The prison overcrowding topic is current in Nebraska, where the core issues might or might not be addressed.
Voters should be aware of, and be prepared to question politicians about, the true reasons for prison overcrowding. As suggested in an earlier post, one reason is that there is money to be made from the prison population: Your tax dollars pay for the upkeep of the forced labor, new laws (like Nebraska’s LB 285 of 2009) expand the forced labor pool, and salaries and benefits are just not a problem for those who profit from the corrections industry.
Here’s an excerpt from a recently published article on this issue:
The “private” prison industry is private in the same sense that crony capitalism is capitalist. Namely, not at all. It is the antithesis of a truly private industry that competes in the free market, does not accept tax funds, and cannot compel labor. By contrast, the “private” prisons enjoy a monopoly over a service that is created by laws and sentencing policies. They receive tax money and preferential treatment. They exploit captive labor through circumstances similar to plantation slavery.
Read the entire article by clicking here.