California, “the industrial prison state,” has a tremendous number of people locked up in state, county and privately-operated hellholes, the only growth industry in the doomed state. And the prisoners are rioting, statewide. Tens of thousands of them, rioting against their low-paid peers in security guard outfits, rioting against starvation diets of inedible swill and decades of “solitary confinement” and overcrowding and misery. Why, if they ever figure out that they can easily overpower all those donut-belly guards and lose maybe 10% of the escapees to the police state’s machine guns in the resulting mass breakout, things could get weird:
Here, from a mysterious website called TUCONE, is the news about the rioting:
Thousands of inmates at up to eight Californian prisons have been on hunger strike for over a week in protest at what they feel is unfair treatment at the hands of prison authorities. Estimates suggest that there could be up to 12,000 inmates involved in the coordinated protest across the state, according to a prison advocacy group.
[...]
The prisoners have made five demands to authorities, including a change to current prison policy where an inmate is forced to go through an interrogation process where they are forced to incriminate themselves and other inmates in order to secure their release from solitary confinement. In addition, the prisoners want authorities to end group lockdowns and for those in solitary confinement to be fed better quality meals and access to clothing more suited to the winter.
California spends $47,000 per inmate, per year. That’s to keep its share of America’s 2.3 million prisoners locked up, mostly for being poor people stealing shit to buy dope. Honestly, that’s what everyone is in prison for, that’s what makes America the world’s biggest police state (according to U.S. Department of Justice figures). Only 8% of American prisoners are in jail for “violent crime.” The rest are locked up for drunken idiocy, drug addiction and chicken-shit property crime, mostly to fund drug habits to numb the grinding bullshit of life for America’s mostly struggling population.
Anyway, riots! Shares in privately operated prison franchises are expected to either go up a little or down a little based on how many low-wage prison guards are killed in the revolt. [TUCONE]
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Man, Three-Strikes-You're-Out was just such a wonderful idea.
More like three strikes and we're broke.
Three-Strikes-You're-Out, aka Three-Semesters-You're-Out (because you can't afford yet another tuition hike because the state is broke and won't cut the prison spending…)
Time to divest your Wackenhut shares.
We're not eatin' till Johhny Cash comes back onstage for an encore!
HIRE THIS WONKETTE JR
Agreed. It is well-written and I came away enlightened, if a little disgusted, which is normal around here.
Yes, good writing indeed, but I've been hearing about this on Democracy Now for weeks now. And DN was covering Occupy Wall Street before it even started.
Wonkette should def. pay attention to everything on Democracy Now.
(Sorry, I'm in a complainin' mood.)
I catch the early part of Democracy Now during the morning commute to work and couldn't agree more. I usually end up surfing their website upon reaching interweb- access again to follow up on what's gleaned on the radio — yet details of this particular bit escaped my hearing.
Actually I have all kinds of issues w/ the prison industry personally, & have been biting my tongue not to vent on this thread. If the timeliness of Jr's post seems behind the curve, well, it is not unlike the myriad of issues raised by DN on a daily basis, no? They cover almost too much to be internalized all at once.
Really, who are we shitting? This is Ken Layne prose if I never saw it.
That’s to keep its share of America’s 2.3 million prisoners locked up, mostly for being poor people stealing shit to buy dope.
As opposed to the corporate criminals who sell us dope to keep us buying shit.
Is it any wonder that our biggest drug problem is highly addictive narcotics manufactured by pharmaceutical companies.
An our pharmaceutical companies, along with alcohol producers, are among the biggest lobbyists to keep the drug war going.
Nothing wrong with some good pharmaceuticals. I think 'Merika has more legal addicts than illegal ones.
If everyone in California is either a prisoner or a guard…unemployment solved!
Does not generate $$.
This sounds like Ken's next novel, just not as dark.
Indignity: a Novel
When I got to the phrase "mostly to fund drug habits to numb the grinding bullshit of life for America’s mostly struggling population", I had to look at the byline to see if it was Ken, and it WASN'T! Shock, surprise, etc…
This particular Wonkette Jr. should get hired if only to bring Ken's (now extremely infrequent) dosage of crushing depression back into the regular Wonkette rotation.
"America the world’s biggest police state"
And I guess, the world's biggest prison guard state too.
I'm kind of sick of spending my tax dollars on this shit….shouldn't we spending more on edumacation and less on shitholes?
Not to mention mental health facilities and rehab programs.
I would be willing to bet that if you proposed marijuana legalization as a question of whether or not you want your tax dollars to continue to be spent on locking up people that smoke, it would have been legal years ago.
If they're protesting anyway send them off to 'Occupy Wall Street' – win-win.
