Slavery In Our American Prisons and Jails: Judges need to be held Accountable for Human Trafficking

Delana, February 9, 2023 Janey* — a bright and bubbly 12-year-old and the quintessential “girl next door” — was being groomed by a trafficker. Her mom and teachers noticed sudden changes in this sweet little girl’s disposition … she withdrew from her friends and social activities, her grades tumbled, she’d fall asleep at school — and stay up all night… After two months of increasing concern, Janey’s mother knew she had to take action. As Janey slept one afternoon, Mom explored the contents of her phone; what she saw there would change her forever.   A man had found her precious daughter and was overtly sexually grooming her — Janey had been … chosen.  All the familiar “techniques” traffickers use to build trust were used. He started slowly, as a “friend,” manipulating the girl into telling him more and more intimate details of her life, and ultimately began using increasingly sexualized banter to lower her inhibitions and convince her he was her “boyfriend.”  Had the situation continued a few weeks more, a far more tragic outcome may have been in the cards.  Your donation today will help advance all our critically important efforts in 2023 — for the sake of vulnerable children like Janey. Thank God for you and your support of Shared Hope. Because of it, we were there when Janey’s mom reached out, determined to find healing for her daughter and to stop this tragedy from impacting more families like hers. Together, we’ve gone to work — to prevent trafficking by protecting even more children from predators through educating them and their parents and teachers on the signs of trafficking … and how to stay safe. Join us in this effort by giving a generous online donation now.  I’m asking for the sake of countless children like Janey who are being lured … abducted … enslaved … molested … tortured … bought and sold …  Their childhood stolen, their innocence shattered, their life unrecognizable. With your help, we will provide safety, hope, and healing for survivors and equip them for a new future while continuing every effort to protect other children and families from the tragedy of trafficking. May God bless you for making a difference, one life at a time!

The Biden administration, which has sued states that ban surgeries that remove the healthy reproductive anatomy of underage girls, has announced its support for the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.

“The Department of Justice is committed to supporting efforts to end Female Genital Mutilation, including by prosecuting those who violate the federal law banning FGM and by providing support to survivors of this harmful practice,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division on Monday. “FGM is a form of gender-based violence and child abuse, which will not be tolerated in the United States.”

Female genital mutilation (FGM), sometimes known as female circumcision, proliferates in sub-Saharan African and Arab states, often to fulfill Islamic concepts referenced in the hadiths. An estimated 513,000 women and girls living in America stand at risk of FGM, which has entered the United States largely through Muslim immigration. The U.S. government, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization mutually define female genital mutilation as “any partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or any other injury of the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” The process, sometimes known as female circumcision, involves “piercing, cutting, removing, or sewing closed all or part of a girl’s or woman’s external genitals.”

The Value of a Signature

On July 4, 1776, John Hancock signed The Declaration of Independence. 55 additional signatures went down in history, not only representing an individual commitment to the cause of freedom, but also the collective determination of a people to break free from oppression and pave their own path in the world. The sacrifices represented by their signatures are woven into the fabric of a founding document that we all now remember forever.

Former President Donald Trump joined the chorus of those responding to graphic footage from the bodycams of five Memphis police officers who repeatedly beat 29-year-old Tyre Nichols. The footage was released to the public Friday, Jan. 27.

thought it was terrible. He was in such trouble. He was just being pummeled. Now that should never have happened," Trump said during an interview with The Associated Press Saturday.

The footage shows the officers punching, kicking, pepper spraying and tasing Nichols, a 29-year-old Black father and delivery driver, following a traffic stop on Jan. 7. 

He died three days later, on Jan. 10. The officers were charged with his murder.

From left, officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr. and Justin Smith. MEMPHIS POLICE DEPARTMENT/AP

The five Memphis police officers fired last week for their role in the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols were charged with murder Thursday.

The five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — are facing charges of second-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, and official misconduct and oppression, according to local WHIO.

The Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis said Wednesday that the group of cops was “found to be directly responsible” for the attack on Nichols during a Jan. 7 traffic stop. Shortly after being arrested, Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, reportedly complained of “shortness of breath” and was sent to an area hospital. After being admitted to the hospital in critical condition, he died on Jan. 10.

“The news today from Memphis officials that these five officers are being held criminally accountable for their deadly and brutal actions gives us hope as we continue to push for justice for Tyre,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, attorneys for the Nichols family, said in a statement Thursday.

The Real American Founding: A Conversation

Uncover the true American Founding and learn how we've departed from it today.

Almost 250 years ago our Founders established the freest and most prosperous nation in human history. But today we have moved so far away from the political theory of the American Founding that we risk losing sight of what made America great in the first place.  

“The Real American Founding: A Conversation” will help students understand what the Founders meant by freedom, equality, and rights—words that are commonly used today, but often misunderstood.  

In this course, Dr. Thomas West, one of the leading scholars on the American Founding, is joined by Dr. David Azerrad, his former student and now colleague, to examine the principles of the Founders, explore the urgent political questions they faced, and reveal the choices they made to secure free government in America.   

The goal of their conversation is to move beyond a simple recitation of the abstract principles of the Founding and bring their political theory to life so we can see how the Founders approached the perennial problems of politics. 

Over the course of eight episodes, you’ll learn: 

• what the Founders meant by equality, freedom, and rights; 
• the Founders' understanding of natural law and the moral duties of citizenship; 
• the policies the Founders believed were necessary to secure the rights of Americans; 
• why the Founders thought sex and marriage were important political topics; 
• and, what the Founders might say in response to many of the crises we face today. 

Join the conversation with Thomas West and David Azerrad to discover the great political wisdom of the American Founding and to learn how it can guide us today. 

VICTORY FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS!  Congress Passes Landmark Anti-Corruption Whistleblower Bill Dear Delana, Congress just passed the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Whistleblower Improvement Act. This U.S. law will now protect whistleblowers around the world who blow the whistle on money laundering and sanctions busting. This law will revolutionize the United States’ anti-corruption efforts and help hold Russian oligarchs accountable. The bill’s passage is also a reflection of the power of the whistleblower community. Despite bipartisan support, the bill was stalled in Congress until NWC called upon whistleblower supporters to take action. Thanks to phone calls made by whistleblowers and whistleblower allies, the bill moved forward as this session of Congress came to a close. Whistleblowers and whistleblower supporters made their voices heard. They demanded that the United States protect whistleblowers risking their lives to expose criminals’ hidden money. Congress listened. Linked here is a special podcast by former FBI agent Jane Turner that tells the inside story of how whistleblowers came together to ensure Congress passed the law. Jane interviews the NWC’s Chairman of the Board, Stephen Kohn, who led a two-year effort to have the law passed. Stephen and Jane explain the importance of the new whistleblower law, its revolutionary potential to fight corruption, and how your grassroots activism made the law's passage possible.   Let me repeat. Washington insiders did not get this law passed. Only the voices of thousands of whistleblowers and their supporters got the job done. The Podcast tells this story.  NWC is proud to see two years of advocacy for increased protections for AML whistleblowers pay off. We will continue to advocate for whistleblowers across the globe. This was also a victory for bipartisan support for strong and effective whistleblower protections. We would like to thank the Act's sponsors in the Senate, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia), and the House, Representatives Alma Adams (D-North Carolina) and Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio). Furthermore, we need to thank the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters (D-California) and Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina), the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) and the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) and Kay Granger (D-Texas). Finally, we do need your donations to carry on our work.  There is much to do, but we learned in this fight that if we stick together and speak loudly, we can win.  The American people support whistleblowers.  It is our job to ensure Congress, Executive Agencies, and all government officials working with whistleblowers respect them and pass the necessary laws to protect them. With your help, we can continue our victories.  Executive Director National Whistleblower Center

Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December). Though it originated as a holiday to give gifts to the poor, today Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday. It originated in Great Britain and is celebrated in a number of countries that previously formed part of the British Empire. The attached bank holiday or public holiday may take place on 28 December if necessary to ensure it falls on a weekday. Boxing Day is also concurrent with the Christian festival Saint Stephen's Day.

