Another excellent topic here, the use of this phrase is repressive by sending out the message, “Don’t be gentle on those criminals, go rough on them.” Which is what Trump advised. But the word “criminal”—and I have to say this from serving time as a white kid in the suburbs—brings to mind a black man to the average soccer mom and working white dad. It has become a substitute for “super predator” which itself used to be “beasts” and many other derogatory allegations to indicated “black men are roaming around at night and good men with guns need to ride and protect the white women.” This type of night riding by white was “popular” after the civil war for the first thirty years, although I must admit I was just reading about cases from the 1950 and 60s indicating the “white curfew on blacks” was never lifted. It was just rebranded.
The reason for continually labeling black men in particular (although there are some really “bad hombres” and “Mexican r@pists” coming across the boarder and it appears now eating dogs and cats in the middle of white rural Ohio, penetrating deep into the heartland) is money. Lots and lots of money. For the wealthy. From about 1800 to 1979, about 711 prisons were built. After Reagan was elected in 1980, over the span of just the next 25 years, 936 prisons were built. By whom? Who built so many prisons and why?
Oh, I already said the answer, my bad: elite white men for money. Imagine spending $56 billion to build those prison (taking an average cost $60 million) and handing that contract over to a construction company (why did you think the government was going to build them? Hell no. It’s all private contracts to build all of them). Whoa, those companies just made a lot of money. Now you might need some “private” companies to operate them, though many remained publicly operated. So [white] private operates need contracts, worth millions and millions per year. That’s a lot of money. Now imagine you need to upgrade these prisons when they get ten or 20 years old, needing the latest technologies—that’s tens of millions per prison. Thank goodness you are connected to some [white owner] technology companies who can bid on those contracts. [I won’t talk about the two major companies that hold the food service contracts for those prison but I can bet they too are overcharging; not will I mention all the manufacturing facilities built onto the just the federal UNICOR system run by the BOP.gov that leases out those [mostly black and brown] criminals to corporations every year on maximally increased sentences and three strikes laws—whoa leasing blacks and browns under government contracts should not be mentioned here.] But all these billions and billions to build, operate, lease, cannot function with a good supply of “criminals.”
Those billions and billions—yes, and some more tens of billions of dollars—to white corporations getting those fat and juicy government contracts, perpetually operating and upgrading, need a nice supply of “really nasty” hombres. Sure Stop and Frisk, Let me see your papers or ID, and just the old Deep South “Come over here boy” are all interactions of fourth amendment violations. But “suspicious activity” means watching black men “doing something” and I think you know what that something is: walking a dog, driving a car, walking at night, and the latest favorite—rolling up your window during a traffic stop after handing over your ID to the police to check (I’m talking to you Tyreek Hill). Somebody has got to be stopped by the police, then charged with resisting arrest and not obeying commands, not cooperating with police, and be forced to take a plea deal to a slew of charges that result (not talking about you Tyreek, you got money for a lawyer thankfully and don’t need an overworked public defender forcing you into a plea deal.
You have just got to fill up those prisons to upkeep those contracts and you (sorry, I mean you Mr. White man) need to justify it by pointing to the “criminal,” who just happens to be black or brown, or an illegal immigrant (or all three at once caught eating dogs and cats). It’s all about the Benjamins. You have to fill all those jails up with somebody who is historically feared 9by whites who are continually “warned” of them through racial sloganeering) just for the crime of existing. You’ll notice that the word “criminal” indicates a permanent state of person, someone born that way like it is an inherent condition, and thus deserve all three strikes without parole, and does not indicate “a person who slipped up and did something bad,” something that was a mistake and is correctable.
Obviously dear author I am very upset about this issue you touched off here. The perpetual abuse that has made America the world’s top jailer, where we account for “housing” 20% to 25% of the world’s prisoners, happened overnight and is a huge problem. I believe the driving factor is the huge, huge amounts of money funneled by government contracts to all those [white owned conservative] corporations that rely on constant arrests of “bad” people (i.e., poor blacks and browns who are 70 percent of those arrested here in Texas and can’t afford a lawyer to get off on a charge they didn’t do).