Hengh. I'm still gainfully employed and comfortable as long as here's no medical disaster, hence not quite ready for Mad Max.
Can't someone just give them rocket launchers and point to Fox News HQ? Hengh?
Hey, the Buckhead Ritz Carlton has rooms for $99. Perhaps we can house California inmates there next year. It'd be cheaper and I'm almost sure that there are enough hookers and blow to go around.
I'll have to compare prices with Niggerhead.
William Shatner and his Priceline buddy Big Deal are on the case!!
Naomi Price, too?
Can we get congress to riot since most Americans are treating them unfairly too.
Didn't you hear? They took a bus load of children hostage last week. That's the problem with kids now days, you all don't follow the news.
$47K a year – now that's a riot.
"California spends $47,000 per inmate, per year."
The thought of one day running Californy sends shivers down Rick Perry's spine.
The thought of one day running Californy sends shivers down Rick Perry's spine.
If *that* happens, California really will fall into the ocean…
Of fear, I hope.
Your move, Andy Dufresne.
Time to swim through a river of shit?
Zihuatanejo, bitches!
Watch the wingtards use this to call for even moar privatizing of the jail industry, since private companies would have even less compunction against using deadly force to quell the rioting.
private companies would have even less compunction against using deadly force to quell the rioting
Not sure I'm with you on that Mem. In the private pen, the inmate is an asset, a small profit center. Killing assets in the long run is not a sound biz paradigm. Now adjusting the prisoner perhaps, with more solitary and a less expensive meal regime could perhaps help the bottom line. This seems to be what the wardens are already attempting.
Unfortunately for private industry, they aren't able to breed their charges to create more, unlike their predecessors were able to do with their assets, back in the plantation days.
But you can always just arrest more people. Remember, we're not even enforcing all the immigration laws that are already on the books!
Nevertheless, for the nonce, you can contract out their (almost)-free labour and earn corporate profits on the low-cost manufacture of many products.
"Soylent Red… it's CONVICT people!!"
It's not an issue of compunction, it's an issue of accountability. Governments are accountable to the people, and their factota can be voted out of power. Corporate entities are not subject to the same scrutiny, unless a successful argument can be made that they are functioning as agents of the government. A corporation can refuse to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care to prisoners without being held to account. A government cannot.
I have worked in the private corrections industry (not in California). It is as thoroughly rotten and corrupt as the term "private corrections industry' sounds.
Gulag, Inc.
Gulag LLC. Limited Liability Corp. And corporations are people, of course. Think of LLCs as people, but with even less incentive to do the right thing…
Think of LLCs are fall men or get-a-way drivers. Their expendable "people."
I heard about this last night — it all started when this big guy was about to murder Dr. House.
The food may be shitty & policies are harsh but didn't some dude rob a bank for $1 to get that awesome health care?
If you're not a cop, you're little people.
The Drug war is working JR. We have more prisons then ever! God Bless Nixon and God Bless Emerica…..Except the people that do drugs….Well do drugs and aren't part of the GOP apparatus.
Hey now, this is America; we treat our drug users with compassion – if they're white.
I live in a neighborhood that was pretty crappy in 80's then during the 90's alot of people moved in and started to restore it to it's original grandure. In it's hey-day this place was pretty swankie. 3 story stone homes (which still stand) that have fire places in every room (circa before natural gas plumbing). Then the tech bubble burst and the crime rate shot up. I've seen teenagers running down the street with pistols on more than one occasion-no joke-. 96% of the crime is directly related to drugs. The drug war effects me directly. I'm one of a hand full of people who will not be bullied and will not move. Because I know when the drug war is over that my 'hood will be a neighborhood again.
I think a lot of us have been effected directly by the drug war in some way; I for one used to have a dumbass cousin who became a drug dealer, and ended up getting murdered, execution-style, and it had to have come from some deal gone wrong or rivals targeting the competition. Just like prohibition before it, all the "war on drugs" does is make drug dealing more profitable and violent.
For both the cops and the crooks (the DEA gets alota $$$$). I always said it's legal for Johnson and Johnson to sell opiates but Tom Johnson goes to jail. You know that the pharmaceutical companies that make oxycontin don't give a shit who the end user is as long as they sell-sell-sell.
Don't know where I was going with that but. I just needed to vent.
(those comments were 100% snark free)
No problem. I was going to make a crack about maybe you finding one of Jan Brewer's headless bodies in your back alley, but it's hard to look at this situation with any humor.
You have to sometimes. The gang in the park leave me alone because they either I'm too funny or too crazy. Every time I walk past them I ask them "SOOOOO, ain't you found Jesus YET?" Which confuses them because I buy my drugs off them.
