Private what?!?!

Private. All in all it’s a good word. A word to describe something that is not our business. “I’m sorry, that’s private” is an acceptable, (good manners even) answer to a question you do not feel comfortable answering. Privacy is something we all enjoy; fences, curtains, window tinting and even clothes are purchases driven by our love of keeping things private. It is under the banner of “private” that an industry is growing, this industry is dangerous and counter-productive. It is the “private sector” business label given to industries that should NEVER be private.

Halliburton is a private sector contractor that has made billions going into war zones and paying their employees to set up military camps, wash uniforms and pay their workers more than the military to do it. And our government pays for it, Halliburton is contracted through the pentagon and our defense budget pays them to do these things. Making money off of war and becoming politically powerful in the process. I have not said anything so far that cannot be reasoned and argued logically, because doing what you do best and making money at it is the American way. It is fully within the rights for any American company to make money, hire employees and as long as they are treating their employees fairly and staying within the confines of the law they can just go right ahead and do that. But what happens when wars end? Does Halliburton go back to building swing sets instead of military camps? Washing nurse’s uniforms instead of fatigues? They are certainly capable of doing these things, but will they make billions doing it? No. It is in the corporation’s best interest to keep doing what they are doing now, contracting in war zones. This is where the corporate political power becomes scary.

America has roughly 5% of the total global population, and nearly 25% of the incarcerated population.

Can you imagine how many prisons we have had to build in the last 30 years to keep up with this? Prisons are expensive to build, expensive to maintain and in high demand. Solution? Private sector prisons. Wait…what? There is an industry that profits from the building, maintaining and managing American prisons? Yes. It would bankrupt the budgets of states to build, maintain and manage prison facilities. Well, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth but we have to do what we have to in order to keep our streets safe, right? Sure, except when you notice that the freedom of information act doesn’t apply to private companies. And then you add the political power corporations now have in our government, you realize we now have a “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” situation between our government and corporations that is leaving the interests of the people completely out of the decision making process.

Seems a little skeevy to me. Wonder why there are inflated sentences for simple possession charges? This is why. Wonder why we haven’t even looked at what other countries are doing to keep crime down and their citizens out of jail? This is why. The notion that there is an industry profiting from imprisoning our citizens is gross. What regulations are in place to hold private sector prisons to keep the constitutional rights of prisoners in mind? And how many of those regulations are they able to use their political power and money to sidestep?

This is not how developed nations conduct business. We are lucky to live in a society that can speak up about such things, we just need to become aware of them to have the opportunity.