Re: <nettime> A Dystopian New Initiative Will Charge Inmates by the

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

Ted, you make a crucial distinction that is often overlooked (or just unknown) by many who are outraged by the relationship between the private sector and the (white supremacist) carceral state. The vast majority (more than 90%) of all people locked up in the US are in wholly state-managed facilities. Most of those held in corporate-managed facilities are in federal custody, and many of those are held in â??immigrant detentionâ?? facilities (may of which are managed by non-profit orgs).

https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/

As you point out, US prisons are currently more a form of wealth extraction than labor extraction--a form of gross redistribution of both what little wealth the poor have and the vast resources of the state (aka tax dollars).
Of course, this is simply an updated political economy founded on forced labor camps (aka plantations) and the exponential growth of the racist carceral state following emancipation and the successes of white supremacy in fighting any potential Reconstruction might have had.
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520250031/emancipation-betrayed

The private sector may collect, but itâ??s the state that (still) provides pretext and enforcement. 
https://www.propublica.org/article/digital-jail-how-electronic-monitoring-drives-defendants-into-debt
https://www.propublica.org/article/why-small-debts-matter-so-much-to-black-lives

Best,
Ryan


> On Dec 5, 2019, at 5:00 AM, nettime-l-request@mail.kein.org wrote:
> 
> The bad news: There's a difference, which gets lost in the outrage of 
> this Hyperallergic piece, between prisons and the services they rely on: 
> construction, infrastructure maintenance, healthcare, food, etc. Huge 

<....>




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