It is as Thin Lizzy prophesied: tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak….
Always wondered about that… "tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town…"
Wouldn't it be a very strong possibility that the jailbreak might take place at, say, the jail?
Who knew jail was a moveable feast?
drunken idiocy, drug addiction and chicken-shit property crime, mostly to fund drug habits to numb the grinding bullshit of life for America’s mostly struggling population.
If I didn't know this was a post about prisons, I'd swear this was an excerpt from the official Wasilla Tourism Board brochure.
Sounds Like Bristol and Levi's Excellent Adventure.
Wasilla and every other rural shithole with a meth problem.
We need our own Australia.
I nominate Arizona.
OK. Build the damn fence! Sheriff Joe, prison colony warden.
Our governor is way ahead of you on that.
Alaska.
Georgia was our Australia once, so it ought to get the title again. I was going to suggest Texas, but that would be cruel and unusual.
I usually go for the unusual.
Google "Dalstroy" to find out how far you can run with this……
Georgia currently boasts 1 out of 13 adults under correctional supervision. We lead the nation! Back to the future, baby.
Oh, I thought you said penile colonies.
It is, after all, Cocktober.
Hee hee. Penile colonies, indeed.
Do they take Medicaid?
Florida is a big semi-flaccid penile colony.
I nominate Australia.
England! Karmic vengeance is a dish best served cold.
Well, then we could send them to The Village. They may enjoy a leisurely existence, but they will have to put up with occasionally being drugged, cloned, eaten by a balloon, turned into a living chess piece and play a role in a psychotropic examination of the human psyche. Not bad!
Why should we reward those criminals with beautiful beaches and socialized medicine?
It is absolutely true that the entry form for visiting Australia asks you to list your criminal convictions.
Location, location, location!
Can I haz some prizners? I will feed 'em better for 47K per year and they'll get good coffee in the mornin'. I only have 2 rooms so a couple of bunk beds and I'm set… let's see… 47K x 4 =… way more than I make now.
Not to mention getting to watch real life re-enactments of your favorite scenes from the HBO hit "Oz"!
I can think a few people who would benefit from this prison diet plan.
This is why private prisons are so much better. Don't like your prison? Is it full of bad food and worse guards? The market will take care of this! Prisoners will just pick a new prison with humane guards and healthy meals and all these problems go away.
Prison vouchers.
Prisons of Choice.
Rand Paul is that you?
$47K a year to permanently ruin someone's life? Yeah, tell me again how weed is the problem.
1. The Californian Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said last week that it was “responding to a hunger striker disturbance by thousands of inmates in several correctional facilities”.
Really–a *hunger strike* is a disturbance? How the hell would they describe an actual riot–Armageddon?
2. $47K per inmate, huh? So glad to know where my tax dollars are going…
…Come on, Governor Moonbeam, you don't have a reputation for being a cheapskate for nothing. Time for some cuts!
"Rocko, you know toilet paper is only issued on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays."
Did anybody at first else read "from a mysterious website called TUCONE" as "from a mysterious website called TUTONE", and wonder what 867-5309 had to do with prisoner's rights?
Ricky. Don't call that number.
If I find myself singing Tommy Tutone's One Hit Wonder against my will now for the rest of the day I will come across that M-D line and make you listen to Hank with me in a pickup truck made of Rebel flags.
And trucknutz? Or does that go without saying?
Hey, if it makes you feel any better I got it stuck in my head myself.
Not really you bastard. Get it out, get it out!!
That;s a prisoners number…I think her name is Jenny.
OT, but my latest crush suggests using Jennie's number to score discounts at drug stores:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upgrade-your-life/upg...
no i didn't think that at all, but now i will all night.
Git busy livin', or git busy riotin'…
"California spends $47,000 per inmate, per year."
Jeez, no wonder they're broke. That's more than many of us poors on the outside make. And we don't get free meals or healthcare!
Maybe we should airdrop all our prisoners into Cuba, kind of a reverse-Mariel Boatlift.
That would certainly constitute overcrowding. And, the island might sink.
That's 'cause California isn't Jesusy enough. Liberal heathens. Neads moar Jebuz.
Maybe they should have thought out smoking that Marijuana Cigarette a little more.
This is one fucked-up money-grubbing society. We are surely doomed to failure when the Root of All Evil becomes Baal to the ignorant, gullible, inbred fools that embrace the Evangelical movement.
Let them out. We need to make room for the bankers.
If they're being so unruly, maybe their corporate guardians can put them on rusted-out ships anchored offshore. It worked in Great Expectations.
Well, we've got plenty of places already available.
