Prison Industrial Complex
The Prison Industrial Complex is very profitable so it behooves governments and corporations to keep incarceration rates high. There are nearly two million people incarcerated in the United States. A large percentage of these inmates suffer from some kind of mental illness and when there was a large scale closing of mental health facilities in the 1980s led to huge increases in prison population as people who should be receiving psychological help were caged. As privately owned prisons began appearing and placed on the stock market, the multi-billion dollar Prison Industrial Complex has become even more profitable and is run as a for profit business, not as a way to improve the quality of society.
As long as this remains the case and we choose punitive rather than restorative justice, we will continue to have systems set up to put youth, particularly brown and black youth into prisons, and Changing Ways will have work to intervene. There are programs of restorative justice in place, and these programs helped to form Changing Ways, however, the standard practice is still retributive justice. If we are continued to be ruled by fear, retributive justice, racial profiling, and spying on our neighbors will continue to be the order of the day. However, Changing Ways offers an alternate narrative. Through sharing their humanity and the commonality of experience, they can reach out to youth at risk of being caught in the system to offer another option. Through restorative justice, Changing Ways has been given a change to continue their own healing while reaching out to help others.
As long as this remains the case and we choose punitive rather than restorative justice, we will continue to have systems set up to put youth, particularly brown and black youth into prisons, and Changing Ways will have work to intervene. There are programs of restorative justice in place, and these programs helped to form Changing Ways, however, the standard practice is still retributive justice. If we are continued to be ruled by fear, retributive justice, racial profiling, and spying on our neighbors will continue to be the order of the day. However, Changing Ways offers an alternate narrative. Through sharing their humanity and the commonality of experience, they can reach out to youth at risk of being caught in the system to offer another option. Through restorative justice, Changing Ways has been given a change to continue their own healing while reaching out to help others.
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