'A Modest Proposal'
Maureen Dimino
Issue date: 10/1/02 Section: Features
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It has come to my attention that a large part of our tax dollars goes to the prison systems - the fastest growing industry in the nation, with an annual budget of approximately 33 billion dollars. With the privatization of many prisons to multinational corporation such as Marriott, however, we have learned how to take a fruitless population and turn it around for a profit. Some say this is an abuse, that it is inhumane to turn a profit on people who are very likely in jail based on their race and class, not merely their criminal behavior.
Do not buy into the liberal rhetoric. We are a great Nation because we have been able to attain our goals in spite of the human factor annoyances in our society (See McIntosh). Whoever thinks prisons and economic gain do not mesh should take a look at the state and federal budgets for prison and prison construction. Although they say crime does not pay, the penal system sure does: it pays construction workers, management firms and sheriff departments.
But we could be making more money! We could turn a much higher rate of profit through other methods of privatization. Although we have already instituted state-sanctioned slavery within prisons by forcing inmates to work in factories building goods, we could be making vast economic gains through prisons. I think we should nationally institute a mandatory educational exchange between prisons and the top universities around the country. It only makes sense. The similarities are striking.
Both are "holding tanks" where the young are sent in droves to improve at their trade. At the top universities, youth are taught to be stockbrokers, psychologists and academicians by professors; in prison, senior members of the community teach youth to be career robbers, drug-dealers and gang-bangers. Both the university and prison project a certain cultural value upon young people at a formative age that teaches them what they have to do in life to succeed in their world. This exchange could be a fabulous educational opportunity for all involved; each group could get the first-hand knowledge of how the other functions within their society in order to survive.
Do not buy into the liberal rhetoric. We are a great Nation because we have been able to attain our goals in spite of the human factor annoyances in our society (See McIntosh). Whoever thinks prisons and economic gain do not mesh should take a look at the state and federal budgets for prison and prison construction. Although they say crime does not pay, the penal system sure does: it pays construction workers, management firms and sheriff departments.
But we could be making more money! We could turn a much higher rate of profit through other methods of privatization. Although we have already instituted state-sanctioned slavery within prisons by forcing inmates to work in factories building goods, we could be making vast economic gains through prisons. I think we should nationally institute a mandatory educational exchange between prisons and the top universities around the country. It only makes sense. The similarities are striking.
Both are "holding tanks" where the young are sent in droves to improve at their trade. At the top universities, youth are taught to be stockbrokers, psychologists and academicians by professors; in prison, senior members of the community teach youth to be career robbers, drug-dealers and gang-bangers. Both the university and prison project a certain cultural value upon young people at a formative age that teaches them what they have to do in life to succeed in their world. This exchange could be a fabulous educational opportunity for all involved; each group could get the first-hand knowledge of how the other functions within their society in order to survive.