Don't forget a lot of the prison population is also mentally ill. Some prison psychiatrists I knew in CA referred to the LA County Jail as the largest facility of mentally-ill offenders in the state. And because there are too few doctors and locking people up does wonders for their mental health, they get out worse than when they went in. Which is good news for the private prison industry, if not for California communities. But, just think, job creators!
OT
The Saloon is not happy with comments about small s santorum. A tasteful comment I posted earlier on this piece on capital S Santorum got deleted. Wouldn't you think they should have a better understanding why the electorate is not getting into a froth over this guy?
Stop worrying. In just one more earthquake, LA will slip into the sea and be made a giant penal colony. Everything will be all right, at least until Snake Pliskin shows up.
I thought he was dead.
I thought he was taller.
"Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica!"
-Willie Bank-
"Attica! Attica! Attica!"
-John Travolta
Can bullshit be both grinding and numbed? It's a versatile substance, but still…
So much for California’s experiment in radical democracy. Given the opportunity it turns out most Americans will vote for services and vote against paying for them. Let’s get tough on crime and lockup all the people that spit on sidewalks, what do you mean we need more prison space. That’s it I’m buying a hoodie some sunglasses and a small cabin away from it all.
I actually got to check out that cabin, the FBI had moved it and it was being stored on the old flightline at Malmstrom AFB, Great Falls, Montana, when I was doing some work up there back in September 2000. What a dump.
If Christie had been serious about running, he would've checked himself into the California prison system.
So, you're better off being a death row inmate. In CA, 670 of them cost about $137,000,000 a year ($204,000 per inmate).
$204k a year??? Jesus Fucking Christ. Can you imagine how smart our children would be if we spent that kind of money on their education?
Shit.
And with that money we could put a 20% or so down payment on that sweeeet Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor we've been looking at in the showroom.
Hahahaha! Alcatraz is closed, idiots. Those guys dressed as prison guards are guides! Just walk away!
"California spends $47,000 per inmate, per year."
Give them the money and a bus ticket to Arizona. At least half of them would buy houses and Phoenix's foreclosure nightmare would be solved. But make sure you only send white ones. Jan Brewer and the olds from Minnesota and Michigan have their panties in such a knot over brown people, blacks would send them around the bend.
I am opening a job-creating new prison to hold prisoners on the waiting list to get into real prisons. The tab is only $50,000 per year. — Sheriff Joe
At an Occupy Wall Street GA a woman got up and talked about the Cali prisoners' hunger strike and we voted to show solidarity with them, but I don't know what ever came of it.
$47k per inmate per year?! I call "bullshit". I wanna see how that was derived since it is almost double the numbers that are typically bandied around.
The private prisons need to tack on their profit margin.
When I go on a hunger strike my Mom just gives me a Juice Box, Lunchables and a Puddy Cup to pull me out of it.
"the prisoners want authorities to end group lockdowns"
Isn't collective punishment one of those things that gets one labelled an "unlawful combatant" in our post-9/11 world?
Isn't collective punishment what the NYPD practiced this weekend?
So, how's that "3 strikes and you're out" thing workin' for ya?
We have some unused oil rigs off the coast here. Let's put the prisoners on a couple of those while wearing magnetized boots, like the prison in Face/Off. They'll have Nicolas Cage and lots of white doves swirling around in slow motion. It'll be awesome.
I'm in! Will it be televised, a la Death Race? Subscribe now!
ETA: I loved that magnetized boots shit. W – T – F?
Erewhon!
If I'da had twin boys, I'da named'em Castor and Pollux, sheeit yeah! Total badass names! Dioscuri, FTW!
Is a Kardashian involved? No? Not interested.
-SoCal MSM.
You SoCalites still obsessed with freeway car chases?
I got a question. Why is it $47K/year to barely keep these people alive when according to the national minimum wage all it takes is $15,600?
There are no guards standing outside the homes of people making $15.6 K. Not yet, anyway.
To pay for Prison Company CEOs, the managers, the prisons, the guards and the food in that order.
31k per is some sweet profit. I gotta get me some prisoners and a government contract.
Health care. Minimum wage slaves duzn't haz. Also, guards. Also labour. Most minimum wage slaves have to shop for, prep, and cook their own meals, buy their own clothing, etc.
My whole point really was that the minimum wage is fucked up, but yeah, I betcha healthcare do take a bite, considering how much you can jack up your prices since it's the governments' money.
Yup. Minimum wage is a joke, the federal poverty line is a joke, and no one seems to think anything of siphoning up "govt. money," forgetting altogether that, in a government of, for, and by, the people, "government money" really means money that belongs to ALL of us. I think I need to up my happy pills.