Barcodes: For most people, barcodes are the handy black and white stripes on products that facilitate quick payment at the store: instead of the assistant keying in the price, the item is swiped over red laser lights which red it off. FOd the shopkeeper. the barcode allows instant stock control. Oh, those poor deluded souls. They need to read the 1982 book The New Money System: 666 by Mary Stewart Relfe. For Relfe has divined that barcodes have Satanic importance. The guard bars on the code indicate 666 - the mark of the Devil and his cashless economy. It says so in Revelations 13:16-18:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no amn might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him tha hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six Hundred threescore and six.

David Icke (he who, inter alia, tracks the doings of the Babylonian Brotherhood) is another to have problems with barcodes because they enable mass observation: everything you buy with a credit or debit card can be put against your name. Soon the government and the backroom cabal that runs it will know exactly what's in your home.  Icke may be a nut, but he might be right. The trend of the era is toward microscopic surveillance of citizens' consumer habits. In 2005 the BBC reported that the Tesco supermarket chain had trialed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, which allowed products to be tracked via radio waves. Privacy groups labeled these chips "spy chips" because the tags could be used to track the behavior of customers.                        There is clearly a need for citizens to watch out for what big businesses and governments are up to. The Devil, though, is not in the detail of the UPC and EAN barcodes used in America and Europe respectively.                                                            Barcodes are part of the prophecy of the Beast's takeover: Alert Level 3 Further Reading Mary Stewart Relfe, The New Money System: 666, 1982                                  

BCCI (Bank of Commerce and Credit International) 

Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.        President James Garfield

It used to be called "charging interest on loans" and is the raison d'etre of those ubiquitous institutions, banks. Since the 17th century, banks have loaned money to nations and companies as well as to individuals, and accordingly, they have been charged with manipulation of national and international affairs. According to the True Conspiracies website the following, among other sins, can be laid at the reinforced doors of "the banks" (punctuation, spelling, capitalization, etc., sic):

• Boom and bust cycles along with the depression, stock market crashes, and wars are deliberately caused to make people lose money to the conspirators. They also weaken the people and tame the governments into accepting the conspirators' solutions.
• The history books controlled by the conspiracy do not tell the full truth about why many events happen or take place. For example, the conspirators blame slavery for the Civil War in America, but the real reason was to establish a central bank in the USA and force a war to enable them to lend money at interest.
• The conspirators bribed members of the government by paying them and having them work for the bank. Intense deceptive media publicity convinced the public and politicians of the benefit of the Federal Reserve Act. It was done in ways such as lying and saying that the banks will reduce boom and bust systems. The Federal Reserve Act was passed near Christmas when few people were present to vote against it.
• Hitler was funded by the USA and Britain to create a bigger war. The U.S. government controlled by bankers' conspiracy, wanted Hitler to invade America but he declined due to the risk of the number of Americans with guns in their own homes. The far Left is the Communist. They are the ones who want the war to control the American public. The U.S. government even encouraged Japan to attack Pearl Harbor to get America into a war we didn't need to get into. 
• The bankers funded Arab and Japanese companies to buy up property around the world so the bankers could gain more control of it.
• Manipulation of Agriculture has and will be used to force the population to accept the conspirators' demands such as having to surrender guns to get food.
• The U.S. deliberately tried to lose the Korean and Vietnam wars so the communists would remain within the territory. [...]
• Although involved with the conspiracy since his initial rise to power, President Kennedy was killed by an agent of the conspiracy for wanting to pull out of the Vietnam war and printing silver currency.
• Many countries now with conflicts had peace until the Banker's Conspiracy.
• The collapse of the Soviet Union was a hoax to fool the world into a false sense of security and also to slowly cause the world to accept communism. The bankers funded the Soviet Union to create an arms race, which cost time and money. Also, it caused the nations to gladly surrender their arms in the name of peace so that the goal of a one-world army could be formed under the control of the United Nations
• In World War 2 the US and British governments controlled by the bankers succeeded in getting the Soviet Union to control much of Eastern Europe.
• They can control the weather for Biological warfare. They are deliberately ruining the environment to gain more control.

