Here’s a headline you’ll never read in the United States:
The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.
During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.
Unlike the Netherlands, the United States is heavily dependent on slave labor. Between Federal Prison Industries, better known as UNICOR, the organization that all federal government agencies, excluding the Department of Defense, must source supplies from first and Corrections Corporation of America, a private industry that sells slave prison labor to interested companies, the United States is dependent on the prison-industrial complex. Because of this dependency the United States will continue to create more prisons and prisoners to fill those prisons.
While the situation may suck here in my home country I’m glad to see the prison-industrial complex isn’t as pervasive in other countries.