Maybe fine, upstanding Christian fanatics Little Georgie Bush and makeout partner Little Michelle Bachmann can go there, read bible passages and sing railroad songs. Sure beats Socialized prison reform.
You know who else tried to make a political statement while in prison?
Chuckie Manson?
Mumia Abu-Jamal?
David Harris?
Conrad Black?
I'm assuming California is looking at exporting its prisoners to North Dakota…
Just to show you how sick this nation is, my state of Michigan was desperate, fucking desperate, to house California inmates in a closed jail in Michigan, and this was during the administration of Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm. She was also wrangling for Gitmo detainees and such when trying them in civil courts was bandied about as an option.
Michigan for the first time in a very long time is actually shrinking its prison population…because we literally can't pay for anything, anymore. Michigan was spending ridiculous amounts of money on corrections even compared to neighboring states.
But hey, everytime a Teabaggie wants to get elected all they have to do is bring up the specter of violent crack addicts raping your daughter, and bam! Instant poll number jump! Maybe watching less TeeVee would make us less paranoid???? Got to go, my show is coming on.
Oh, little Wonkette, Jr. Those poor, poor prison guards: "low-paid peers in security guard outfits," "low-wage prison guards". Not in California, punkin.
"Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.
As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he's not even the highest paid."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704...
I still wouldn't want to be one (prisoner OR prison guard)…
Course, I wouldn't want to be a Harvard grad, either.
Yeah, but then YOU are in prison too, see what I mean?…there's just got to be better way to make cash. That's legal. Because damn, it's PRISON!
They couldn't pay me enough to have pee and poop thrown at me on a daily basis. Not to mention the psycho and socio-paths that would threaten my life everyday.
(Not all the inmates are bad, but some are VERY bad people.)
Harvard?
Point(s) taken. Prison guardin' ain't the funnest job around. However, in California, it cannot be described as a low wage job. Unless your frame of reference is movie stars, professional athletes, or Koch heirs.
California prison guard wages are even competitive with unwed mothers who become abstinence spokeswomen.
Well, yes, but CA is one of the most expensive places to live.
I know. I live here. You still can not describe a 6 figure income as 'low wages'.
According to the Census Bureau, the median household income is about $51,425, and median income per person is about $27,041.
True story:
My scary, hard-boiled uncle (coldest blue eyes I've ever seen) worked as a C.O. at San Quentin when Johnny Cash sang there. He didn't think much of Johnny, and thought he used the inmates for his own ends.
He was also against the death penalty. Said he'd seen too many minorities die, and that it didn't seem fair.
(When I think back on the stuff he must have seen…)
Snark Off/
I worked on death row in Ohio in the early '80s and the disparity between how those inmates vs. the rest of the population were treated was horrible. And there was virtually no difference in how heinous their respective crimes were. I came to the conclusion that the defense bar for those inmates on death row were just plain out-lawyered.
Snark on/
Just one more way in which Amurka sucks. And it will never end, not so long as the
militaryincarceration industrial complex is making the rich richer.The Gulag Californichipelago
The degree of suffering these hapless folks must endure is just terrifying. So very, very sad.
Here's a video of a bunch of British people being horrified at America's prison, and pointing out that it is, in many ways, a legalized slave economy that nobody knows about.
turn the playoffs on. that will simmer them inmates down
Maybe Gordon Ramsay could redo the Nutraloaf for CDC&R? Fried mortadella sammies on ciabatta?
Totally, he has "Plane Food" at Heathrow, why not "Prison Food" at Folsom?
Maybe the prisoners can pick the rotting tomatoes. They only make, like 90 cents a day as prisoners, don't they? I believe, but I'm not sure, that this is even less than they are paying those greedy, welfare queen Mexican pickers.
prisons for profit, a charming notion …
Prisoners are profit centers, while guards are cost centers. It's just business. And math.
California leads the nation and the world in prisons, percentage of population incarcerated and fucked up priorities. Here's a 5 year old article from the SF Chronicle of May 2007:
"For the first time, and unique among large states, California will soon spend more on its prisons than on its public universities. It has been projected that over the next five years, the state's budget for locking up people will rise by 9 percent annually, compared with its spending on higher education, which will rise only by 5 percent. By the 2012-2013 fiscal year, $15.4 billion will be spent on incarcerating Californians, as compared with $15.3 billion spent on educating them."
And people make fun of Cali as the "bleeding-heart liberal state."
My solution to the recidivism problem: 1-Sex Offenders get their dicks cut off. 2-Serve only dick & beans three times a day in all prisons. You're welcome.
Three strikes (to the guards' noggin) and you're out (and free).
I must admit, that's pretty handy.
Ha!
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