What States Remain Addicted To The Prison Industrial Complex?

The Alabama legislature plans to take funds specifically allocated to their constituents’ well-being and reallocate it to the overcrowded/understaffed prison system. Despite fifty years of proof, this system is outdated and doesn’t work. The Pandemic Relief funds could instead be used to invest in what builds up and restore communities such as: expand health care, cut medical debts, build wellness facilities, address rent/mortgage burdens, prevent and alleviate homelessness, create well-paying jobs…etc.

Also, take the opportunity to learn what’s working in other states and/or countries. Yet, Alabama’s current legislating body is focused on more prisons. Double down on investing more into a normalized and festering human rights disaster.

To be pro-life and not see the effects this will have on the next generation is twisted in reasoning and nature. The overcrowded prisons will stay overcrowded and understaffed. New prisons won’t increase public safety and the desire to work in the prison system will not improve, staffing will stay stretch thin due to the nature of the job. History will repeat itself. New prisons, same results, silent partners making millions off of the broken lives of thousands of individual men, women, and their families. This level of federal funding is an opportunity to crack the school-to-prison pipeline.

For more insight from both the prison industrial complex and those who have fought to move communities and cities in a new direction check out organizations such as JusticeLAnow.org, dedicating years to shut down such projects like what is being proposed in Alabama.

“If Alabama were a country, its per-capita incarceration rate would top that of every other nation in the world. Alabama’s incarceration rate — 946 persons per 100,000 residents as of 2018 — places the state in the top five within the United States. This rate has grown exponentially over the last 40 years, driven in part by the state’s adoption of — and prosecutors’ subsequent reliance on — the Habitual Felony Offender Act. Between the law’s passage in 1977 and 2000, for example, Alabama’s prison population increased by over 600 percent.” By John Fowler (Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law) December 22, 2020

#wellbeing #mentalhealth #socialjustice #injustice #prisonreform #wecandobetter #alabama #maagiccollins #fightthefunkpodcast