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TubmanCityPress.com
an emancipatory journalism project
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| Greetings,
The Maryland Correctional Enterprise (MCE) is the newest form of slave labor in Maryland. Their 2009 Catalog reads like a Sears Roebuck Catalog.
Stephen M. Shiloh, CEO of Maryland Correctional Enterprises states, "Our product line varies widely to meet a full range of business requirements such as furniture for offices, reception areas, libraries, dorms, lounges, and outdoor settings. MCE products and services also consist of: furniture restoration, food products, printing/signage, office supplies, textiles, cleaning supplies, mailing and distribution,data entry, warehousing, moving, laundry, and quick copy. Our Account and Customer Service Representatives are available to discuss your needs, while our in-house Design and Installation Team (emphasis mine) helps with the layout, design, and set-up of your furniture purchases."
The products and services produced by MCE are limited to not-for-profit, and state government institutions. However, according their website Maryland Correctional Enterprises under the Prison Industry Enhancement (PIE) Program, is permitted to enter into agreements with, and become a sub-contractor to private industry. "Benefits to the private sector include a stable and motivated work force, reduced overhead, production availability,an alternative to "off-shore" operations, and a label affixed to the product which can state "made in the USA." (Emphasis mine).
In "A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in Maryland" the Urban Institute reported that the majority of Maryland prisoners released in 2001 returned to Baltimore City. And that those who return to Baltimore are concentrated in a few communities including Southwest Baltimore, Greater Rosemont, and Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park. Though these men and women are able to produce high quality products in prison many return to poor neighborhood with little to no employment opportunities. And the cycle continues. While failing schools produce young men and women who are ill -equipped for the workforce. These men and women are then left with very few options.
How can the state of Maryland underfund education, shut down schools, offer limited summer employment for our youth, but build a state of the art production facility inside of the prisons?
The struggles continues.
In love and service,
Jamye Wooten
Kinetics
"In a colonial society, education is such that it serves the colonialist...In a regime of slavery, education was but one institution for forming slaves." -Statement of Frelimo (Mozimbique Liberation Front) Department of Education and Culture 1968
"The economic well-being of the nation depends on the presence of a large number of men who are content to labor hard all day long. Because men are naturally lazy they will not work unless forced by necessity to do so. The education of the poor threatens to rob the nation of their productivity. . . Every hour those poor people spend at their books is so much time lost to society. Going to school in comparison to working is idleness." Bernard de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, 1714
The education of any people should begin with the people themselves.... The chief difficulty with the education of the Negro is that it has been largely imitation resulting in the enslavement of his mind.-Dr. Carter G. Woodson, THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, (1933)
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Will Maryland Correctional Enterprises Compete with Private Sector Companies?
Maryland Correctional Enterprises, the prison industry arm of the Maryland Division of Correction, is discussing plans for another attempt this year to expand the use of inmate labor by removing the ban on competing with private sector services on the open market in Maryland.
According to several Annapolis sources, the new bill modifies the bill that last year passed the state Senate, but died in the House Health and Government Operations Committee, by adding a layer of public notice, input and oversight, and permit MCE to sell goods directly to state employees.
Labor unions are already rebuking the proposal.
"In the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the last thing we need is to take jobs from working men and women to give them to prison inmates," declared Harold L. Bock, regional director, UNITE HERE Mid-Atlantic Joint Board.
Saying he was unfamiliar with any planned bill, Division of Corrections spokesman Rick Benetti declined to comment.
The measure would expand the current program to include call centers, commercial laundry contracts, and food service preparation, according to a lobbyist familiar with it.
Del. Joseph J. "Sonny" Minnick (D-Dist 6), chairman of the MCE Management Council, last year praised the expansion before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "By placing offenders in working conditions that mirror the private industry, these individuals have been able to develop job skills and a consistent work ethic."
However, Donna Edwards, secretary-treasurer of the Maryland State and DC AFL-CIO, offered a different viewpoint. "We support apprentice training that allows people to come out with marketable skills, but this proposal that would expand into commercial laundry, call centers and food service is just crap. They're just using people."
Read More
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The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?
Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million - mostly Black and Hispanic - are working for various industries for a pittance.
For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.
There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people.
From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.
What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?
