Thérèse Klingele
Ironic Encomium
The Unique Value of Private Prisons
Few private institutions provide widespread benefit more than private prisons. Private prisons are run by government paid contractors, who aren’t held to any enforceable standards, giving them the proper flexibility needed to assess an accurate value of each human life. The ingenuity of private prisons trading basic human dignity for economic gain provides a healthy work environment for prisoners, and safety and convenience for citizens.
Private prisons can only make money when the jails are full, and the more prisoners the more money. This incentive for private prisons to maintain higher rates of incarceration ensures citizens equal protection from the poor as from those convicted of homicide. Fining those who don’t have money for not paying bail guarantees jail time. This relays the important message that rather than lazily sit in a cell all day, prisoners should find a full-time job, and learn to pay their own bail. Like a good parent, the operators of private prisons don’t tolerate the weak excuses of a misbehaving child (or in this case, prisoner). One operator recalled one of the worst excuses he had heard, and how he dealt with it: “Once a prisoner said to me that he couldn’t get a job, because he couldn’t apply since he was in jail, and couldn’t work since he had no chance of probation. I reminded him that our prison offers plenty of work opportunities and internships. He actually had the audacity to scoff at me and say that unpaid labor was useless to him. The entitlement of some of these men astounds me.”1 As more lazy and impoverished people are found and put into prison, society’s streets become cleaned of any inconveniences. This benefits innocent citizens who shouldn’t have to pay for anyone else’s well-being through taxes, which are meant to be used only on the well-being of collective individuals with money.
These institutions also help the middle class (and what’s left of the lower class) avoid the deprivation of toys, by driving down prices with free labor. The cost basis of a product is significantly lessened when you don't have to factor in labor services as a cost, and private prisons allow for just that: a lessened cost through free prisoner labor. Not only does this minor exploitation provide major skill sets to prisoners, like knowing how to answer a phone, stitch lingerie, or pick oranges–a skill a few Florida prisons are generous enough to teach–but it also makes sure no child is deprived of a toy from Walmart. Not all prisons have adapted to this strategy, some pay excesses of 93￠or even up to $5.15.2 But the progressive states like Florida and Texas are not held down by the economic inconvenience of conscience and can make the rational decision that helps to provide used Ikea furniture at the best prices.
Private prisons also ensure healthy laborers by refusing the indulgence of average food portions and providing prisoners protein by granting meals with just enough maggots for nutritional value.3 Food past its due date is also served, in order to strengthen the immune systems of inmates. Some prisons, such as one in Mississippi, even help increase happiness by providing free pets to prisoners for company, including rats and a wide variety of insects such as fruit flies.
Reducing the impoverished, keeping materials affordable, and providing irrefutable health benefits to prisoners are just a few of the services private prisons provide. These endless benefits are what make private prisons so unique and irreplaceable a system, one that deserves attention and protection against those who are unhealthily obsessed with constitutional rights.
1 Quote is (obviously) fake in order to emphasize rhetoric of the impossibly paradoxical standards that prisoners are held to.↩
2 Initiative, Prison Policy. "Section III: The Prison Economy." Section 3 The Prison Economy - Prison Labor - Prison Index | Prison Policy Initiative. Prison Policy Initiative, n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016. ↩
3Tana Ganeva / AlterNet. "Maggots Keep Appearing in Food Prepared by Private Prison Food Vendor." Alternet. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016. ↩
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