Imagine a dam that is badly leaking, with the world downstream gradually being drowned. What if the current procedure to deal with a dysfunctional dam was for each individual to immediately get as many buckets as they can and quickly start to bail the water from their streets and their houses? Eventually, there would be no place left to store all the water as the leak worsens and becomes more violent. The dam would continue to leak, but the problem would go unnoticed because everyone is so busy attempting to save his own street.

This is the problem with imprisonment. We are bailing as many “criminals” as we can and storing them elsewhere to somehow dispel crime. There is no permanent solution to deal with the leaking dam of the children lost in the streets searching for a direction. We need to go upstream towards this dam and fix the foundation, the broken families and impoverished communities. Those bailing water downstream aren’t necessarily evil- they are just not doing anything that will help the entire body of water.

Recently, lawyers, police forces, judges and the entire prison industry including policy makers have been bailing water out of the streets at an astonishing rate. Those who are involved with these institutions do not necessarily understand that they are doing nothing to improve the long run conditions that create crime and poverty. The people at the very top, the puppeteers of these industries, need these existing inequalities and dysfunctions in society to persist for the market on dysfunction to continue. Without a certain amount of negativity they would not only be unable to make a profit off of exploiting criminals, but they would also lose their power to influence the masses and media. This may explain why about half of each state’s prisoners are imprisoned for non-violent crimes. One man in a Wisconsin prison is serving a seven-year sentence for having a crack pipe! They must really need any prisoner they can get! In my beginning economics class we are taught about demand and supply, but for some reason society has not applied these concepts to institutions that have fed off of a demand for crime and dysfunction. Most of the people involved with these parties are told that their occupation is benefiting everyone. To some degree they may, in fact, fulfill their dreams of helping families, children, and society, but only on small scales. As a whole, they are only contributing to the problems they intended to ameliorate. In fact, most of these people encourage its growth without even knowing the damage they commit just by accepting that it is a necessity. Where are the studies that show that more prisoners and more prisons decrease the crime rate?

The prison industry is an example of how independent entrepreneurs have made it their business to destroy entire communities and support an increase in crime and imprisonment. There are so many prisoners these days that the government has to give money to private industries to support the rush of our youth into penitentiaries all over the United States. It is sad that the average adult inmate costs the state of Wisconsin $28,000 per year, while only a tiny percent of this could be devoted to programs for our younger generation to grow stronger and become better equipped to deal with the hardships that they will face in this unfair world. A clear picture of how outrageous this is: Milwaukee Public Schools spends approximately $8000 a year per pupil. This money goes mostly to security, transportation, and other non-educational expenditures. To put a dollar amount on a 14-year-old kid’s education that is less than a third of an adult criminal is ludicrous. Programs besides education can help, too. You could easily start a youth sports program to generate results within a year for under $1000 for a large group of kids. Studies have shown that the poorer and more chaotic the life at home for a child, the more positive the results of extracurricular activities. The activity can be anything from sports and music to dance and art, as long as it involves a regular schedule and adults who consistently push for high standards and high opportunities. This way, people can at least try to balance the low standards and expectations coming from the media and any other ignorant organizations that infiltrate our inner-city communities on a daily basis. Why haven’t they affected all communities? In most suburban and rural areas, there are higher expectations. This is why in Fox Point, a suburb of Milwaukee, the government spends $16,000 per high school pupil, where the issues that kids in the central city deal with everyday are non-existent.

Let us now take a look at the expenditures on dysfunction starting at an early age in the state of Wisconsin. Take into account that this is not a typical state. Most of the crime is committed in only one county. California and New York will undoubtedly have a greater amount of dysfunctional expenditures. We have the residential treatment center for delinquent youth with serious emotional problems where a minimum of $90,000 a year is spent for each inmate. Next, there are group homes (usually housing 6 to 10 beds) where $63,000 is spent each year with only minor support services for the kids. At the Milwaukee County juvenile correctional facility, the county, Ethan Allen, spends $65,000 a year per inmate. The “success” rate at Ethan Allen, based on the last study was 52%. This 52% included kids who were murdered, kids who left the state, kids who were arrested as adults for felonies but got the charges reduced to misdemeanors, etc. Success never meant they were working, had completed high school, or had a positive relationship with their family or a woman. So what exactly is the point of these institutions? Do people actually feel safer? Maybe in places where they have been safe all along things feel a little better, but in the same neighborhoods these kids grew up in, there has never been any real change. The only thing that is changing is dollars. The dollars are leaving taxpayer hands and they go into these programs we call prisons that have really never shown that they work as a permanent solution to anything. They exist off of the dysfunction of others.

The question now becomes, why not spend this money for change instead of investing in people who have already lived their lives? Most prisoners have already gone through a life of pain and misery, leaving them with no hope for anything positive. At least at a younger age, a little help could lead kids onto a path to save their lives. At least an investment in the kids won’t be donating our money to these prisons that never seem to have an overall “success” rate. These investments in our future have been shown to fix some of the leaks in the broken dam; why not expand these expenditures for even more progress?
We can’t rely on the politicians and others profiting from the dysfunction industry to change the current system. As long as one has a system set up to keep a steady flow of incarceration, which, in turn, keeps money coming for the prison industry, police, FBI, CIA, and the military, these people will always be happy. Why should the people who control these institutions want a permanent solution to crime and the overwhelming rate kids are entering prisons? They are doing just fine the way things are and this way they might never have to deal with the foundations of the problem. They are politicians, who are only concerned with superficial success. This is why candidates for some elected positions have no problem with basing entire platforms on “lock them up and throw away the key.” Crime, poverty, and dysfunction have become the focus of the American mind, and politicians convert this into an elected position to sound as if they really make sense and care.

You might ask: who do these politicians want to prostitute? The same people they’ve been trying to pimp for the history of the United States: any non-white person they can find. Look up the statistics. Wisconsin has the number 1 incarceration rate for black people in the country, with blacks being sent to prison at 10 times the rate of whites. There are obviously conditions that have been implemented to make this possible. Now, these pimps have created a new generation of youth with lowered expectations. The definition of success is survival while not going to jail. Some people think this is some kind of exaggeration. They might say to themselves, “things have gotten a lot better… haven’t they?” Sorry, just because you never were able to see the conditions that create these inequalities and dysfunctions does not mean that they don’t exist. Anyone growing up in the inner city of any major city will have lost two or three friends or family members to either a jailhouse or a graveyard by the time he or she grows up. It doesn’t even take a statistic to come to this conclusion. Because a typical kid growing up here is expected to fuck up and end up where so many in the neighborhood spend their nights, gradually this kid will start thinking the same thing. It cycles through once more, and now we are in the present in which nobody even notices when another crime and another prisoner is committed. The current system of broken parents developing broken children has millions of supporters in the dysfunction industry- police, hospitals, social workers, prisons, etc. Despair, low expectations and low support guarantee the growth of misery and dysfunction. Don’t get mad because your mom or dad contributes to this industry because they only have power over a small portion of the work they do every day. Private prison entrepreneurs, policy makers, and politicians are living off of its existence. It is the steadiest growth an investor can count on. Watch out for the hottest new stocks being offered in 2010: U.S. Private Prisons. Over this summer, start or help a youth program in your area. This is one of the only ways to stop the trend. When building more prisons becomes unprofitable, these problems will finally begin to be corrected, and we can reverse the under-funding of schools and programs for our youth. With this we can begin the new foundation for a stronger dam.
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