Have Inmates Become Commodities On Wall Street?

Prison populations are constantly growing, recessions lead to overcrowded government prisons, and the government will look to private firms to house the excess inmate population.

Crime always goes up in a bad economy.  Where's there are good times and jobs are plentiful, people who get out of prison can usually find work

 and don't have to go back to their old ways.

When the economy fails, so do the former inmates.

Private prison populations have increased faster than the entire incarcerated population. During the last decade, the total prison population grew by 16%. Simultaneously, the number of federal prisoners in private facilities grew by 120%, while the number of state prisoners in private facilities grew by 33%.

According to the state government of California, the average cost to house an individual prisoner for one year is a whopping $47,102. By comparison, the average income for an American individual is $47,200, according to the CIA(GDP per capita purchasing power parity).

The prison industry could be nearing a turning point. Millions of inmates, a very large portion of the total prison population, are serving time for non-violent drug crimes – a group that could decrease in size with looser drug enforcement laws, like the recent decriminalization of marijuana use in Connecticut where Gov. Malloy said that he would prefer to use the criminal justice resources for more serious and violent crime.

“… in a time of declining crime rates and tight state budgets, smart reforms are gaining ground, and most aim to reduce the prison population,” writes The Economist.

Interested in conducting your own research into the private prison industry? To help you out, here is a list of the two largest companies in the industry. Where do you think these stocks are heading?

1. Corrections Corporation of America (CXW): Property Management industry with a market cap of $2.4B. It specializes in owning, operating, and managing prisons and other correctional facilities and providing inmate residential and prisoner transportation services for governmental agencies. As of December 31, 2010, it operated 66 correctional and detention facilities, including 45 facilities that it owns, with a total design capacity of approximately 90,000 beds in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

As of December 31, 2010, it was also constructing an additional 1,124-bed correctional facility in Millen, Georgia. It also owns two additional correctional facilities that it leases to third-party operators. Its facilities offer a range of rehabilitation and educational programs, including basic education, religious services, life skills and employment training, and substance abuse treatment. It also provides healthcare (including medical, dental, and psychiatric services), food services, and work and recreational programs.

2. The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO): Security & Protection Services industry with a market cap of $1.45B. It is a provider of government-outsourced services specializing in the management of correctional, detention, mental health, residential treatment and re-entry facilities, and the provision of community-based services and youth services in the United States, Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Canada.

It operates a range of correctional and detention facilities, including maximum, medium and minimum security prisons, immigration detention centers, minimum security detention centers, mental health, residential treatment and community-based, re-entry facilities. It offers counseling, education and/or treatment to inmates with alcohol and drug abuse problems at most of the domestic facilities, which it manages. It also provides secure transportation services for offender and detainee populations as contracted.

Don't allow human beings to become commodities like oil or pork bellies

on Wall Street!

Demand that bailed-out banks and businesses like Wells Fargo divest in GEO and CXW, companies that make their money off of incarcerating our families and neighbors for longer and in more harsh conditions--for profit be shut down!

Remember- if you have a Wells Fargo account, this is a great day to put your money in a bank that doesn’t devastate families and communities!

Thanks for visiting "The Smoke Filled Room." Visit again soon. 

Peace and Love 

TLW, Editor 

LifePlusUs@gmail.com

The New Jim Crow

By: Michelle Alexander

Fifty years ago, James Baldwin accused his country and his countrymen of destroying hundreds of thousands of black lives. They “do not know it and do not want to know it,” he wrote.  “It is their innocence which constitutes the crime.”

Today, in the era of mass incarceration and supposed colorblindness, the white guilt of the Civil Rights era has exhausted itself, as Barack Obama has observed, and the number of African American lives we destroy through not knowing now runs in the millions.

The New Jim Crow is for people “who do not yet appreciate the magnitude of the crisis faced by communities of color as a result of mass incarceration.” It’s a book to end not knowing.

  

Is this the willful art of not knowing?  It is essentially this: The system of mass incarceration that has resulted in putting one out of every 31 adults behind bars, on probation or on parole, is merely a redesign of the two race-based caste systems that parallels a chilling truth.

  1 in 87 working-aged white men is in prison or jail compared with 

1 in 36 Hispanic men, 

and 1 in 12 African-American men.

There are those who persist in believing that African Americans deserve to be locked up at a higher rate than whites because they commit more crimes. However, the impact of the discretion our law enforcement agencies enjoy in deciding where drug laws are enforced and where they’re not is asinine. Where are illegal drugs more likely to be found than at a fraternity house? Yet how often are frat houses subject to early morning police raids?

 Once branded a criminal, people enter a parallel social universe in which they are stripped of the rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement. The old forms of discrimination—employment and housing discrimination, denial of basic public benefits and the right to vote, and exclusion from jury service—are perfectly legal again. In some major American cities, more than half of working-age African American men are saddled with criminal records and thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These men are part of a growing under caste—not class, caste—a group of people, defined largely by race, who are relegated to a permanent, second-class status by law.

The question for those who see the racial inequity as merely an unintended consequence of the War on Drugs is: If the consequences are unintended, then why aren’t we willing to change the drug laws to eliminate the inequity?

The New Jim Crow is a call to high-stakes caring across color lines—the kind of revolutionary, grassroots caring that will certainly cost us our innocence and some of our material advantages. But it can also restore the moral force at the heart of the civil rights movement and ensure that we finally listen to—and advocate for—criminals.  Read it and be ashamed and angry for the lives and innocence lost.

