I remember my first job out of law school, and passing the company administrator, who asked me why I was smiling on my way into work. I replied that I was happy because I was getting paid to come do what I enjoyed. I was fortunate to escape the Law, despite growing up in Washington, D.C. in the 60’s and 70’s, a Black boy, the oldest of three, raised by a single mother. I saw more than a few friends and family disappear almost from existence and reappear some years later, as a consequence of getting caught up by the Law. Not without paranoia, nationally a third of Black men are in the legal system, and ironically, of the children arrested 32% are Black. Securing an education at all cost, full stop, seemed clear to me, given the chaos that accompanied living in the various neighbors in which we moved about throughout D.C. Notwithstanding, I was lucky, plain and simple!
Puzzled by the lack of opportunities which propel unnecessary numbers of poor and disadvantaged people to be incarcerated, I explored the source of the obvious root cause, that is, money. The fact has been known for decades that the cost to incarcerate an inmate is higher than the funding per public school student, in every U.S. State. Conservatively, each inmate costs $25,000 to $35,000 per year to incarcerate, compared to $10,000 on average per public school student to be educated. For comparison, ranked first in public education in the U.S. is the State of Massachusetts with funding at just shy of $16,000 per public school student. One of the worse performing States in Education is Nevada, ranked 49th, funds less than $10,000 per public school student. The question is, why the disparity in the money spent between incarceration and education. Certainly a better educated person would be less prone to be snared by law enforcement.
The explanation for the disparity in money spent between incarceration and education would appear rational when you consider that public education is not a profit center for Government, but neither is the Defense Budget and the trillion dollar band continues to play. The prison system, in contrast to public education, is a $100 billion dollar industry with multinational corporations making billions and spending millions on lobbying for stricter law enforcement. The corporations that feed at the prison system trough directly benefit from growth in the incarcerated population. Show me a prison or prison supplier / contractor with a plan to reduce the incarcerated population, and I’ll tell you when the U.S. Forces plan to leave Afghanistan. Similarly, the reason for incarcerating immigrants in mass is by no means an accident, but a planned source of revenue for the prison system.
In order to ensure any chance of a level playing field for the poor and disadvantaged to escape the claws of the prison system, and to realize any chance of a life of purpose, why not eliminate political spending by those institutions that stand to benefit from incarcerating people. Corporations, in particular, are not human citizens and suffer no chance of being imprisoned, unlike human citizens. Police ticket quotas were eventually found to be obviously unconstitutional. Without much of a stretch, prohibiting institutions from participating in our political system, who stand to gain from incarcerating human citizens, would assist to prevent undue influence over legislators and law enforcement in any attempt to cast wider nets in the effort to maintain and grow the incarcerated population.
Legislators and the private education industry are no better than the prison system in preying on human citizens. Rather than multimillion dollar public education lobbying comparable to the prison industry, advocating for increased per public school student funding and higher public school teacher salaries, money is poured into efforts to privatize education, leaving the poor and disadvantaged inadequately prepared for life. Many inmates are incarcerated before 25 years old, at a time when the frontal lobe of the brain is not fully developed for making rational decisions. Properly funding programs designed to engage and channel undeveloped minds would leave little opportunity for poor and disadvantaged youth to be snared by law enforcement. Spending more money on the front end of a human life is logically to be more profitable to society than incarcerating a human being merely because of a lack of resources as a consequence of the zip code and/or circumstances one is born into.
To ensure adequate funding to educate the disadvantaged and poor, consider eliminating education funding by zip code, and instead, equitably distribute funding per public school student regardless of address. An educated citizen is less likely to be involved with the criminal system; 80% of inmates are high school dropouts. A reduction by some $18 billion in annual crime costs has been estimated to result with merely a 5% increase in the high school male graduation rate. With an undisputed direct correlation between incarceration and education, why not tie per public school student funding to the per inmate cost and/or profits of the prison industry.
Undocumented immigrants, similarly, with the opportunity to participate in our economy, provide a net increase to overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by some $11 billion in state and local taxes, as reported by a Congressional Budget Office report. Corporations game our political system, lining the pockets of the few who stand to gain from human suffering. Vigilance, accordingly, is necessary to safeguard the human rights of immigrants fleeing persecution, because profit driven interests otherwise see immigrants as ripe for incarceration. The loss to communities and love ones of the contributions known to be made by immigrants and undocumented immigrants specifically is undoubtedly greater than the profit from incarceration.
Citizens motivated to preserve the Constitutional Rights of individual citizens and Human Rights of all people realize the benefit to society in eliminating money in politics. Legislators, citizens and patriots have an active role to: drive profit out of incarcerating people; adequately fund public schools based on a cost to incarcerate-educate ratio; and dispel the myth that undocumented immigrants do not provide a net benefit to Americans’ quality of life and an overall increase to America’s GDP.
Fix Capitalism now for the betterment of human development and quality of life.