Post-reading week 13

If the motivation for incarcerating people isn't to stop crime , what is it?

The motivation for incarcerating people is to enslave them . The major of the people who are being incarcerated are African Americans and Latinos .  Back in day when slavery was banned, people could have African American prisoners work for them without any consequences . Once you are incarcerated , you lose a lot of privileges such as voting . So, instead of African Americans and Latinos being discriminated against and denied the right to vote , they are just unfairly judged and put  into prison so they can’t vote .  People who have been incarcerated find it harder to get jobs , and they are denied food stamps and public housing . I feel this is just another way to keep African Americans and Latino on the bottom of the hierarchy . For example , the increased police surveillance in urban neighborhoods . The main reason why African Americans and Latinos are caught or arrested for crimes is because there is a large amount of police surveillance in their neighborhood. In a predominantly white neighborhood , you might not find any police officers . There are also police officers in high schools , arresting students for having fights . The police officers usually be in predominantly African American and Latino school as well . So if students get into a fight over something small they might get arrested and it will go on their record , restricting them from being able to vote , get a job , etc .

The motivation for incarcerating people is also to make money off the prisoners .  Prisons receive 19 dollars for every prisoner they have . There are also private prison businesses that contract prison labor . Prisons have prisoner working on supplies such as desk and chair . They also have prisoner working as the phone operator to receive money from large companies who would rather pay the prisoners a low amount of money , then hire an employee who demands minimum wage . Private prison make money for how many prisoner they have , and how long they stay there . I feel the economy would be a lot better if the government would use the money they spend on prisons , on something more important. For example the state only pays 4 dollars per student compared to 19 dollars per prisoner. If the money went to schools it would be one less problem in this economy.

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