Interesting Book

P1234567890 · Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:42 am Post subject: Interesting Book

I haven't read it, but it looks interesting. In particular, it asks a very interesting question:

*THE PERPETUAL PRISONER MACHINE
How America Profits from Crime
/by Joel Dyer
/* /Every thinking person in America ought to read this book./ In */The Perpetual Prisoner Machine,/* Joel Dyer takes a critical look at the United States' criminal justice system. America has more than tripled its prison population since 1980 even though crime rates have been either flat or declining. The U.S. now incarcerates nearly two million people in its prisons and jails on any given day and more than five million of its citizens are currently under some form of justice department supervision. These facts raise an obvious question: /If crime rates aren't going up, then why is the prison population?/ */The Perpetual Prisoner Machine/* provides the answer to this question, and shockingly, it has little to do with crime or justice. The answer is "profit."

*/The Perpetual Prisoner Machine/* explains how the new /prison-industrial complex/ has capitalized upon the public's fear of crime -- which has its origins in violent media content -- to help bring about the "tough on crime" policies that have led to our prison-filling, and therefore profitable "war on crime."

Dyer concludes that powerful, market-driven forces have manipulated America into fighting a very real war against an imaginary foe. "Unfortunately," says Dyer, "real wars have real casualties. And in this case the victims are America's poor, particularly those segments of our black and Hispanic populations who live in poverty and who now comprise the vast majority of the new human commodity."
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous.

Pete · Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 6:53 am Post subject:

Maybe the reason that the prison population has gone up is that they got rid of the electric chair, and replaced it with wide screen television.

P1234567890 · Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 6:57 am Post subject: