I Am A Living Piece of Property 

JON (nom de plume) / Fault Lines i.11, 1may2005

[Are Prisons Obsolete?]

I am a living piece of property: I am a prisoner in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections. I am a teeny-weeny ingredient in an ever-expanding pie whose pastry contains ground human fodder. I am a meal for multitudinous parasites who are profiteering from my slow motion torture.

Don’t misunderstand me: A healthy society needs law and order personnel to function properly. However, a closer examination of the reasons causing America to have the highest incarceration rate in the world reveals a shocking story.

First, the 13th amendment abolished slavery except for convicted prisoners. Writing in the New York Globe in 1883, an editor and leading African-American journalist wrote “…the penitentiary system of the South, with its famous chain gang… the object being to…furnish victims for contractors, who purchase the labor of these wretches from the state for a song.”

Nowadays, this loophole is being exploited not only to provide a slave labor force working for free or for pittance, but also to transfer billions of dollars of tax revenue to profiteers operating under the guise of law and order and the pretend shibboleth of being tough on crime. Yet crime continues to flourish because the underlying causes remain unaddressed and the prisons — colleges of crime — do not rehabilitate inmates as proven by the high rates of recidivism. Prisons weave young men into criminal patchworks where violence and intravenous drug use are esteemed by their peers. Prisoners graduate with Bachelors of Arts in committing felonies and some with the honors of Hepatitis C.

The profiteers lobby for the status quo; to feed their insatiable appetites for value accretion the legislators have introduced a plethora of new laws and stiffer penalties in order to widen the dragnet that traps victims as it trawls through society.

The prison-industrial complex and the legal profession are two of the main cancer-causing organisms. There are now over one million legal vampires in the US- a modern day gold rush- and applicants for law examinations are at record levels. US citizens mock the Mexican police for accepting $20 bribes, yet the cost of a defense in America may cost a person’s entire life savings, and then some- the remainder being billed to the taxpayers.

For the current growth rates to be maintained, soon, everyone is going to have a family member or friend gobbled up by the system- a system supposedly operating for the benefit of the people.

Edmund Burke wrote that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing”. It is time to stop this disease from spreading. It is time to stop the mighty profits for few occurring at the expense of a seven digit prison population. It is time for the public to reign over their leaders. If the oppression is not stopped now the vestigial democracy will be swallowed by totalitarianism. In order to educate the public, expose what is occurring, and to rally the troops, I have authored a weblog. I never imagined that it would be widely read, but interest in it has snowballed and it has made the news around the world. People can read the blog and post comments at: www.jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com

The public, who is footing the bill for the existing pyramid scheme, needs to put sufficient pressure on the vote-hungry politicians and legislators to abandon the failing policies and introduce new policies emphasizing prisoner education and rehabilitation; it is the only humane option for an enlightened society. Together we can put a stop to the tyranny.

Jon (nom de plume)
writeinside@hotmail.com