Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

“And justice for all” – ending verse in the American Pledge of Allegiance^*

But the evidence is that these are more so just words than the actuality. Consider this article:

Title: White-owned Private Prisons are suing States for millions if they don’t stay full
Sub-title: Low crime rates bad for business for white-owned private prisons; they demand States keep them full
Source posted: May 3, 2015 – Retrieved May 12, 2015 from: http://earhustle411.com/white-owned-private-prisons-are-suing-states-for-millions-if-they-dont-stay-full/

The prison-industrial complex is so out of control that private prisons have the sheer audacity to order states to keep beds full or face their wrath with stiff financial penalties, according to reports. Private prisons in some states have language in their contracts that state if they fall below a certain percentage of capacity that the states must pay the private prisons millions of dollars, lest they face a lawsuit for millions more.

And guess what? The private prisons, which are holding cash-starved states hostage, are getting away with it, says advocacy group, “In the Public Interest”.

“In the Public Interest” has reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning “quotas” for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those contracts reviewed. Those quotas can range from a mandatory occupancy of, for example, 70 percent occupancy in California to up to 100 percent in some prisons in Arizona.

It is very interesting and telling that so few major national news organization are willing to report on the monstrous, ravenous and criminal system that is devouring hundreds of thousands of black and brown boys. Even those who do not subscribe to conspiracy theories have looked askance at this shocking report.

Welcome to the greatest manifestation of modern-day slavery, ladies and gentlemen.

One of those private prisons, The Corrections Corporation of America, made an offer last year to the governors of 48 states to operate their prisons on 20-year contracts, according to “In the Public Interest”.

What makes these deals so odious and unscrupulous? Take a look:

1)  The offer included a demand that those prisons remain 90 percent full for the duration of the operating agreement. You know what that means: if there are not enough prisoners then there will be an unspoken push for police to arrest more people and to have the courts send more to prison for petty, frivolous and nonviolent crimes. There will also be a “nudge” for judges to hand down longer or maximum sentences to satisfy this “quota.”

2)  Private prison companies have also backed measures such as “three-strike” laws to maintain high prison occupancy.

3)  When the crime rate drops so low that the occupancy requirements can’t be met, taxpayers are left footing the bill for unused facilities.

The report found that 41 of 62 contracts reviewed contained occupancy requirements, with the highest occupancy rates found in Arizona, Oklahoma and Virginia.

In Colorado, Democratic Gov. John Hinklooper agreed to close down five state-run prisons and instead send inmates to CCA’s three corrections facilities. That cost taxpayers at least $2 million to maintain the unused facilities.

It is getting more difficult to rationalize the societal cost of keeping prisons full just to satisfy private investors who treat prisoners as commodity and cattle .
Source: Rolling Out

Welcome to America…

While at the same time, the eco-systems of Caribbean society are failing; many Caribbean citizens long for the opportunity to emigrate to the United States. There have been many that have taken to the seas on risky vessels to reach the land of their dreams. Many times these ones are interdicted and immediately returned. Sometimes even worse; the boats go “down”, with tragic consequences.

The reasons for emigration are “push-and-pull”. Failures in our society have compelled many to seek refuge abroad; that’s the “push”!

Propaganda in the media and community gossip within the region pronounces that American life is better – the “place to be”. This is the “pull”.

This commentary posits that “all that glitters is not gold”.

The publishers of the book Go Lean … Caribbean campaign that it would be better for Caribbean citizens to remain in their homeland and work to remediate conditions there. Considering the statistics and anecdotal evidence published in the embedded features/articles here, there are reasons why American life should be less than ideal for Caribbean people:

• Crony Capitalism – America has a disease where much of its public policy is set based on some special interest benefiting from public resources. This is Crony Capitalism and it is defined as public interest being hijacked for private gain.
• Institutional Racism – Racial discrimination still permeates much of American society, though not always blatant. Statistics and anecdotes prove that employment, housing and educational disenfranchisements still abound in many institutions, despite surpassing 150 years after the Civil War (1861 – 1865) and 50 years after the “bad old days” of the 100-year legal segregation policy; (think Jim Crow).

This foregoing article quotes dollar amounts that are so big that the malevolence of Crony-Capitalism cannot be ignored. It can be argued that this is actually the primary driver in the above average prison population per capita (compared to other industrialized countries, the US is Number 1 by a far margin). This commentary thereby asserts that there is a nefarious Big Business agenda in motion here. Many States have outsourced prison management to private companies. It is in those companies’ best interest to keep prison populations high.

A reduction in crime is bad for business.

This “Prison Industrial Complex” is compelled to lobby, cheerlead and tease both sides of any political divide to keep public policy focused on “being tough on crime / hard on criminals” so as to keep their prisons filled. There is too much money involved. The “bad actors” in this case would readily short-change the Greater Good for immediate gains or profits.

It is obvious from this review that one consequence of Crony-Capitalism is that it short-changes the future for immediate gains, or profits.

In the Caribbean, we hope to minimize the “push-and-pull” factors that draw our Caribbean youth away; and away from that American reality. This dilemma is not just due to the fact that the US population has increased or that crime has increased. No, just the opposite. This point was related in a previous Go Lean blog/commentary, that served as a review for a book by writer and Rolling Stone Magazine contributor Matt Taibbi entitled: “The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap“. The actual book quotation is:

Violent crime has fallen by 44 percent in America over the past two decades, but during that same period the prison population has more than doubled, skewing heavily black and poor.

