US prison system; torture, solitary confinement and big business.

For many of us who are more recent immigrants to the US, we are struck by the violence of the culture. Not just the endless violence on US television which is perhaps the worst TV programming in the world, but the power of the police, the courts and most of all, the state of the prisons.  As the report below describes, there are more than 50 super max prisons in the United States and prison construction is big business.

There are some two million people in prison in America, almost 50% of them are black folks; this is a catastrophe. The US imprisons children for life and even executes them as well as the mentally impaired.  Torture and abuse is rampant and solitary confinement the norm.  It is inhumane to keep any human being in solitary confinement for 25 years as the US does. The prisons are not correctional centers by any stretch of the imagination; they are for the warehousing of human beings nothing else. The video gives an example of what a profitable enterprise the prison industrial complex is as the private prison corprations spend millions of dollars bribing politicians.

In the age of a dying economic giant, for many in rural areas working as a correctional officer is the only job in town that also pays some benefits.  The politicians get bribed by the corporations to bring prisons in to their communities and fight the good fight, be "tough on crime".  Prisons and gambling casinos become the new age economy.