of the largest of any federal agency, which would bring its total budget to more than $6.9 billion."

Financial growth of the private prison industry
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002430630#post4



The corporate one percent prepare for resistance to the new normal, while licking their lips over cheap prison labor.

Occupy.

That graphic makes me

Warehousing people and billing the taxpayer. Some of the sentencing mandates for pot expired and the prison populations are falling. They will lobby to get new crops of prisoners one way or another.

This is the truly chilling part of it. The private prisons are corporations, so they have business plans that DEPEND on growth of their prison populations for their success as corporations.

Financial incentives for imprisoning human beings is wrong. It is evil.

Let's start a list of the ways an emerging corporate fascist state can "get new crops of prisoners," shall we?

By criminalizing protest against government actions
By expanding the drug war to target low-level users and medical marijuana providers and patients
By building massive spy centers and putting dragnet surveillance systems into place to monitor people's movements, emails, and phone calls without a warrant
By broadening who can be suspected to be a "terrorist" based on criteria as broad and vague as grumbling comments about TSA in an airport, or attending an Occupy protest, or typing a certain word on the internet.

It's chilling.

lock up people who owe and then make them work for slave wages to pay back the credit companies. If they do this they will be crowing on Fox about how manufacturing is returning to the US.

That's gonna be a biggie.

We are seeing the groundwork for that being laid already: imprisoning people for not being able to pay fines, and making prisoners work for pennies just to maintain basic privileges.

We are in deep, deep trouble in this country.

we a sick country. i don't know if there's hope. though i can't let it go, i don't have the means to leave, i have children and grandchildren...

That is an astonishing fact, perhaps Americans are particularly bad people, or perhaps more accurately the US justice system is not that good. More emphasis on rehabilitation and education must be promoted not locking people up.......should only be reserved for the worst of the worst.

especially liberals, minorities, the poor....the vast majority of inmates are non-violent substance users and abusers. Some need treatment, some need to be left alone. None deserve to be locked in cages like dangerous animals.

Oh, and war spending, too.

And where's the change?

Total Federal Inmates: 217,890 (Last updated on May 31, 2012 )

The weekly population report is generated every Thursday at 12:00 a.m.

http://www.bop.gov/locations/weekly_report.jsp

for profit prisons, it will become even worse over the long run.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.