It may sound perverse to say so, but I believe that the so-called “War on Drugs” and the privatization of prisons, the growth of corporate prisons, etc., are directly related. The Republican agenda to continue to criminalize "personal" drug use and non-violent drug crimes and to prosecute the poor and poor blacks in particular has served one purpose: it has brought about the growth of “corporate” prisons. It has served privatization. The “quintupling” of our prison population in recent decades has served that one purpose.
“FOLLOW THE MONEY” may be a line in a movie, but it is legend. If we followed the money in the "drug war," the equation would look like this:
non-violent-drug War + the growth of prison populations = privatizing prisons.
No doubt about it: long-term. How best to transfer federal or state REVENUE back to the private sector? Privatize it. How best to privatize the prison populations? Criminalize non-violent crime. Legislate that judges should not judge but must MANDATE prison time. Severe sentences for even first-time offenders will boost prison populations to the bursting point. That will force even states that cannot afford to do so to hire private corporations to house these non-violent and safest of criminals. Easy!
Conservatives, the Republican Oligarchs, e.g., like the conservative Think Tanks and "Alec"-legislative paper-doctrinaires, plan and legislate one or two generations ahead of us, ahead of everybody else: definitely ahead of Liberals and Progressives. They may have learned this after losing to FDR and Truman for God-knows how many terms. Out of power for so long, they had a lot of time to think about how to undo everything that the New Deal and then Truman and LBJ had done for the Middle Class vs. the Plutocrats, the Oligarchs and the Richest One Percent. They figured it out. They plan today as if they have forever to achieve their ambitious goals--as if they will live forever--and they are far in advance of those of us who legislate for today or tomorrow. We're taking care of "today" to put a roof over our heads and food on our tables; they're building the foundation of a New America: A Corporate America. They're building Corporate U.S.A., a multinational Congressional Military-Industrial Complex, like the one that Gen. Ike Eisenhower warned us about--and against becoming--as he exited the presidency and spoke his mind like the great general that he was.
The War on Drugs is a perverse, conservative ploy to transfer Revenue to the private sector. No? Conservatives, Republicans, and Right-wing ideologues and extremists don’t give a second thought to the social damage that their policies have caused. In ignorance they press for the criminalization of non-violent "drug" use and by doing so they boost prison populations. The "electorate" is manipulated by CORPORATE LOBBYISTS and by those anti-government ideologues whose mandate is to "Starve the Beast" and wreck government for the good of “privatization” and “corporate gain.”
Conservatives, Republicans, and Right-wing ideologues and extremists have embedded themselves so assiduously into state legislatures and into the U.S. Congress and into "the hearts and minds" of the lemmings who TRUST in the Fox non-News Network as if Murdoch and Ailes had "In God we Trust" emblazoned on their brows--so assiduously AND perversely into the electorate--that it will take a generation to "clean out the stables." Or a Revolution.
That’s the way I see it.
Domenic Corsaro
Philadelphia, PA