Phew. And there's plenty more where that came from! In the fevered minds of some conspiracy theorists, the banks are run by a cabal of families - principally the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, Loebs, and the Rockefellers - who hammer out their joint policy in the Bilderberg Group and implement said policy via various front organizations. The Bank of English, the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank all hold a special chill place in the hearts of conspiracy theorists as the business conspiracy. And the end goal of that conspiracy?                             A New World Order, naturally. A distinct flaw in the international banking conspiracy theory is that the national banks continue to operate with patriotic bias. The Bank of England still promotes British interests above all others; the Bundesbank acts resolutely in favor of German strategy (which, according to some in the British left, is a conspiracy to run Europe from Berlin, a sort of soft-glove Third Reich), and so on and so forth. Then there's that nasty sheen of anti-Semitism over much of the banking conspiracy theory, just as it had in the 1930s when Hitler blamed "the Jewish financiers" for the world's woes, principally Bolshevism. Sixty years later it's still the Jews who "destroyed Christian old line companies who want Islamic owned companies excluded from Dow Jones ... [who] live on the labour of others" according to the internet site Jew Watch. It's not difficult to debunk the anti-Semitic fantasy: It takes just one name, the name J.P. Morgan. The super banker was a white Christian. Take out the anti-Semitism and the puppet-and-string notion of politics, however, and the conspiracists raise legitimate concerns about the most powerful of financial institutions. Banks are one of the globalizing forces seeking to enervate the nation-state, and banks do discuss mutual interests in elite forums such as Bilderberg, Le Cercle, and the Trilateral Commission. The International Monetary Fund does operate in the worldwide capitalist interest (as numerous left-wing regimes have discovered when obliged to alter their internal economies in return for aid).                                                                               Sometimes banks are immoral: the Vatican Bank allegedly laundered money for the Mafia (see Raborto Calvi), the Banco Nationale del Lavoro funded illegal arms purchases, Barclays underpinned the apartheid regime of South Africa before, with breathtaking hypocrisy, funding the black dictatorship of Mugabe in Zimbabwe. For sheer criminality, however, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) remains unsurpassed. The sorry tale of the BCCI is also the one that ties in some of the biggest names of late 20th-century history, among them George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, and Osama bin Laden.                                                                                   The BCCI was founded in 1972 by the Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi, with an initial chest of 2.5 million. In an astute piece of marketing, it proclaimed itself the "Third World Bank," with a mission to promote prosperity in the corners of the globe that Western banks ignored. Within a decade it had a million depositors and was working its way to a paper value of $25 million. Despite its "Third World Bank" tag, BCCI was keen to break into North America, where in 1977 it bought four banks, including the First American Bank.                                                                                      BCCIs vigorous asset-buying hid the bank's true financial status: it was verging on insolvency. And much of whatever money BCCI was making was coming from illegal activities. By the mid-1980s the CIA, the IRS, and the DEA were respectively informing the US State, Treasury, and Justice departments that BCCI had been drug laundering money. These alarms were and are being ignored. Knowing that our government is the biggest human trafficking country in the world. The reality in the US today is that prison is not for rehabilitation, it is for profit. With that kind of mentality, we are living up to the nickname of the United States of Incarceration. The idea of working while in prison was to be used as a good time for prisoners to get out early on parole. The workers' program was a rehabilitation tool used for the prisoners to turn their behavior around and ultimately, greater public safety, but as usual, the execution is to benefit the government and the private corporations. Plus, the shift of the prison system's emphasis from rehabilitation to punishment in the last three decades has blocked opportunities for people to upgrade their skills and education while incarcerated.                                    The Nuns of the Catholic Church used to tell me in grade school Sunday School: "an idle mind is the devil's workshop and idle hands are the devil's tools." The brains behind our prison system had the devil's welfare in mind when they reoriented our institutions away from rehabilitation into warehousing millions of innocent people while the government makes its way to the bank with stolen taxpayers' money. They have stripped away their opportunities for personal and collective development. As a result, purposelessness and excruciating boredom, not overwork, are the dominant features of most prison yards. To put it plainly there is no myth about the abuse the prisoners suffer. Governors of every state cover up the truth about our prison system. These alarms are raised but no one helps. Possibly because some branches of the CIA itself were using BCCI for clandestine purposes - until 1987 when President Manuel Noriega of Panama was discovered to be among those using BCCI to launder drug money.                       The lid could no longer be kept on. The US Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations launched an investigation into BCCI under Senator John Kerry. When Ketty eventually delivered his report on "The BBCI Affair" to the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, in December 1992, he recorded a catalog of larceny by BCCI that ranged from narcotics trafficking to money laundering.  Such a catalogue of criminality would, one might presume, have the US administration champing at the bit to close BCCI down. Not an allegation of "conspiracy" enters stage right. One of the companies which borrowed money from BCCI, Harken Energy, had on its board of directors one George W. Bush, the US president's scion. BCCI lobbyists and advisers included Hery Kissinger's consultancy, Kissinger Associates. The CIA, while denouncing BCCI on the other hand, was "float[ing] in and out of BCCI" (Kerry) on the other, was possibly using the bank to run funds to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, and was definitely working to some unspecified end through leader Jesse Jackson were receivers of BCCI's largesse. In another word, a vast number of US luminaries had a vested interest in halting Kerry's work - which is exactly what happened in 1989, when the Justice Department stalled his investigation. According to Washington Monthly, personal pressure from no less than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was put on Kerry to desist. To Kerry's credit, he refused to give up completely and approached New York Attorney Robert Morgenthau with irrefutable evidence that the BCCI was handling the account of the Colombian Medellin drugs cartel and diverting funds to the terrorist Abu Nidal. In 1990 the Bush administration gave BCCI a rap over the knuckles but refused to close the bank account or close down the bank. That task fell eventually to the Bank of England in July 1991, although the publication of Kerry's report (now co-authored by Senator Hank Brown) in the following year administered the coup de grace. BCCI was indicted for money laundering, bribery, and grand larceny.                                     Shutting the doors on BCCI did not prevent $13 billion from going missing - not that any of the monies went to the bank's staff or small investors, the latter queueing fruitlessly to retrieve their deposits from BCCI branches. There are no answers as to where missing monies went, although there are hints that some of the bank's bigger clients received larger than usual remunerations in the run-up to the collapse.                   An investigation by the French intelligence service found that one Osama bin Laden was a BCCI customer. It is within the bounds of possibility that bin Laden was among those who benefited in the last days of BCCI criminal empire. Makes since why President George W. Bush allowed the bin Laden family to fly out of America the day after 9/11. He was willing to protect the family of a murderer.  

US Senator John Kerry's investigation into the BCCI was deliberately blocked by vested interests: ALERT LEVEL 9 

Further reading: J. Beaty and S.C. Gwyne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heat of BCCI, 1993

Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown, the BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States, December 1992, 102nd Congress 2nd Session, Senate Print 102-140

Petter Truell and Larry Gurwin, False Profits: The Inside Story of BBCI, 1992      

Document: Report of Senator John Kerry "The BCCI Affair" to the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, UNITED STATES SENATE, IN DECEMBER 1992

BCCIs unique criminal structure - an elaborate corporate spide-web with BCCI's founder, Agha Hasan Abedi, and his assistant, Swaleh Naqvi, in the middle - was an essential component of its spectacular growth, and guarantee of its eventual collapse. The structure was conceived Abedi and managed by Naqvi for the specific purpose of evading regulation or control by governments. It functioned to frustrate the full understanding of BCCI operations by anyone. Unlike any ordinary bank, BCCI was from its earliest days made up of multiplying layers of entities, related to one another through an impenetrable series of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, banks-within-banks, insider dealings, and nominee relationships. By fracturing corporate structure, record keeping, regulatory review, and audits, the complex BCCI family of entities created by Abedi was able to evade ordinary legal restrictions on the movement of capital and goods as a matter of daily practice and routine. In creating BCCI as a vehicle fundamentally free of government control, Abedi developed BCCI as an ideal mechanism for facilitating illicit activity by others, including such activity by officials of many of the governments whose laws BCCI was breaking.

Among BCCIs principal mechanisms for committing crimes were shell corporations, bank confidentiality, and secrecy havens, layering of corporate structure, front-men and nominees, back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI-controlled entities, kick-backs and bribes, intimidation of witnesses, and retention of well-placed insiders to discourage governmental action.

However daunting the task of explicating the full extent of BCCIs criminality, it is essential to recognize that at the core, BCCI was not a bank that made an adequate return on investment through lending out depositors' funds like other banks, but a "Ponzi scheme," which used ned depositors' funds to pay current expenses and to repay earlier depositors, creating a pyramid of mounting obligations that ultimately and inevitably would bring about BCCIs collapse.

From the beginning, BCCI President Abedi conceived of BCCI as a machine with two driving mechanisms - asset growth and faith. The latter was essential to prevent a day of reckoning when depositors and creditors alike would cause a run on the bank. The former was necessary to sustain the latter through bad times. Together, they worked to sustain the illusion that BCC I was solvent, when in fact, it was unlikely ever solvent. 

On the 18th of December 1991, in an agreement with the Justice Department and the New York District Attorney, BCCIs liquidators pleaded guilty to having engaged in a criminal conspiracy through financial fraud and thereby constituting a Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO), whose entire assets, legitimate and illegitimate, were subject to confiscation by the government. Specific crimes admitted to by BCCIs liquidators in the agreement included:

• Seeking deposits of drugs proceeds and laundering drug money
• Seeking deposits from persons attempt to evade US income taxes
• Using "straws" and nominees to acquire control of US financial institutions
• Lying to regulators and falsifying regulatory documents
• Creating false bank records and engaging in sham transactions to deceive regulators.

The New York District Attorney found that among the major actions taken by BCCI to carry out its fraud were: 

• Employing the ruling families of a number of Middle Eastern states as nominees for BCCI, who pretended to be at risk in BCCI but who were in fact guaranteed to be held harmless by BCCI for any actual losses.
• Using bank secrecy havens including Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands to avoid regulation on a consolidated basis by a single regulator of BCCI, and thereby to permit BCCI to transfer assets and liabilities from bank to bank as needed to conceal BCCIs true economic status. 
• Paying bribes and kickbacks to agents of other banking and financial institutions, thereby avoiding the scrutiny of regulators.

Money-Laundering 

From the time BCCIs indictment on drug money-laundering charges in Tampa, Florida in October 1988, there was little doubt to anyone looking at the facts that BCCI had been used to launder drug money.

The Customs agents working on the "C-Chase" case against BCCI moved millions of dollars in US money currency, representing the proceeds of cocaine sales, through BCCI Panama, BCCI Luxembourg, and LOANS Switzerland as a result of the knowing participation of several BCCI officials. 

As Robert Mazur, the Customs agent in Tampa who selected BCCI as the target of the Customs money-laundering sting testified, BCCI bank executives volunteered methods to enhance and improve his techniques for money-laundering, and shortly before the sting ended the operation, offered to introduce Mazur to other potential "cash" customers for money-laundering services from Bogota, Colombia.

Given BCCIs size and dispersion, money-laundering at BCCI would have been inevitable under any circumstances. Given BCCIs and its management's attitude towards laws, it was ubiquitous. As Akbar Bilgrami explained. Abedi was constantly telling BCCI employees that the only thing that mattered was the generation of assets. When Bilgrami was in Colombia in the mid-1980s [sic}. a period when Colombia had already developed a reputation as the center for cocaine smuggling and drug money, Abedi told him that he needed to increase BCCIs activity in Colombia to $1 billion in local currency in deposits, and $ 1 billion in US-denominated deposits - funds which obviously could only be generated, directly or indirectly, from the drug trade.

The degree of BCCI-US's reliance on money-laundering as a principal business was demonstrated by what happened when BCCI put into place a "compliance program" as part of its January 1990 plea agreement resolving the Tampa money-laundering case: business dropped noticeably, especially referrals from other BCCI locations because neither BCCI nor its customers wanted to provide details about the customers' businesses.

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  The Most Common Types or Categories of Corruption, Grand Verus Petty Corruption Conventional, and Government Corruption. District Attorney Mark Powell from Lackawanna County; Scranton Pennsylvania August 24th, 2022 - August 26th, 2022.

Spring 2001 / 107th Congress - The Local LAw Enforement Hate Crime Prevention Act in introduces in the House and Local Law Enforement Enhancement Act introduced in the Senate. The legislation would provide federal assistance to state and local jurisdictions to prosecute hate crimes.

1990's The General Assembly made it illegal to misuae the registry to harass sex offenders. But, Lackawanna County is using the Sex Offenders to buy bigger cars. More inmates the more federal funds they get. That's Human Trafficking.

Too many voices in America today sound the wrong-headed belief that these truths are no longer so self-evident. Most of these voices are from Washington and Lackawanna County Pennsylvania, but many more come from our universities, our high school textbooks, even our churches. These skeptics think we have overgrown our founding principles, that even the wisest men and women in 1776 and 1787 couldn't possibly have been wise enough to create an effective government for America in the twenty-first century.   

Some find the words of the Founders to limiting for their bloated vision government. After all, a government that is true to the ideals of our Charters of Liberty is a government that is limited. If government exists to protect our God-given rights - and not to bail ut banks, buy car companies, take over our health care, and tell us which light blub we can use - then the government does few things, out of the way in order to realize their potential.

Remember the 2001 interview about the Constitution by then - Illinois state Senator Barak Obama complained as he captured perfectly the constraints on government created by the Constitution. Speaking about the Supreme Court in the 1950s and '60s during the Civil Rights movement, Obama expressed regret that the High Court.                                                                                       Our future president called the civil rights' subsequent failure to break free of the constraints imposed by the Constitution - a "tragedy." But a lot of us call it basic fairness and adherence to our founding principles. We believe it's a good thing that we came so far in achieving racial justice while keeping faith in God to protect our Constitution. Some like to dismiss all this talk about staying true to our founding documents as the ideological rants of the people who are obsessed with constitutional theory. But whether we remain true to God's Constitution or not has practical, real-world consequences for all of us. The Supreme Court, along with the rest of the federal judiciary, has tremendous power over our lives today. Their ruling means tremendous power over our lives today. Their ruling means the difference between free political speech and censored political speech, property rights that are protected by the government and property rights that are routinely violated by the government, and the survival of innocent life and the state-sanctioned killing the innocent life. The reason this is the case is that so many of the people who appoint and approve our judges and justices erroneously believe the court's duty isn't to interpret the law but to make the law. In cases where their agenda can't prevail among the people representatives in Congress, they have turned to the courts to make policy. That means having judges and justices who are no longer guided by the Constitution and the law, but by their personal opinions. We need to remember judges and justices are human and they do have feelings, but they have no right to ignore this great American Constitution men and women have died to protect. I believe has blessed this country great, but this ignorance of thinking people control the law is wrong. God gave the law to Moses and it belongs to Him, not us.                                                                                                Former President Obama gave the wrong advice when he said, "That is the really difficult, consequential cases, justices shouldn't go with the law but with their hearts."                                                                         "That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy the president

 But if you look at the Supreme Court Justice oath taken, you will see that it commits them to a very different standard. They pledge not to pick winners and losers based on their hearts or "empathy." When they take that oath. Their job is to protect the United States Constitution.               City, County, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Lackawanna County breaks more laws than anyone other state. The District Attorney takes an oath to protect the United States Constitution and the Commonwealth. But, when we have a D.A. getting rich and allowing the constitution to be ignored, it's time for the people to stand up and not be scared. When we have a government that is breaking the law, we the PEOPLE are in trouble. I am going by personal experience with Lackawanna County. The government here is abusive to its voters. They abuse their power. The police break the law by lying and judges allow that.

The day our bodies and immortal will be a fulfillment of the Scriptures where we are told that Death will be swallowed up. Imagine a life with no death. We will be surrounded by our loved ones, in the LORD, and we will never have to worry about losing them again. We will spend eternity together, Forever!

PRAYER: Dear God, I thank You that in the times' things may not make sense, you know more than I do. In times of pain, where I lose the people closest to me, I take comfort in knowing that as long as they are of you, we will meet again. A time will come when we will all be reunited without worrying about death and sorrow. I praise You in Jesus' name Amen.   

I wish Josh Shapiro was around when I was trapped in human trafficking in Scranton Pennsylvania the was 1992 when my life was turned upside down. I did go to the Scranton Police Department and the Lackawanna Sheriff's Department. At that time I was told by both departments it was my fault. For 30 years I was caught in this horrible crime without help from any government. I have true stories to tell and I will be writing more about the unlawful government of Lackawanna County Pennsylvania. There are also a few judges I can write about as well. I am Praising the Lord for saving my life and never leaving me. My faith in Jesus has helped me as well. God bless everyone who reads this post, in Jesus' name, Amen.

HARRISBURG — Two men who coerced six victims into prostitution with the false promise of easy money and then used drugs, violence, and threats to control them have been arrested for human trafficking. Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office worked closely with the Pennsylvania State Police and other law enforcement agencies to build the prostitution and trafficking case.

Crowell was taken into custody by authorities outside Chicago over the holiday weekend, and Schiff, currently incarcerated in York County, was arrested as well.  The men are charged with trafficking in individuals, corrupt organizations, involuntary servitude, conspiracy, possession with intent to deliver, prostitution, and related offenses. 

Kenneth Crowell, 34, and Barry “Bear” Schiff, 50, coerced six women into forced servitude as prostitutes in a human trafficking ring that operated in Lancaster, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and York counties and southern New Jersey from 2014 until October 2017.