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A New Slavery
The U.S. war on drugs is big business -- a multi-billion dollar public/private venture that radically inflates the value of illegal drugs and criminalizes the poorest people of color, trapping them in a vicious cycle of addiction, unemployment and incarceration:
$27 billion for interdiction and law enforcement, $1.3 billion for Plan Colombia in 2000.
$9.4 billion in 2000 to imprison close to 500,000 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses, 75% of whom are Black.
$80 to $100 billion in lost earnings.
Untold billions in homeless shelters, healthcare, chemical dependency and psychiatric treatment, etc.
Black women are the fastest growing segment of the prison population and Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita.(1) Approximately five million people -- including those on probation and parole -- are directly under the surveillance of the criminal justice system. The prison industrial complex profits from racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Black and brown bodies are the human raw material in a vast experiment to conceal the major social problems of our time.
The racially disproportionate demographics of the victims of the war on drugs will not surprise anyone familiar with the symbiotic relationship between poverty and institutionalized racism. Economic inequality and political disenfranchisement have been inextricably intertwined since the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The racist enforcement of the drug laws is just the latest example of institutionalized racism.
As political economist John Flateau graphically puts it: "Metaphorically, the criminal justice pipeline is like a slave ship, transporting human cargo along interstate triangular trade routes from Black and Brown communities; through the middle passage of police precincts, holding pens, detention centers and courtrooms; to downstate jails or upstate prisons; back to communities as unrehabilitated escapees; and back to prison or jail in a vicious recidivist cycle."(2)
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Joi Ruth Orr is a seminarian at Howard University School of Divinity. She currently serves as the Co-Chair of Seminarians for Justice and was recently elected as the 2008-2009 Student Government Association President. In 2004 Joi graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy with a minor in Comparative Religion from the University of Maryland College Park.
Ms. Orr is also a former Americorp alumna, completing a Year of Service with Good Shepherd Services in which she lived in solidarity with the "least of these" by "living simply so that others may simply live." As an aspiring theologian, maturing minister and the Program Assistant for the African American Religious Affairs division of People For the American Way Foundation, Joi has begun to carve a career path focused on a ministry of social justice and civic engagement. |
A Portrait of Prisoner Re-Entry in Maryland
Maryland Correctional Enterprises Product and Services Catalog
In 2001, the U.S. incarceration rate for adult black men was 7,226 per 100,000; the incarceration rate for adult black men in South Africa, under apartheid in 1993, was 851 per 100,000.
In 2000, the federal government handed down 23,120 sentences for drug violations; almost 4% of our civil labor force either works in a prison or works to put people there.
The Bureau of Prisons expects to have 211,516 people in federal prison in the year 2009; between 1992 and 2000, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized more than $5.5 billion in assets. |
From Plantation to Prisons: Where Does the Money Go?
According to the United Nations International Drug Control Program, the international illicit drug business generates as much as $400 billion in trade annually. Profits of this magnitude invariably lead to corruption and complicity at the highest levels. Yet the so-called war on this illegal trade targets economically disadvantaged ethnic minorities and indigenous people in the U.S., Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
Putting aside the question of legality, there is no evidence of a "trickle-down effect." These substantial profits are not enriching the low level players who constitute the vast majority of drug offenders. To the contrary, the black market drug economy undermines non-drug-related businesses and limits the employability of its participants. Discussing the "legal apartheid" that keeps the developing world poor, Peruvian economist, Fernando De Soto observes that "[t]he poor live outside the law . . . because living within the law is impossible: corrupt legal systems and warped rules force those at the bottom of the world economy to spend years leaping absurd hurdles to do things by the book."3 "In a criminalized economy, the risk of imprisonment is almost 'a form of business license tax.'"(4)
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About Us
... You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell. (Isaiah. 58:12)
Kinetics mission is to develop new ideas that work to strengthen social movements within the African-American community; providing them with the tools and skills to pursue justice and better address the needs of those whom they serve.
Kinetics is a project of Fusion Partnerships, Inc. | |
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Maryland Correctional Enterprises
Product and Services Catalog Highlights
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Kinetics Faith & Justice Network is in its initial planning stage of launching Justice Sunday. Justice Sunday will be a quarterly campaign where we reach out to pastors and their congregations to preach, teach, and work on issues of social justice. Our four areas of concentration will be:
Health
Education
Africa and the Diaspora
Poverty
Our first Justice Sunday is scheduled for April 5, 2009 and our area of concentration will be Poverty.
