Uncle Sam's Cabin

Via Charles Pierce, here's a little tale that oughta make your blood boil. The entire article is excerpt-worthy; suffice to say that there's a modernized version of the old southern work farms going on here, except this one is a food-industry-created temp agency where the "employees" don't get paid at all.

Should anyone be surprised that this particular slave-diversion outlet pretends to be a christian rehab, even though most of the "participants" have committed no drug-related crimes? No more than one would be surprised that the vile cow overseeing this scam is well-paid, runs some of the slaves to work her daughter's egg farm, etc.

Most exposés of the ever-expanding, ever-more-privatized carceral state focus (with good reason) on the disproportionate ratio of minority inmates exploited and abused under the system. But it's really a socioeconomic issue -- the slave drivers are just as happy to exploit poor whites as they are any other poor person. The race of the exploited person doesn't matter nearly as much as the captivity of the victim, the complete inability to fight back or resist against the evil perpetrated on them.

Considering the article mentions plenty of popular food brands that buy product from these slave farms, it would be nice to think some sort of economic pressure could be pushed onto these companies. In the real world, however, this is an unfortunate fart in a now endless hurricane. Beef is relatively easy to buy locally sourced, chicken much less so. But maybe if enough people hear about this atrocity, these monsters can be shut down and shunned.

In the meantime, this serves as an apt metaphor for the way our wonderful world really is:  you're either profiting from the racket, or being victimized by it. That's their ultimate goal.

Something to Consider

I know we're all against the death penalty now, some of us out of principle, and some (like myself) because in practice it is an enormously flawed and corrupt process, but the fact is that Dylann Stormfront Roof is 22 years old, and the rest of his life, even if he lives to be eighty, will be just like this, unless he finds someone to "ride" with for protection:

Dylann Roof was attacked after he was let out of his cell to take a shower at around 7:45 a.m. Thursday, Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said at a news conference.

As Roof left his cell, inmate Dwayne Stafford “ran down the stairs and was able to get to Roof, who was at or near the shower area,” the sheriff said.

Stafford, who is black, punched Roof “a number of times and assaulted him quickly,” Cannon said.

Don't worry, the guards can be trusted to keep young master Roof in (to use the colloquial) PC:

Officials are investigating how Stafford managed to get through a steel cell door with a narrow vertical window and down the stairs to reach Roof.

The two detention officers assigned to the unit are being interviewed and officials are also looking into the possibility the electronic door mechanism malfunctioned.

The area of the jail is for federal and high-security prisoners. It has two tiers of cells and the shower Roof was using was in the center on the ground floor. Cell doors can only be opened by officers sitting at a control console.

Yeah, that is indeed a mystery. Sure hope they get to the bottom of that. So to speak. Start with the equipment malfunction. Lose any videotape of the event that might exist. One thing we definitely know for sure is that prison guards are absolutely incorruptible.

Don't get me wrong, I have zero sympathy for Roof and whatever demented cause that drove him to his fateful moment, although Roof clearly came from let's say suboptimal circumstances. But the fact of the matter is that life without parole also presents a complex set of dangers and challenges: people who are literally disincentivized from attacking other inmates, guards, etc.

Supposedly the death penalty will be sought against Roof, and maybe it'll happen, or maybe it will just enable them to keep him in a more supervised environment for the next half-century. Either way, chances are Roof will spend the rest of his life not contemplating his sins, but deciding whether to become prey or predator. That's all the carceral state is anymore.

Just as Every Cop Is a Criminal, and All the Sinners Saints

Look, I think most people across the ideological spectrum will attest that the majority of police officers are decent people doing difficult work the best they can under adverse conditions. This is not really in dispute. The problem is that when there is a turd, they refuse to fucking flush it. You can't make them, la la la they can't hear you, they will insist that not only is there no turd, but not even a bad odor.

It has less to do with whether the individual that gets shot is black -- though that clearly is a statistically significant factor -- and more to do with the victim in question being of the "marginalized" class. This is what those aerosol-cheese-sucking yahoos counter-protesting in Ferguson and elsewhere don't seem to get:  this is a socioeconomic issue, even more than a racial one. If you're a dipshit drug dealer and they decide to cave in your front door without warning, you're fair game. In a southern state, the odds double. And in Florida or Texas, they triple. And they get away with it, every goddamned time.