“This is a horrible case where women were lured into prostitution by the false promise of easy money,” Attorney General Shapiro said.  “When the victims tried to leave, these criminals used violence and threats of violence to keep them working as prostitutes against their will. Law enforcement collaboration and the use of a statewide investigating grand jury built this case.  We will use every tool at our disposal to prosecute these kinds of human trafficking cases.”

The arrests mark the second human trafficking case brought by the Office of Attorney General and Pennsylvania State Police in recent weeks. Earlier this month, two defendants were held for trial on human trafficking charges in Montgomery County in a case broken open with the help of an Uber driver who alerted police to the existence of a trafficking victim.

The charges against Crowell and Schiff stem from a joint investigation by the Office of Attorney General and Pennsylvania State Police, with assistance from Northern York County Regional Police, Dallas TX police, Millville NJ police, the North Star Initiative of Lancaster, and the Salvation Army of Greater Philadelphia Anti-Human Trafficking Program. The ring was uncovered when a woman reported to police that she was a victim of human trafficking during an undercover prostitution sting.

“The Pennsylvania State Police is committed to investigating individuals and criminal organizations involved in the trafficking of humans for financial gain,” said Cpl. Gregg J. Kravitsky. “This investigation shows that by working cooperatively with law enforcement and other partners, we can bring those who commit these heinous acts to justice.”

On April 4, 2017, two undercover Pennsylvania State troopers responded to a prostitution advertisement on the website Backpage. Using the listed phone number – later linked to a second number tied to nearly 350 similar ads over two months – the troopers arranged a meeting with the victim at a Lancaster hotel.

After the troopers identified themselves, the victim told police she did not feel safe and wanted to “get out.” She said Crowell and Schiff recruited her as an escort while she was working at a York gentlemen’s club. The victim told the troopers Schiff bragged about selling opioid pills and heroin to the women working for him as a means of control. When she told Schiff she didn’t like him buying and supplying heroin in the hotel room where she worked, Schiff threatened her with a knife.

A second victim testified before the grand jury that she needed money to fuel her addiction and began working for Crowell and Schiff believing they ran an escort service, not a prostitution ring. She testified she rarely slept and was sent in an Uber to buy large amounts of heroin for Schiff multiple times.

According to the grand jury presentment, a third victim testified Schiff told the women his name was “Frank Luchese” and impersonated a mobster to intimidate them. She said she joined what she believed was an escort service run by Crowell and Schiff to pay off a drug debt to Schiff. When she tried to leave, Schiff told her he would “chop her up into little pieces and throw her in the river.”

Victim four worked for Crowell and Schiff at various times between 2014 and 2016 as a way to obtain heroin and support her addiction. She testified Crowell tried to strangle her on several occasions, causing her to lose consciousness during one confrontation.

A fifth victim who began working for Crowell and Schiff in 2015 testified that Schiff controlled her with prescription opioids and heroin. This victim testified that one time, after she refused Schiff’s demand for sex, Schiff slammed her head into a bucket of dirty water containing shards of broken glass. The victim suffered severe cuts and scarring on her knees and legs.

After that incident, the victim sought help during a “date” from an undercover police officer and gave a full statement to police before being taken to the hospital for treatment.

Because of the complexity of trafficking cases and the importance placed on them by Attorney General Shapiro, the office has specially designated Senior Deputy Attorney General Heather Castellino to prosecute human trafficking cases.

“No one should be victimized by the kind of brutality and violence that happened in this case,” Attorney General Shapiro said.  “We’re focused on taking on and taking down human trafficking wherever we find it in our Commonwealth.”

The government traffic more people than any other organization in the world. 

                                           

Pennsylvania Civil Rights and laws to protect Sex Offenders: Any Person who uses the information contained here in to threaten, intimidate, or Harass the registrant or their families, or who otherwise misuses this information, may be subject to criminal prosecution and Civil Liability. This is despite the facts that people convicted of sex offenses are statistically unlikely to re-offend. Many prosecutors, police officers, corrections professionals, and criminal justice reformers are also aware that it is nonsensical to irreparably stigmatize a broad swath of offenders in the same exact way. 

                    

                                     

 

August 12, 2001 

Lackawanna County Judge Michael Barrasse is linked to a former Avoca pub whose clientele are being questioned relative to a federal grand jury investigation into money laundering and drug trafficking.

Several reliable sources, two of whom are close to the investigation, said Barrasse used the name 'Michael O'Malley' whenever he visited Lavelle's Pub. The pub was shut down in December 1997 following a joint federal and state grand jury investigation linking the pub to a major cocaine operation in upper Luzerne and lower Lackawanna counties.

Twenty people were charged, including the pub's owner Thomas Lavelle, in 1998 for their role in the cocaine ring. A source said there was a reason why Lavelle was one of the last suspects to be charged and sentenced from the group but declined to go into further detail.

Barrasse made his way to Lavelle's Pub because he was a member of a dart league, a source said. He got to know the people who were involved in the cocaine operation, the source said.
Barrasse is now a Lackawanna County judge who won the disputed seat in 1999. He is on vacation and could not be reached for comment at either his Moosic residence or the Lackawanna County Courthouse after repeated attempts.

Barrasse's law clerk, Karl Lynott, did not return a message seeking comment.
A convicted cocaine ring leader who operated from Lavelle's Pub, several sources said, was questioned by federal authorities from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Division and the Northeastern Organized Crime Unit. The questions focused on what knowledge the ring leader had about money laundering and others who purchased cocaine, including if Barrasse is involved.
The source said Lavelle's Pub was not involved in money laundering but is connected to the federal grand jury investigation because of the pub's clientele.

"What happened at Lavelle's is producing what we are seeing now," a source close to the investigation said. The source continued to explain that the investigation has "definitely expanded" because of the information they "stumbled upon" at Lavelle's Pub.

Prostitutes from escort services operated by alleged pimp Al Carpinet Jr. were used to entertain the clients at a Pittston Township hotel. Carpinet Jr.'s cocaine supplier was one of the 20 people arrested who operated from Lavelle's Pub.
At least three persons who sold cocaine at Lavelle's Pub are continuing to sell the drug at nightclubs in Kingston and Plains Township. One of the suspects is known as 'Fast Eddie,' a source said, and two of them were legislative aides at one time.
The third person is related to two of the three persons who received target letters of the federal grand jury investigation.

The federal grand jury began hearing testimony earlier this year in Harrisburg about a year after the IRS in Harrisburg received information about the alleged scheme, a source close to the investigation said. The same source said the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Scranton failed to investigate for several years because of the Barrasse connection.

"They'll probably end up retiring when this comes to an end," said a source about two FBI special agents based in Scranton.

The records the FBI had on the case were transferred to Attorney Gordon Zubrod in Harrisburg at the request of the IRS, the source said.

On May 31, the IRS along with U.S. Postal Inspectors and state police raided and seized records from the homes of Thomas Joseph, Fairview Township; Samuel Marranca in Forty Fort; reputed La Cosa Nostra crime boss William D'Elia in Hughestown; and Jeanne Stanton in Fairview Township.
Joseph's business, Acumark Inc., a direct mail and telemarketing firm in Pittston, was searched and records were seized, as was an office at 1303 Wyoming Ave., Exeter, where records of the now defunct weekly newspaper, The Metro, were said to be found on May 31.