You already have a sermon topic picked out for that Sunday. Relate your sermon to the issue of poverty and/or work the campaign into your prayer and announcements. We will be providing Bible study resources, sermon templates, responsive reading and a host of materials that will make this easy for you to join us.
We are thankful to our big sister Lisa Sharon Harper of NY Faith & Justice Network for her support and encouragement and Liz Theoharris of the Poverty initiative who will be assisting us with materials for Justice Sunday.
If your church is interested in joining this campaign and would like to be added to our list of endorsers please email me your:
Church name/organization name
Pastor/Leader
Address
Website and Email Address
We will be in touch in a few weeks with materials.
Please join us as we stand for the least of these.
In love and service,
Jamye Wooten
Kinetics
info@kineticnet.org
Why Poverty?
"When there is massive unemployment in the black community, it is called a social problem. But when there is massive unemployment in the white community, it is called a Depression. We look around every day and we see thousands and millions of people making inadequate wages. Not only do they work in our hospitals, they work in our hotels, they work in our laundries, they work in domestic service, they find themselves underemployed. You see, no labor is really menial unless you're not getting adequate wages. People are always talking about menial labor. But if you're getting a good (wage) as I know that through some unions they've brought it up . . . that isn't menial labor. What makes it menial is the income, the wages."
One in eight Americans now lives in poverty. A family of four is considered poor if the family's income is below $19,971-a bar far below what most people believe a family needs to get by. Still, using this measure, 12.6 percent of all Americans were poor in 2005, and more than 90 million people (31 percent of all Americans) had incomes below 200 percent of federal poverty thresholds.
Millions of Americans will spend at least one year in poverty at some point in their lives. One third of all Americans will experience poverty within a 13-year period. In that period, one in 10 Americans are poor for most of the time, and one in 20 are poor for 10 or more years.
Poverty in the United States is far higher than in many other developed nations. At the turn of the 21st century, the United States ranked 24th among 25 countries when measuring the share of the population below 50 percent of median income.
Inequality has reached record highs. The richest one percent of Americans in 2005 had the largest share of the nation's income (19 percent) since 1929. At the same time, the poorest 20 percent of Americans had only 3.4 percent of the nation's income. (Center for American Progress)
"Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and the needy."- Proverbs 31:9.
Look @ some of our suppporters!
Rev. Carieta Cain Grizzell, Pastor
Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church
Cheyenne, WY
Rev. Deborah D. Jenkins, PastorFaith @ Work Christian Church
Rev. Michael Pfleger, Pastor
Community of St. Sabina
1210 W. 78th Place
Chicago,Il 60620
Rev. Lisa D. Jenkins, M.Div., Pastor
Blessed Trinity Baptist Church
New York, NY
Rev. Dr. Dred Scott
St. Matthews United Methodist Church
Baltimore, MD Rev. Heber Brown
Pleasant Hope Baptist Church
Baltimore, MD Elder Kenneth Golphin
Presiding Elder the Lexington PE District of the Kentucky Conference of the 13th Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Joi Orr, President
Howard Univerty Divinity School Student Goverment
Join Us!
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We are currently in Phase 1 of our program; hosting a monthly speaker series and strategic planning sessions. We have also begun the process of grant writing to try and secure funding for the development of the T.R.U.C.E. Institute @Baltimore City Correctional Center. We have developed a webpage @ http://TRUCE.collectivex.com and are building a network of resource providers and advocacy organizations.
Phase 1
Speaker Series
Strategic Planning
Grant Writing
Build a coalition of grassroots, community/ faith-based organizations who are working in the areas of gangs and re-entry.
Phase 2: T.R.U.C.E. Institute @ BCCC
History of Gangs: From Protector to Predator
War on Drugs: The Real American Gangster
Street Law: Trips, Traps, and the Trappers
Testimonials: Ex-offenders and families give their testimonies
Life Skills Training
Conflict Resolution
Spiritual Development
Male/Female Relationships
Fatherhood Training
Job Preparedness
Skill Development
Career Day
Advocacy/Legislative Process
Phase 3: The T.R.U.C.E. Movement
Please help us build this MOVEMENT with Time, Talent or Treasure.
Kinetics mission is to develop new ideas that work to strengthen social movements within the African-American community; providing them with the tools and skills to pursue justice and better address the needs of those whom they serve.
443.415.7974
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