Michael Edwards
April 23, 2012
The recent story of breast cancer
survivor Lisa Lindsay being thrown in prison for a $280 medical bill
that was sent in error has thankfully gone viral.
It has brought much-needed
attention to the insanity of reinstating the concept of debtors’
prisons.
Debtors’ prisons have a sordid history that was thought to be best left behind in Medieval Europe and in Charles Dickens' fictionalized accounts of the 19th-century hellholes of Victorian England.
America was not to be outdone, however, debtors prisons were widespread in the United States as well, and stories of the conditions in New York's debtors prisons could make one question if repayment of debts was really the purpose; violent criminals were much better clothed and fed.
Debtors’ prisons have a sordid history that was thought to be best left behind in Medieval Europe and in Charles Dickens' fictionalized accounts of the 19th-century hellholes of Victorian England.
America was not to be outdone, however, debtors prisons were widespread in the United States as well, and stories of the conditions in New York's debtors prisons could make one question if repayment of debts was really the purpose; violent criminals were much better clothed and fed.
In fact, history shows that
terror and slavery have always had a close relationship with debt, and it
follows a path from the Romans right through to 17th-century England and into
America from English common law. However, America chose to abolish her debtors’
prisons a full 36 years before England; first in New York in 1831, and by 1833
the rest of the America had followed. (1)
Now, debtors’ prisons seem to be
making a comeback in America.
An article in the Star Tribune in Minnesota titled, "In jail for being in debt," exposes the growing number of citizens going to jail at the behest of banks and a welcoming judicial system. They write:
An article in the Star Tribune in Minnesota titled, "In jail for being in debt," exposes the growing number of citizens going to jail at the behest of banks and a welcoming judicial system. They write:
It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.
In our modern era of debt servitude, a PR Push has been designed to reintroduce a serious discussion
of debtors' prisons as a sound solution. What goes beyond alarming is
that the full-fledged return of debtors prisons might be seen as both
appropriately terrifying, as well as a profitable investment opportunity and
politically sound decision to be made by state governments struggling with their own looming bankruptcies, and a Federal
government struggling politically with the concept of a jobless recovery that
is not materializing.
A de facto debtors’ prison
has already been largely accepted in the case of "deadbeat" parents
when a failure to pay child support puts them in civil contempt of court.
It is this civil contempt charge that is now beginning to take on an
expanded definition to include those who owe for much smaller infractions.
When a court order to pay a debt
is issued and ignored, it then qualifies as a civil contempt of court. At
that point, the judge becomes a literal dictator with the ability to imprison a
person indefinitely for the violation. The Constitution explicitly prohibits incarceration for failure to pay
debts, but it is the violation of a court order that gives judges free
rein to impose draconian punishments. In this way, an end-run around the
Constitution can become frighteningly commonplace. (2)
America already has a record-high ratio of people in prison,
with no signs of the trend reversing as private corporations like Wackenhut
Corporation, referred to as a "Free
Market in Human Misery," have long been enlisted to turn
government directives into shareholder profit.
One might even deign to call it
blatant fascism in its purest form, as government legislation leads offenders
directly into private company coffers. The prison-industrial complex has already
capitalized on government actions like The War on Drugs.
A prime example is how The
California Correctional Peace Officers Association helped fuel the
prison-building boom as a cozy relationship was established on Capitol Hill
through influence peddling. (3)
Profiting from the suffering of
the poor while bailouts and bonuses await the over-leveraged banksters, car
companies, and state governments, sets up a prison-industrial complex with a
class warfare component that is the domestic mirror of the military-industrial
complex sent abroad.
This domestic prison system seems
to be the only industry left to build upon, and it is here that things become
truly frightening. For the federally-owned prison system complex, Federal
Prison Industries (UNICOR), more incarceration means a growing supply of cheap labor and a
skewing of unemployment numbers, as these inmates are often doing jobs they
couldn't even find if they were job hunting on the outside. But it is the
private prison system, with its web fully woven throughout the U.S. government
that stands to profit the most from the return of debtors' admission. (4)
The largest private prison
conglomerate in the U.S. is Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which
controls more than 47% of all private prison and jail beds nationwide and is
able to produce a 13-15% return annually on new real
estate investments. Wackenhut (now subsumed into G4S, the
largest security company in the world) was of course started
by an FBI agent, George Wackenhut, who is famous for developing millions of
dossiers on America's "potential subversives" in the sixties, and was
exposed as being an integral player within the shadow CIA. (5)
These major security
conglomerates are at the top of a growing pyramid of for-profit, international
detention center operators that has Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs
simply fawning over the solid, long-term investment
potential.
Similar to war, when there is a
profit to be made off of incarceration, only more incarceration can be expected
to follow. The U.S. government certainly seems to be working hard to
ensure that the numbers of poor continue to increase, as they are well aware
that that programs designed to help the downtrodden are an abject failure every time.
The massive government debts that must be repaid directly into the hands of the Federal Reserve-led banking cabal must lead us to an inescapable conclusion:
The massive government debts that must be repaid directly into the hands of the Federal Reserve-led banking cabal must lead us to an inescapable conclusion:
More money is to be made from
slavery
in the United States,
than from freedom.
OTHER ARTICLES CITED:
1. Jill Lepore, "I.O.U. - How We Used to Treat
Our Debtors," The New Yorker (April 13, 2009): 35.
4. Christian Parenti, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=852
5. John Connolly, "Inside the Shadow CIA,"
SPY Magazine (September, 1992): Volume 6.
Read other articles by Michael Edwards here.
Read other articles by Michael Edwards here.
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