The nation's prison industry now employs more people than any Fortune 500 corporation except General Motors. Is prison labor rehab or corporate slavery?
If you think prison inmates only make license plates, you're behind the times.
As a child Ayana Cole dreamed of becoming a world class fashion designer. Today she is among hundreds of inmates crowded in an Oregon prison factory cranking out designer jeans. For her labor she is paid 45 cents an hour. At a chic Beverly Hills boutique some of the beaded creations carry a $350 price tag. In fact the jeans labeled "Prison Blues" -- proved so popular last year that prison factories couldn't keep up with demand. (Follow the link on the title to read the rest of this unbelievably shocking article.)
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Dear Kafka (humor)
In search of employment, I had to apply for a criminal background check. Discovered there’s a slick online system, requiring a major credit card, of course. A thought crossed my mind: How much of the criminal justice system is just one more growth industry? Reconsidered. Naaaaah, couldn’t be.
Although I’m a law-abiding registered voter, pretty good wife, mother, and churchgoer, my blood chills, the hair on my neck stands up, and I want to RUN when a police car happens to pull in behind me. I assume I’ve broken some law I never knew existed.
What I felt while waiting for the results of this test? Sheer terror.
How could I have got through this much of my life and not committed a major criminal act? Totally unknown to myself, of course. How can we even know what counts as a major crime? When I was about nine, I remember shoplifting a thumbsize pink plastic doll from the dime store. Maybe in the big scheme of things, that counts.
What if every night I come under the control of reptoids who have implanted a small module in my neck, using it to send me out as an assassin?
It seemed plausible that this check would show I was a bank robber, embezzler or, at least, as Psalm One puts it, someone who has been scornful and sat down with the disorderly. Done that a lot and boy, did I regret it now.
I pictured my results coming through to a room something like a cross between Winston Churchhill’s World War II underground command bunker and the control room of the star ship Enterprise. With maybe some Live-8-type fifty-foot high video screens outside to display my results to the world. I wasn’t going to be let off to sneak home with my crimes unknown.
Picture it. There’s a guy in suspenders, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth, watching requests for background checks coming in, getting mine, and calling out: “We’ve finally got her! Here’s the authorization to open up her records.”
Great excitement. The whole room gathers around the screen. All my enemies are there and even some major humiliations. Everyone who ever fired me. Everyone who ever passed me up for a date. People who had looked at the outfit I had on and snickered. All the thin people in the world. My mother from the time she got mad at me.
Everything starts to pour in. The screen fills up. Things flash and beep once in a while. All my ... crimes? Used the company photocopier to copy recipes. Wandered off with the bank’s ball point pen. Takes extra-big sips of communion wine. Wears sweaters instead of ironing. Eats deep fried food. Doesn’t always come to a full, car-crunching stop at signs in the middle of the night in deserted neighborhoods. Dips her chip twice when no one is watching.
It’s all there. Things I have done that I shouldn’t have, and things I haven’t done that I should have.
I think to myself, it’s not so bad. These are not crimes, only sins, and minor sins at that. But over in the corner, I see several men dressed in black poring over the printout. Worse than that, they’re highlighting things. Once in a while, one looks at the others and smiles.
I don’t like those smiles, remember what Cardinal Richelieu said back in the seventeenth century, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”
In the end, the background check came out clean. Nothing they could hold me on. After all that, didn’t get the job. Still, it’s nice to have the certificate saying I’m crime-free. I guess. I’ll keep it in the folder with the transcipt of my unfinished degrees, my credit check, my Lyme Disease test results, and the letters from my old boyfriends.
For my literary executor.
Although I’m a law-abiding registered voter, pretty good wife, mother, and churchgoer, my blood chills, the hair on my neck stands up, and I want to RUN when a police car happens to pull in behind me. I assume I’ve broken some law I never knew existed.
What I felt while waiting for the results of this test? Sheer terror.
How could I have got through this much of my life and not committed a major criminal act? Totally unknown to myself, of course. How can we even know what counts as a major crime? When I was about nine, I remember shoplifting a thumbsize pink plastic doll from the dime store. Maybe in the big scheme of things, that counts.
What if every night I come under the control of reptoids who have implanted a small module in my neck, using it to send me out as an assassin?
It seemed plausible that this check would show I was a bank robber, embezzler or, at least, as Psalm One puts it, someone who has been scornful and sat down with the disorderly. Done that a lot and boy, did I regret it now.
I pictured my results coming through to a room something like a cross between Winston Churchhill’s World War II underground command bunker and the control room of the star ship Enterprise. With maybe some Live-8-type fifty-foot high video screens outside to display my results to the world. I wasn’t going to be let off to sneak home with my crimes unknown.
Picture it. There’s a guy in suspenders, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth, watching requests for background checks coming in, getting mine, and calling out: “We’ve finally got her! Here’s the authorization to open up her records.”
Great excitement. The whole room gathers around the screen. All my enemies are there and even some major humiliations. Everyone who ever fired me. Everyone who ever passed me up for a date. People who had looked at the outfit I had on and snickered. All the thin people in the world. My mother from the time she got mad at me.
Everything starts to pour in. The screen fills up. Things flash and beep once in a while. All my ... crimes? Used the company photocopier to copy recipes. Wandered off with the bank’s ball point pen. Takes extra-big sips of communion wine. Wears sweaters instead of ironing. Eats deep fried food. Doesn’t always come to a full, car-crunching stop at signs in the middle of the night in deserted neighborhoods. Dips her chip twice when no one is watching.
It’s all there. Things I have done that I shouldn’t have, and things I haven’t done that I should have.
I think to myself, it’s not so bad. These are not crimes, only sins, and minor sins at that. But over in the corner, I see several men dressed in black poring over the printout. Worse than that, they’re highlighting things. Once in a while, one looks at the others and smiles.
I don’t like those smiles, remember what Cardinal Richelieu said back in the seventeenth century, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”
In the end, the background check came out clean. Nothing they could hold me on. After all that, didn’t get the job. Still, it’s nice to have the certificate saying I’m crime-free. I guess. I’ll keep it in the folder with the transcipt of my unfinished degrees, my credit check, my Lyme Disease test results, and the letters from my old boyfriends.
For my literary executor.
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