2004-08-17
CRIMINAL INJUSTICES
"Pay for Play" is more commonly a phrase bandied about when talking about crooked politicians who accept "gifts" from equally corrupt contractors and lobbists | Generally, it's accepted parlance for the idea that if you want to get in on the action at the state level, then you are expected to pay to participate |
Now, however, an old wine is being sold in a new bottle, this time, with the "player" paying after the fact | Namely, once he's gone to prison - having been caught | Now, as highlighted in an article in Don Diva the the tune is "Pay to Stay" | Not that an inmate has any choice in the matter |
Personally, I'm kind of interested in the social dynamics of this idea | Are we going back to the mean old days of debtors prisons? |
After all, with the educational attainments in the prison population well below the national average, and with prison work programs more along the Corrections Corporation of America model, just when and where is it likely that inmates will acquire the skills to pay that debt back? | Endentured servanthood? | Or maybe the Chinese prison slave labor model | Either could be likely from the corporate profit angle
Which brings to midn another question, or a set of them | Is someone the likes of Benjamin Sisti or the Rigas family going to have to pony up these fees? | The cynic in me doubts it |
¶ 23:21
"Pay for Play" is more commonly a phrase bandied about when talking about crooked politicians who accept "gifts" from equally corrupt contractors and lobbists | Generally, it's accepted parlance for the idea that if you want to get in on the action at the state level, then you are expected to pay to participate |
Now, however, an old wine is being sold in a new bottle, this time, with the "player" paying after the fact | Namely, once he's gone to prison - having been caught | Now, as highlighted in an article in Don Diva the the tune is "Pay to Stay" | Not that an inmate has any choice in the matter |
Personally, I'm kind of interested in the social dynamics of this idea | Are we going back to the mean old days of debtors prisons? |
After all, with the educational attainments in the prison population well below the national average, and with prison work programs more along the Corrections Corporation of America model, just when and where is it likely that inmates will acquire the skills to pay that debt back? | Endentured servanthood? | Or maybe the Chinese prison slave labor model | Either could be likely from the corporate profit angle
Which brings to midn another question, or a set of them | Is someone the likes of Benjamin Sisti or the Rigas family going to have to pony up these fees? | The cynic in me doubts it |
OTHER LINKS: Don Diva, promoting itself as "The original Street Bible" | The main page to Correction Corporation | NOTE: Ben Sisti, along with Jonothan Googel and Frank Shuch, working under the aegis of Colonial Realty [in Connecticut] were involved in multi-billion dollar pyramid scam that eventually collapsed | Sisti and Googel went to prison; Shuch allegedly committed suicide | Sisti still owns a multi-million dollar gated village housing unit in Florida | Oh yes, their accounting firm? Arthur Anderson |
¶ 23:21