Investigators originally believed $650,000 was laundered through The Metro, formerly owned by Joseph. But, when records were seized, a source close to the investigation said it looks like nearly $3 million was laundered through the weekly paper from 1994 through 1998

The new government under Josh Shapiro will be just as bad as the last one. He has allows judges who are Drug Dealers and Pimps stay one the bench even after they get cought

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced today that a coalition of 21 state Attorneys General have filed an amicus brief in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in support of a lawsuit brought by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the State of New Jersey asking the courts to stop the Trump Administration from rolling back the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers provide contraceptive care coverage in their health insurance plans. The Attorneys General brief asks the court to issue a nationwide preliminary injunction stopping the federal government from implementing new regulations that authorize employers with a religious or moral objection to block their employees and their employees’ dependents from receiving insurance coverage for contraceptive care and services.  The new federal regulations are otherwise set to take effect this month.      

“Despite previous court orders barring the Trump Administration from implementing rules which threaten the health care and independence of women in Pennsylvania and across America, the federal government continues to seek ways to enact these harsh measures,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. “Women need contraception for their health because contraception is medicine, pure and simple. Families rely on the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of affordable healthcare, and my fellow Attorneys General recognize the impact this has on family budgets in their states and across the country. I welcome my colleagues’ support. Congress hasn’t changed the law, and the President can’t simply ignore it with an illegal rule.”                            

In December 2017, Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit to challenge the interim version of the regulations and won a nationwide injunction from U.S. District Court Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. That decision stopped the Trump Administration’s interim rules from undermining the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers provide their employees with contraceptive coverage. Last month, Attorney General Shapiro announced that he had filed an amended complaint against Trump Administration seeking to block the federal government’s final religious and moral exemption rules from taking effect, and that New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal had joined Pennsylvania in filing the amended complaint.             

Federal government estimates for the number of American women who will be immediately impacted by the final rules are more than double the number which were potentially impacted by the interim rules. Government estimates do not account for women who will be entering the workforce in the future.                              

Since the ACA was enacted in 2010, most employers who provide health insurance coverage to their employees have been required to include coverage for contraception, at no cost to the employee. As a result of the ACA, more than 55 million women in the United States, including 2.5 million in Pennsylvania and their families, have access to a range of FDA-approved methods of contraceptive care, including the longest-acting and most effective ones, with no out-of-pocket costs.           

 In the amicus brief, the state attorneys general argue that the new regulations threaten the health, well-being, and economic stability of hundreds of thousands of their residents by depriving them of contraception coverage. As a result, the attorneys general contend their states will be forced to spend millions of dollars to provide their residents with state-funded replacement contraceptive care and services. The states further argue that the expanded religious exemption included in the final regulations will cause women in every single state to lose contraception coverage and therefore agree that the court should impose a nationwide preliminary injunction.              

“Access to contraception advances educational opportunity, workplace equality, and financial empowerment for women; improves the health of women and children; and reduces healthcare-related costs for individuals, families, and States,” the state attorneys general write in the brief.                                                                                                                 

Joining Massachusetts Attorney General Healey in filing the amicus brief in support of Attorney General Shapiro’s lawsuit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania are the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.  

Judge Barrasse Has Broken the Law and Yet Josh Shapiro allows him to be a Judge. I can not let this rest. Micheal Barrasse has been breaking the law for as long as I have known him and his brother Pat Barrasse from the M&I bar. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is one of the most significant, esteemed judicial bodies in the history of the United States, and, indeed, in the civilized world. There has been some debate, however, about whether Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court—often dubbed “the oldest court in North America”—can legitimately claim that distinction. One renowned legal historian, writing in 1972 to mark the 250th anniversary of the act that formally established the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as one of the most significant, esteemed judicial bodies in the history of the United States, and, indeed, in the civilized world. There has been some debate, however, about whether Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court—often dubbed “the oldest court in North America”—can legitimately claim that distinction. One renowned legal historian, wrote in 1972 to mark the 250th anniversary of the act that formally established the Pennsylvania Constitution.

I wish Josh Shapiro was around when I was trapped in human trafficking in Scranton Pennsylvania the was 1992 when my life was turned upside down. I did go to the Scranton Police Department and the Lackawanna Sheriff's Department. At that time I was told by both departments it was my fault. For 30 years I was caught in this horrible crime without help from any government. I have true stories to tell and I will be writing more about the unlawful government of Lackawanna County Pennsylvania. There are also a few judges I can write about as well. I don't understand why a judge who breaks the law is still allowed to be handing out sentences. Governor Josh Shapiro, why are you letting Judge Barrasse be a judge and not go to jail for dealing drugs while he was the judge for drug court. He is wearing a house arrest monitor and is allowed to pass judgments. HE broke the law. 

I am Praising the Lord for saving my life and never leaving me. My faith in Jesus has helped me as well. God bless everyone who reads this post, in Jesus' name Amen.                                                    

HARRISBURG — Two men who coerced six victims into prostitution with the false promise of easy money and then used drugs, violence, and threats to control them have been arrested for human trafficking. Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office worked closely with the Pennsylvania State Police and other law enforcement agencies to build the prostitution and trafficking case.                                                        

Crowell was taken into custody by authorities outside Chicago over the holiday weekend, and Schiff, currently incarcerated in York County, was arrested as well.  The men are charged with trafficking in individuals, corrupt organizations, involuntary servitude, conspiracy, possession with intent to deliver, prostitution, and related offenses.              Kenneth Crowell, 34, and Barry “Bear” Schiff, 50, coerced six women into forced servitude as prostitutes in a human trafficking ring that operated in Lancaster, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and York counties and southern New Jersey from 2014 until October 2017.                                      

“This is a horrible case where women were lured into prostitution by the false promise of easy money,” Attorney General Shapiro said.  “When the victims tried to leave, these criminals used violence and threats of violence to keep them working as prostitutes against their will. Law enforcement collaboration and the use of a statewide investigating grand jury built this case.  We will use every tool at our disposal to prosecute these kinds of human trafficking cases.”                          Click here for a video of Attorney General Josh Shapiro.                          

The arrests mark the second human trafficking case brought by the Office of the Attorney General and Pennsylvania State Police in recent weeks. Earlier this month, two defendants were held for trial on human trafficking charges in Montgomery County in a case broken open with the help of an Uber driver who alerted police to the existence of a trafficking victim.                                                                                                                     

The charges against Crowell and Schiff stem from a joint investigation by the Office of Attorney General and Pennsylvania State Police, with assistance from Northern York County Regional Police, Dallas TX police, Millville NJ police, the North Star Initiative of Lancaster, and the Salvation Army of Greater Philadelphia Anti-Human Trafficking Program. The ring was uncovered when a woman reported to police that she was a victim of human trafficking during an undercover prostitution sting.                                                                                                            

“The Pennsylvania State Police is committed to investigating individuals and criminal organizations involved in the trafficking of humans for financial gain,” said Cpl. Gregg J. Kravitsky. “This investigation shows that by working cooperatively with law enforcement and other partners, we can bring those who commit these heinous acts to justice.”                                                                                                       

 On April 4, 2017, two undercover Pennsylvania State troopers responded to a prostitution advertisement on the website Backpage. Using the listed phone number – later linked to a second number tied to nearly 350 similar ads over two months – the troopers arranged a meeting with the victim at a Lancaster hotel.                                                                                                                                                          After the troopers identified themselves, the victim told police she did not feel safe and wanted to “get out.” She said she was recruited by Crowell and Schiff as an escort while she was working at a York gentlemen’s club. The victim told the troopers Schiff bragged about selling opioid pills and heroin to the women working for him as a means of control. When she told Schiff she didn’t like him buying and supplying heroin in the hotel room where she worked, Schiff threatened her with a knife.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      A second victim testified before the grand jury that she needed money to fuel her addiction and began working for Crowell and Schiff believing they ran an escort service, not a prostitution ring. She testified she rarely slept and was sent in an Uber to buy large amounts of heroin for Schiff multiple times.                                                                                                    

