How do you create an institution that dehumanizes, incarcerates and destroys the soul of tens of thousands of people? How do you do that? You don’t undo that by, in your last week, giving more commutations than any other president in history. I think, you know, you have to look at these as systems of predation, right, that have fed rural communities for generations in the punishment industry, the so-called penal industry. But you have to recognize, first of all, that it is an industry. I think that, you know, maybe his advisors told him that history will not look kindly on this mass incarceration. So, in his last week in office he tried to decarcerate, and he would have been in the history books for the greatest number of commutations. I think history will have to tell both sides of that story.
This thing was devised by, in large part, a man who was born in a rural community in Arkansas, and I’m speaking of William Jefferson Clinton, born in Hope, Arkansas, rural as can be. But what he tried to devise, largely succeeded, in enriching rural communities for literally generations, and that was the federal support for State prison building and extended stays in prison, beyond what was the norm when these things got developed. But here’s the thing, you know, Clinton did that, and when he needed these people that he helped the most, and when him and his wife needed it most, when Hillary needed it to win her election they, at least by the high 90s, turned their backs on the people who gave them this largesse and they went for Trump, you know, and here we are now.
You cannot create workers who work in the punishment industry and expect them to be thankful for the ‘gift’ that keeps on giving, the ‘gift’ that feeds generations. You know, this is a mining community just like Greene County in Pennsylvania. They were mining communities, and they were dying mining communities. These people have the new mines. The new mines are the prisons. And they are eating steak and buying new cars and building new houses, and getting cable and satellite dish reception units for their TVs, and they’re living the lives of Riley because they’re making an incredible amount of money, far more than their grandfathers made in the mines. The State can always out pay private industry.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.