SOCIALISTIC PENITENTIARIES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (8/15/10)

Capitalistic multi-national corporations exploit our natural resources for profit as in British Petroleum’s exploits in the Gulf of Mexico, just as capitalistic corporations exploit our criminal justice system for profit as in the State Prison near Kingman. The results have been the same: disaster. Capitalists cut costs to improve profits to keep the investors happy.

Cutting costs means cutting corners. BP shaved safety regulations to cut costs, and the Kingman prison cut costs with the result that prisoners could easily escape. As a consequence, we have had the worst ecological disaster in American history in which 11 workers were killed and 17 injured and an escape of three murderers with at least two murders as a result. The costs for tracking and apprehending the escaped murderers are borne by the public taxpayers, not the capitalists who own the prison.

Penitentiaries are designed to hold dangerous criminals in order to protect society from their mayhem. Cutting corners on safety and protection to increase profits is a sociopathic policy in which the public is damned.

Ever since Ronald Reagan, the Republicans have run on an anti-government platform with the ludicrous claim that politicians opposed to governing are better at governing. Claiming that privatizing Social Security will make for a healthier retirement system, they want to put Wall Street bankers in charge of Social Security. In fact, capitalistic privatizing makes things worse. Throw capitalism out of the prisons and return the penitentiaries to socialism as in throwing out the Republicans.