Child Prisoners

Is anybody else bothered by the the trend toward privatizing the prison system?

If you're not, you should be.  Any legal system is teetering on the edge abuse, anyway - that's just the nature of life.  Sorry.  But when you privatize any aspect of the criminal justice system, you remove any chance for a check or balance on raw profiteering.

Here is an example of a judge taking pay from private prison owners to sentence children.   When the judge has a direct economic incentive to sentence, do you suppose there is ANY chance for justice?  Do you think guilt or innocence even is a factor?

The payments to the judges included $140,000 in cash stuffed into FedEx boxes, prosecutors said. The judges were charged with laundering some of the money, buying a luxury condominium in Florida in 2004. In 2006, Mr. Powell began instructing his employees to withdraw amounts of less than $10,000, to avoid suspicion, prosecutors said.

Mr. Ciavarella faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted of all 39 counts against him. But the fact that he is on trial at all feels like a triumph to Hillary Transue, whom he sentenced to three months for a spoof Web page mocking an assistant principal at her high school in 2007.

Think about this.  The judge gets rich, the prison owners get rich, the children get incarcerated - often with no legal council - ergo, no due process.  Of course, due process - like any other form of regulation -would only get in the way of profiteering.  This  is a horrible example of victimizing the most vulnerable and helpless people in society - for direct monetary gain.  

These kids end up with prison records.  Is there a better way to trap someone in poverty forever?

This is no better than - and, in fact, not much different from outright slavery.

As horrible as this is - can you conceive of any other possible outcome resulting from the existence of private, FOR-PROFIT prisons?

Corporations and Regressives want to take us back to the 13th century.  And it's working.

H/T to LGM .

.