Crime and Punishment

By now you've seen some or all of the viral video of the Texas cop going a little gung-ho on busting up a pool party made up largely of those people. (Check out Starsky's barrel-roll about five seconds in, like something out of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This clown probably practices sliding across the hood of his squad car.)

It's a none-too-subtle reminder of how minor incidents that did not used to require police involvement now routinely involve guns being pulled on unarmed kids, and said kids being physically assaulted by cops. Very often these incidents culminate in people being brought in, and entities and institutions with vested interests in getting citizens on the hook of the prison-industrial complex.

It can result in poor people (and it's always poor people; people of means generally aren't taken into custody in the first place, and when they are, they can usually buy their way out of a jam) being held in custody because of their inability to make bail, and thus have to wait for months or even years on end for due process to run its course.

Such is the case of the unfortunate Kalief Browder, who spent three years locked up in Rikers Island on suspicion of stealing a backpack. Browder, who was kept in solitary confinement for two-thirds of his stay, and captured on video being beaten by guards and inmates, tragically took his own life over the weekend, unable to cope with the severe treatment he endured in New York's Kafkaesque metropolitan prison system.

It's safe to assume that most people, regardless of political sentiment, believe that Browder's experience is the norm, not an aberration, and that very few people would survive a week in a hellhole like Rikers, or any state or federal facility. These are places where physical, mental, and sexual abuse are not just tolerated, but actively used as means of control. Even county jails are no picnic, especially in metropolitan areas.

To assert that bad people deserve to be treated miserably, like animals, is one of the more hideous human teleologies, especially in the US, but certainly in every third world country as well. It is a temptation that all of us, including yours truly, give in to when presented with individuals who commit truly monstrous acts. There really are some folks whom it's difficult to see what redeeming value would be achieved by warehousing them, letting them victimize other inmates and attack guards for years or decades on end.

And yet we have to figure that at some point, most of the people in prison will have done an appropriate amount of time for their transgression, and then must return to what passes for civilized society here. And it's in our best interest to make sure those people have not been traumatized by an experience that none of us would endure in our worst nightmares. Chanting the mantra of "don't so the crime if you can't do the time" doesn't cut it; the time they do is not supposed to include the constant threat of deadly violence, and it's hard to expect them not to carry those experiences back out into the real world.

We made the decision, under the guise of public safety, that rehabilitation was not a priority, that it was more important to beat them down and keep them there than to make attempts to change them in order to get them back on the track of living productive lives -- or at least not victimizing others.

These events that pop up in the news routinely now, cops assaulting kids for getting a little rowdy, kids being kept in custody for minor bullshit far longer than any reasonable person could deem fair, people coming out of the system so traumatized that they can no longer function normally. It would be nice to think that something might be done about it, but we all know that nothing will. And the odds are, at this rate, sooner or later you or someone you know or care about will find themselves in the system at some point, either on a financial hook or actually incarcerated. And there won't be anything you or they can do about it.

Rescue Dumb

I suppose it's a good thing that the Kenyan Moooslim got these two idiots out of North Korea, but at the same time, it would not have bothered me terribly if we hadn't. Traveling to North Korea -- for an American, anyway; people from other countries can and do travel there with no repercussions -- is a foolhardy idea.

Engaging in risky behavior is very much a part of the human experience, it's why some of us ride motorcycles, race cars, fly planes, climb mountains, become astronauts. But for the risk there should be some tangible reward -- automobile racing has led to numerous safety and efficiency improvements in all cars; air and space travel have led to countless innovations.

There is no point to going to North Korea and engaging in deliberately provocative behavior, with its notoriously paranoid and erratic regime, none whatsoever. Just as rescue teams have better things to do than endanger themselves to save morons who chose to climb a mountain in a snowstorm, diplomats have better things to do than grant concessions to psychotic despots in order to save fools who should have known better.

Somewhat (but not entirely) off-topic, this little nugget gave me a grin, though:

A recent United Nations report documented rape, torture, executions and forced labor in the North's network of prison camps, accusing the government of "widespread, systematic and gross" human rights violations.

Aha. Rape, torture, executions, and forced labor. Yeah, none of those things are commonplace here, in the most incarcerated society (both total and per capita) on the entire planet. The North Korean gulags may be hell on earth, but the disgusting, vicious American prison system is not so far behind.