In a decision setting back prisoners' rights and helping to advance the interests of prison bureaucrats and their guard union allies, Facebook announced plans to work with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to shut down pages set up for prisoners. Spokespersons for the Department claimed that prisoners were using their Facebook pages to "stalk victims" and "conduct illegal activities," and that this was all related to the increased incidence of cell phones found inside the prisons.
What a load of crap!
I'm one of the prisoners with a Facebook page that will be shut down to appease the shrill hate groups that continue to try and own the public debate about prisons, about crime and punishment, and about what kind of justice should be practiced here in the Land of the Free. It's past time to address some of this fear mongering head-on, even if my keepers surely won't appreciate it.
The prison-industrial complex is a huge jobs engine for unionized public employees. Governor Andrew Cuomo spelled it out it accurately when he withstood intense lobbying pressures and closed a couple of prisons in New York, "I'm not running a jobs program, putting a lot of people in prison to give a few people high paying jobs." This is the fundamental truth about prison. The people who profit off of mass, disproportionate incarceration know that a reckoning is coming. Crime is at historic lows. State budgets are upside down, like the rest of the country. The majority of people in prison are not monsters. The public's safety is not the issue. The threat is to the paychecks of public employee unions.
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