According to the grand jury presentment, a third victim testified Schiff told the women his name was “Frank Luchese” and impersonated a mobster to intimidate them. She said she joined what she believed was an escort service run by Crowell and Schiff to pay off a drug debt to Schiff. When she tried to leave, Schiff told her he would “chop her up into little pieces and throw her in the river.”                                                               

Victim four worked for Crowell and Schiff at various times between 2014 and 2016 as a way to obtain heroin and support her addiction. She testified Crowell tried to strangle her on several occasions, causing her to lose consciousness during one confrontation.                                                                                                                                         A fifth victim who began working for Crowell and Schiff in 2015 testified that Schiff controlled her with prescription opioids and heroin. This victim testified that one time, after she refused Schiff’s demand for sex, Schiff slammed her head into a bucket of dirty water containing shards of broken glass. The victim suffered severe cuts and scarring on her knees and legs.                                                                                                            

After that incident, the victim sought help during a “date” from an undercover police officer and gave a full statement to the police before being taken to the hospital for treatment.                                                                                                                                                                                        Because of the complexity of trafficking cases and the importance placed on them by Attorney General Shapiro, the office has specially designated Senior Deputy Attorney General Heather Castellino to prosecute human trafficking cases.                                                                                   

The Most Common Types or Categories of Corruption, Grand Verus Petty Corruption Conventional, and Government Corruption. District Attorney Mark Powell from Lackawanna County; Scranton Pennsylvania                                                        

August 24th, 2022 - August 26th, 2022

Spring 2001 / 107th Congress - The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act in introduces in the House and they introduced the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act in the Senate. The legislation would provide federal assistance to state and local jurisdictions to prosecute hate crimes.                                                                                                    

Pennsylvania Civil Rights and laws to protect Sex Offenders: Any Person who uses the information contained herein to threaten, intimidate, or Harass the registrant or their families, or who otherwise misuses this information, may be subject to criminal prosecution and Civil Liability.                                                                                                       

This is despite the facts that people convicted of sex offenses are statistically unlikely to re-offend.                                                                                                                                                         Many prosecutors, police officers, corrections professionals, and criminal justice reformers are also aware that it is nonsensical to irreparably stigmatize a broad swath of offenders in the same exact way.                                       

1990's The General Assembly made it illegal to misuse the registry to harass sex offenders. But, Lackawanna County is using the Sex Offenders to buy bigger cars. More inmates the more federal funds they get. That's Human Trafficking.                                                                                

Too many voices in America today sound the wrongheaded belief that these truths are no longer so self-evident. Most of these voices are from Washington and Lackawanna County Pennsylvania, but many more come from our universities, our high school textbooks even our churches. These skeptics think we have overgrown our founding principles, that even the wisest men and women in 1776 and 1787 couldn't possibly have been wise enough to create an effective government for America in the twenty-first century.                                                                                                              

Some find the words of the Founders to limiting for their bloated vision of government. After all, the government that is true to the ideals of our Charters of Liberty is a government that is limited. If government exists to protect our God-given rights - and not to bail out banks, buy car companies, take over our health care, and tell us which light bulb we can use - then the government does few things, out of the way in order to realize their potential.                                                                                

Remember the 2001 interview about the Constitution by then - Illinois state Senator Barak Obama complained as he captured perfectly the constraints on government created by the Constitution. Speaking about the Supreme Court in the 1950s and '60s during the Civil Rights movement, Obama expressed regret that the High Court.                                                                                                                       

Our future president called the civil rights' subsequent failure to break free of the constraints imposed by the Constitution - a "tragedy." But a lot of us call it basic fairness and adherence to our founding principles. We believe it's a good thing that we came so far in achieving racial justice while keeping faith in God to protect our Constitution.             

Some like to dismiss all this talk about staying true to our founding documents as the ideological rants of the people who are obsessed with constitutional theory. But whether we remain true to God's Constitution or not has practical, real-world consequences for all of us.                               The Supreme Court, along with the rest of the federal judiciary, has tremendous power over our lives today. Their ruling means the difference between free political speech and censored political speech, property rights that are protected by the government and property rights that are routinely violated by the government, and the survival of innocent life and the state-sanctioned killing the innocent life. The reason this is the case is that so many of the people who appoint and approve our judges and justices erroneously believe the court's duty isn't to interpret the law but to make the law. In cases where their agenda can't prevail among the people representatives in Congress, they have turned to the courts to make policy. That means having judges and justices who are no longer guided by the Constitution and the law, but by their personal opinions. We need to remember judges and justices are human and they do have feelings, but they have no right to ignore this great American Constitution men and women have died to protect. I believe has blessed this country great, but this ignorance of thinking people control the law is wrong. God gave the law to Moses and it belongs to Him, not us.                                                                                                                The former President Obama gave the wrong advice when he said, "That is the really difficult, consequential cases, justices shouldn't go with the law but with their hearts."                                                                         

"That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy the president said.                                                           

Lackawanna County Scranton Pennsylvania is just as guilty of breaking the Constitution and the District Attorney Mark Powell is just as guilty of Human Trafficking. He uses the inmates to get paid. (I call it a movement no one listens to not even the government. The governments make laws to break them).               

Today I come to You, Father God through Jesus and thank You in Jesus' name for a blessed day. Thank You, Father God, for your sacrifice of Your Son Jesus, Who died for our sins in Jesus' name, Amen                                     

1 Corinthians 15:54 - So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.                                   

But if you look at the Supreme Court Justice oath taken, you will see that it commits them to a very different standard. They pledge not to pick winners and losers based on their hearts or "empathy." When they take that oath. Their job is to protect the United States Constitution.                     

City, County, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Lackawanna County breaks more laws than anyone other state. The District Attorneys take an oath to protect the United States Constitution and the Commonwealth. But, when we have a D.A. getting rich and allowing the constitution to be ignored it's time for the people to stand up and not be scared. When we have a government that is breaking the law we the PEOPLE are in trouble. I am going on personal experience with Lackawanna County. The government here is abusive to the voters here and anyone who speaks out against them. They abuse their power. The police break the law by lying and judges allow them to do it. 

Judge Barrasse got caught dealing drugs while on the bench. Judge Barrasse, was an elected District Attorney and an elected judge. If you or I get caught dealing drugs we go to jail and after getting out we can't get jobs. Judge Barrasse is still a judge handing out sentences. He has an ankle bracelet and still has a job. Really!                              

The day our bodies and immortal will be a fulfillment of the Scriptures where we are told that Death will be swallowed up. Imagine a life with no death. We will be surrounded by our loved ones, in the LORD, and we will never have to worry about losing them again. We will spend eternity together, Forever!                                          

PRAYER: Dear God, I thank You that in the times things may not make sense, you know more than I do. In times of pain, where I lose the people closest to me, I take comfort in knowing that as long as they are of you, we will meet again. A time will come when we will all be reunited without worrying about death and sorrow. I praise You in Jesus' name Amen.

