Suppose you own a number of giant prisons and you’re looking to expand your annual earnings. How exactly could you do that?
Well, you could cut maximize efficiency and minimize overhead, like any good corporation would do. As well, considering how you’re housing a massive population of inmates with practically no rights, it would be best to put them to work for slave wages.
After that, what options are there to increase the bottom line? Simple – pressure the government to pass legislation which will significantly boost the number of people sent to prison. Do that, and you’re laughing.
Case and point – the new Omnibus Crime bill Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have been cramming down Canadian throats. This disastrous bill focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation, implementing new mandatory minimum sentences for relatively minor non-violent offenses.
And who do we have to thank for these draconian policies which are taking us down the same flawed path that most other Western countries are now abandoning? Why, lobbyists from the prison industry themselves. Who better than giant corporations to guide our elected officials?
Of course, most people who care about rational thinking and logic will recognize that prison is not an effective deterrent. If it were, America – hosts of a quarter of the world’s prison population – would be the safest place on earth. The fact that it’s not does not dissuade the Tories.
So what can we do about this? Petitioning the Conservative government falls on deaf ears, but we can still try. Rally, protest, write, make phone calls, and do whatever else we can to voice opposition. After that, come next election, we need to ensure that these corporate shills get booted out of office.
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Tags: bill, canada, complex, conservatives, crime, draconian, harper, industrial, mandatory, minimum, omnibus, policy, prison, sentence, stephen, tories
