<story><title>Private Prisons Are Behind the Push for Homeless Criminalization</title><url>https://invisiblepeople.tv/private-prisons-for-homeless-criminalization/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>isodev</author><text>The penal system in the US is perplexing. It&amp;#x27;s built on the premise that people should not only lose their freedom but also get subjected to the worst possible conditions and exploited as free labor. I honestly can&amp;#x27;t comprehend how a modern nation can get to this point.</text></item><item><author>dgan</author><text>I loved to throw around &amp;quot;What&amp;#x27;s next? Private prisons??&amp;quot; when speaking about some crazy privatization ideas. That, until I learned it&amp;#x27;s an actual thing in US. Who would have guessed. I think I was 32 at that time</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acdha</author><text>We didn’t get here as a modern nation. We got there because the fight to end slavery resulted in a lot of white people giving up during the Reconstruction era and allowing the South to rebuild many of the same power structures through a campaign of terrorism and political disenfranchisement during the Jim Crow era, which was only partially halted during the civil rights era and even some of those wins were later reversed under Regan and later.&lt;p&gt;The major loophole here is in the 13th amendment:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.&lt;p&gt;That doesn’t work if the judicial system is unfair. There are many, many examples showing that it too often isn’t with uncomfortably close relationships between the police, prosecutors, judges, and the prison industry. This is one of the more egregious cases in recent memory because it involved children but the cases involving adults tend to get far less media coverage:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inquirer.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;pennsylvania&amp;#x2F;pa-kids-for-cash-scandal-judges-mark-ciavarella-michael-conahan-20220818.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inquirer.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;pennsylvania&amp;#x2F;pa-kids-for-cash-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Private Prisons Are Behind the Push for Homeless Criminalization</title><url>https://invisiblepeople.tv/private-prisons-for-homeless-criminalization/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>isodev</author><text>The penal system in the US is perplexing. It&amp;#x27;s built on the premise that people should not only lose their freedom but also get subjected to the worst possible conditions and exploited as free labor. I honestly can&amp;#x27;t comprehend how a modern nation can get to this point.</text></item><item><author>dgan</author><text>I loved to throw around &amp;quot;What&amp;#x27;s next? Private prisons??&amp;quot; when speaking about some crazy privatization ideas. That, until I learned it&amp;#x27;s an actual thing in US. Who would have guessed. I think I was 32 at that time</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bdg</author><text>I think this had something to do with the base ethos of North American style crime &amp;amp; punishment.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;History_of_the_Puritans_in_North_America&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;History_of_the_Puritans_in_Nor...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>