Read it and start a revolution of caring

TLW
LifePlusUs

Reinvented African Americans

These are the first black Americans to realize pioneering achievements in their fields. With talent and determination, each one has reinvented not only what it means to be an African American, but also what it means to be an American. Our list celebrates the first African Americans to overcome the obstacles of discrimination and achieve top honors in 

their fields of endeavor.

1.  Marian Anderson

•  First black member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, in 1955.

 2.  Arthur Ashe

• First black man to win a Wimbledon singles title, defeating Jimmy Connors in 1975.

3.  Halle Berry

• First African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actress, in 2001 for Monster's Ball.

4. Beyoncé

• In October 2003, black artists held all "Billboard" Top Ten chart positions for the first time in pop history. Beyoncé was No. 1.

5. James Hubert (Eubie) Blake

• Composed first Broadway musical written and directed by African-Americans.

6. Guion Bluford

• First African-American astronaut to launch into space, in 1983.

7. Gwendolyn Brooks

• First black to receive a Pulitzer Prize, in 1950.

 8. Ralph Bunche

• First African-American to win a Nobel Peace Prize, in 1950.

 9. Shirley Chisholm

• First black woman elected to Congress, in 1968 (from Brooklyn to 91st Congress).

 10. Nat King Cole

• First back entertainer to host his own show on national television, in 1956.

 11. Elbert Frank Cox

• First African-American to earn a PhD in Mathematics, in 1925 (Cornell University).

 12. Benjamin Oliver Davis

• First black appointed to the rank of general, in 1940. His son, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr., was the first black general in the Air Force.

 13. Frederick Douglass

• First black to receive a major US government appointment, in 1877.

 14. Rita Dove  

• First black female US Poet Laureate, 1993-1995.

 15. Keith Ellison

• First Black Muslim elected to U.S Congress, in 2006 from Minnesota.

 16. Althea Gibson

• First African-American to play in the US Open, winning the tournament twice, in 1957 and 1958.

 17. Whitney Houston

• First artist ever to have seven consecutive singles hit number one.

 18. Dr. Mae Jemison

• First black woman astronaut to launch into space, in 1992.

19.  Jack Johnson

•  First African-American world heavyweight boxing champion, in 1908.

 20. Robert Johnson

• The owner of Black Entertainment Television, Johnson became the first black billionaire in 2001.

 21. Simmie Knox

• First black artist to paint an official presidential portrait (Bill Clinton).

 22. John Mercer Langston 

• First African-American elected to public office, in 1855 in Ohio.

 23.  Oliver Lewis 

• First jockey to win the Kentucky Derby, in 1875. Thirteen of the 14 jockeys in the first Derby were black.

 24.  Reginald Lewis 

• First black person to own a billion-dollar company, TLC Beatrice Lewis opened TLC Group, a venture capital firm.

25.  Thurgood Marshall

• First African-American appointed to the Supreme Court, in 1963.

 26. Hattie McDaniel

•  First African-American to win an Oscar, in 1940 for Supporting Actress for Gone with the Wind.

 27.  James Meredith 

• First black graduate of the University of Mississippi, in 1963.

28. Carol Moseley-Braun 

• First black woman to serve on the U.S. Senate, in 1992 from Illinois.

29. Toni Morrison

• First black to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1993.

 30. Barack Obama

• First African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, 1991.

31. Sidney Poitier

• First African-American to win Oscar for best actor ("Lillies of the Field," 1963). First black nominated for Best Actor Academy Award ("The Defiant Ones," 1958). First black to star as romantic lead ("Paris Blues," 1961). First black to become number-one box office draw (1968). First black to insist on a film crew at least 50% African-American ("The Lost Man," 1969). First black to kiss a white woman on screen ("Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," 1967).

 32. Colin L. Powell

• First black chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 1989, and first black Secretary of State, in 2001.

33. Charley Pride

• First African-American inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, in 2000.

34.  Joseph Rainey 

• First black Congressman, in 1870 from South Carolina.

 35. Phylicia Rashad 

• First black woman to win Tony Award for dramatic lead on Broadway, in 2004, role of Lena Younger in "A Raisin in the Sun."

36. Hiram R. Revels 

• First black member of the U.S. Senate (R-Miss), in 1870, sworn in to fill unexpired term of Jefferson Davis.

37. Condoleezza Rice

• First black woman Secretary of State, in 2005.

38. Jackie Robinson

• First black major league baseball player, in 1947, and first black player elected to Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1962.

 39. Carl Stokes 

• First black mayor of a major American city, in 1967 (Cleveland).

40. Willie Thrower 

• First black NFL quarterback, in 1953.

41. Alexander Lucius Twilight 

• First black college graduate, in 1823 from Middlebury College.

42. Emlen Tunnell 

• First black elected to the Football Hall of Fame, in 1967 (defensive back, New York Giants).

43. Madam C. J. Walker

 

• First self-made African American woman millionaire.

44. L. Douglas Wilder 

• The first black governor elected by popular vote, 1990 (Virginia).

45. Daniel Hale Williams 

• Founded the first black-owned hospital in America, and credited with the world's first successful heart surgery, in 1893 (Chicago).

46. Tiger Woods

• First African-American to win the Masters golf tournament, in 1997.

47. Andrew Young 

• First black U.S. Representative to the UN, in 1977.

48. Eric Holder 

• In 2008, he became the first African-American attorney general designate in the United States.

49. George Poage 

• First African-American to win a medal in the Olympic Games

50. Alain Locke 

• First African-American Rhodes scholar

Thanks for visiting "13 Diamonds." Visit again soon.

 Peace and Love TLW, Editor