This subject matter – and foregoing news article – align with the publication Go Lean … Caribbean, which serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean roadmap calls for the optimization of Caribbean society by rebooting the eco-systems with prime directives for the region’s economic, security and governing engines.

We want a society based on sound justice, not the fake American model. We do not want to sacrifice our young people on the altar of corporate profits. We’d rather invest in them rather than sacrifice them; this means investing in (early) education and universities rather than prisons.

Title: #ManifestJustice Art Exhibit in Los Angeles
By: Alexander Aplerku, AfroPunk Contributor
Source: AfroPunk Blog Site – Retrieved 05-12-2015 – http://www.afropunk.com/profiles/blogs/feature-manifestjustice-art-exhibit-in-los-angeles

“Enough is enough. We demand more empathy, more accountability, more economic opportunity, more compassion, more dignity, more power and more opportunity for all. We demand healthier communities, which means more from each other; more from our school systems and more from our judicial systems.” Those are the words of Manifest Justice, the creative community exhibition. The Exhibit, which took place last week [(May 2^nd – 10)] – in Los Angeles’ gang affected Baldwin Village – featured protest posters, paintings, and three-dimensional works. Mostly focused on police brutality, the exhibition also touched on issues like education, racial justice, and LGBT rights. Programme coordinator Nijeul Porter says, “The idea is that art is at the center of social change”.

Related:
http://manifestjustice.org  (See VIDEO Below)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Manifest-Exhibit-Manifest-Justice

This Go Lean roadmap first openly confesses that the Caribbean is in crisis, that we are not able to retain our young people. Many member-states (St Vincent, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, etc.) have lost more than half of their populations to foreign shores. While others have lost more than 70 percent of their college educated populations. For many, the destination of choice is the United States. The situation is so impactful that now 1 out of 11 Black persons in the US is now of Caribbean (or African) descent, and these numbers are only expected to grow.

The goal of Go Lean is to forge a better society, to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. This means optimizing our own justice institutions. We want to lower the “push” factors. These requirement were pronounced at the outset of the Go Lean book, in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) with these statements:

xi.   Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xxi.    Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

How should the Caribbean be different than the United States in the pursuit of justice?

The Go Lean roadmap cautions that we do not want to repeat America’s mistakes in criminal justice; there are many. But rather we want to learn from history; the book cites the example and abuses of the Peonage system that emerged in the Southern US after the Civil War (Page 211). Without being considered a conspiracy theorist, it is obvious that many “bad actors” in American society wanted cheap labor even though slavery had just been outlawed in the country.

That was 1865; this is 2015 – 150 years later. Surely American society has transformed … finally. Yet there are vast reports of a continued Great Divide in the US Criminal Justice system, where those of Black-and-Brown heritage (including those from the Caribbean) get sentenced to long prison engagements while “White Collar” offenders get little-to-no jail time at all.

American “White Collar” offenders have perhaps caused more damage in the US than the other “Blue Collar” types. This is especially the case for cross-border criminal conduct in the US. In truth, the Caribbean – and other parts of the world – are still reeling from the effects of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008; spurned from financial mis-adventures on Wall Street.

What is worse, the US has…

“hardly marshaled any persecutions against the culprits and perpetrators of the mortgage fraud that de-stabilized the American securities markets and the world economy” (Matt Taibbi’s “The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap“).

To all those in the Caribbean desiring to emigrate to the US, take heed: the “grass is not greener” on that other side!

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, on the other hand, details strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate Caribbean society, mitigating the “push” reasons:

This Go Lean roadmap asserts to all those desiring to flee to the US. That country is not so alluring … from a justice perspective, especially if you’re poor, Black-and-Brown. The admonition: Lower the “pull” factor for Coming to America.

There is another dimension of the prison industrial complex considered in the Go Lean book: the economic returns of a proper practice of this social responsibility of crime and punishment:

xxvi.  Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of … the prison industrial complex… – impacting the region with more jobs.

It is the vision of this roadmap that modern-technocratic CU prisons can be located in appropriate rural communities and create a viable economic “through put” (jobs); especially when the CU facilities house prisoners for other jurisdictions. The CU would emerge as a benevolent player in the prison-industrial complex. But instead of profits, our motive would be the Greater Good.

More jobs would help to lower the “push” factor. We must do this; address all possible “push” factors. The region must address its issues, as to why its population is so inclined to emigrate. This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap. It features the assessments, strategies, tactics and implementations to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

Now is the time for the Caribbean region to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are too alluring to ignore: emergence of our own $800 Billion (GDP) economy, 2.2 million new jobs, new industries (like our own prison industrial complex), services and optimized justice institutions.

The end result of the Go Lean roadmap – after the defined 5 year plan – is to lower both the “push-and-pull” factors. Instead we want to incentive our citizens to prosper where planted. 🙂

Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix – ^*Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Originally composed by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and formally adopted by the US Congress as the official pledge in 1942.^[1]

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Appendix – VIDEO – #ManifestJustice Art Show – https://youtu.be/Pyxqo4TBCFU