Why does Sex Slavery Continue to Thrive in Our Jails? Despite the increased policy, law enforcement is a big part of the problem. The overall problem is the police are filled with lies and organized traffickers bribe and pays for this horrible crime to continue. There is real corruption in our police departments that our government ignores. Every prisoner is at risk of being raped by the police. Many witnesses have been allowed to be brutally murdered during any investigation. Some of us lost our families and any chance of a good life just before they were to testify. Mostly, I think it's the system that's fraudulent, not necessarily the people in it there's a small amount of corruption. 

The legal profession thrives on cluttered, incomprehensible legislation that the average person couldn't possibly make sense of. Human trafficking in our jails is for saving and investing. The Government wouldn't have to handle the money just because they are looking for their own financial welfare. What is the biggest lie about prison corruption? They deserve what they get. No one deserves to be raped by anyone. The prison system uses overcrowding to cover up prison rape and poor prison conditions. With that said, let's look at why our prisons are overcrowded and in poor conditions. Not being raped is the number one challenge inmates are facing in our prisons and jails. 

Despite increased policy and media attention on trafficking, the industry continues to thrive. Ending American Human Trafficking in America will not stop while the government allows rape to continue in our prisons. Prisons are a business industry and they make a lot of money. Economic analysis can tell us how an industry functions through the factors of supply and demand. That's where the sex industry brings into our prisons. Certain market forces create a demand for a product; other market forces create supply to meet that demand. Sex offenders are targeted because the government says they are made to register and their personal lives are all over the internet. 

So because there is a demand for products, it's cheaper to arrest people you find on a register than to chance younger drug dealers and murderers. Understanding the market forces that give rise to the contemporary sex trafficking industry and the implications that these forces have for the industry's trajectory will reveal the optimal interventions required to erode or abolish sex trafficking in our prisons and jails across an America Prison System. 

Several factors have contributed to the supply of prison human trafficking: slave labor throughout history, including poverty, bias against gender or ethnicity, lawlessness, military conflict, social instability, and economic breakdown. Each factor is a direct accretion of the supply of contemporary sex slaves. The sweeping phenomenon of economic globalization directly exacerbated each fact, those aspects through the unfettered profusion of American-style capitalism. 

Even our U.S. Military has raped prisoners in prison camps. In the current U.S. occupation of Iraq, it has allegedly trafficked thousands of South Asians and Middle Easterners for forced labor on U.S. military bases, their passports confiscated and wages unpaid. No wonder why people hate this country and have no respect. 

Therefore, taking on the hot-button issues few politicians dare-touch-and lay out a resounding indictment of our creeping national cynicism, irresponsible media, and a political system that rewards mediocrity. With this forthright, razor-sharp, and entertaining critique. 

The gauntlet-challenging a disenchanted to defiantly reclaim the freedom and opportunity that is our American birthright. Our prisoners may have equal rights.

There are over 200,000 more rape victims in our prison system than on the streets. Rape is rape no matter what. Being a rape survivor myself, I will fight hard to stop rape in our jails. I know for a fact that rape is the most traumatic experience in my life. I believe it is even worse for men. What's worse than that is, it's allowed by the government and COs, who set up the rapes. The COs handle many rapes that happen to men, women, and youths in every prison in our country. Those who speak out lose everything. I have been speaking out against our prison system abuse for years. There are no words to comfort anyone. Therefore, I believe we need to stand together in and out of prison and fight for equal rights and protection against Legalized Slavery of our inmates. These are slave prison camps.

I am writing this because of my personal experience in the Lackawanna County Jail. Victims are being bought and sold by our government. Starting with our local police, we need to investigate the dirty police officers and the convention should include multi-lateral extradition for all police officers and COs involved with prison rapes. They also provided false documents, interacted with corrupt judges, DAs, and Public Defenders, and chose the exact routes to be taken on any day. The low-level operations worked in destination cities and delivered or grunt men who took a small commission from the sale price and passed the remainder back to the mind-level operators, who take their cut and sent the bulk of the money to the bosses at the top.

These high-level bosses typically reinvested trafficking profits into other illicit businesses - drugs - firearms and legitimate businesses, such as travel or job agencies, that facilitated slave trading operations. They organize most of the prisons in America crime groups operated in a neat-tiered fashion, and it's a fact that American prisoners are victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation. The United States government then bought and sold these victims to the highest-paid corporations in our country to build our cars, computers, software, Etc: When prisoners are moved from one prison to another they are often beaten, raped, and starved to death: also silenced for the duration of their sentence. These steps break the spirit of the inmates. The more broken the inmate, the more accepting an inmate is for the rest of his stay and they are less likely to speak out. The evolution of these step processes in the movement and exploitation of the inmate demonstrates the alarming suffering of all inmates. Efficiency and sophistication of the business of modern-day slavery. COs, torture, starve, and rape inmates no matter their sex. The COs need to be arrested and looked up. All inmates are targeted. Everyone wants to be elected, but no one deserves to be a politician. 

Life and Law of the Commonwealth: 

When it converted on April 10, 1776, just before the Declaration of Independence was formalized, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was still conducting proceedings under the caption the "reign of our Sovereign, George the 3rd." By its next session in September 1778, something had changed the caption to the road, "The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." 

Thus the Provincial Court had formally ended: a new court, not beholden to the Crown, had come into existence. Chief Justice Thomas McKean (1777-1799) presided it over.

McKean was a leading public figure and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, president of the Continental Congress, and later the governor of Delaware; I have rightly described him as the "father of the judicial system in Pennsylvania."

Where do local governments derive their power from State Constitution and State laws?

Legalized Slavery: The Prison Pseudosatirical Complex

This is a crime of which I still accuse my country and my countrymen and women, and for which neither I nor history will ever forgive them.

Lackawanna County Government Profits Off Of Inmates

There is big money in the county jail. Lackawanna County needs to be charged with Capital Kidnapping sex offenders in order to make a profit. The more inmates Lackawanna County jail gets the more money they make. Income derived relying on income for holding state and federal prisoners in county facilities. Lackawanna County holds sex offenders longer than any other inmate. The county also holds people passed their release dates. They also get an extra influx of cash. There are no attempts to reform anyone in this county. I know this from experience. I had time served but Lackawanna County keep me for another three weeks. That's kidnapping! The state pays the county a "perdiem" fee. The call is an overcrowding problem. Yet with poor conditions, inmates are raped, beaten, starved, and left in isolation.

Time For Justice: Lackawanna County Breaking the Law While Violating the Pennsylvania Constitution

The urgent need for change in Pennsylvania's sentencing system. Local governments are largely to blame for allowing false reports by the police. Local discretionary arrests are high bail policies that can have tremendous for mass incarcerations. This is corruption and has been happening from the beginning of time. I define corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Corruption happens in the shadows often with the help of professional enablers such as politicians, lawyers, and public defenders, and the DA's accountants are a large part of opaque financial systems and anonymous shell companies that allow corruption schemes to flourish and the corrupt to launder and hide their illicit wealth. Corruption is a big problem in our courts and the media covers it up. 

The U.S. Civil War, which was fought to abolish slavery, was not really that long ago. My father tells the story of visiting the Higginsville home for Civil War veterans near his childhood home in Missouri. The Missouri River was a dividing line between North and South, and so when the war was finally over, many families had veterans — and casualties — on both sides. My father remembers watching two old soldiers, one Union, one Confederate, each dressed up in the remnants of their uniforms, having an argument that ended up with one attacking the other with a pair of crutches. Hearing this as a little girl was the first time the Civil War seemed real to me. It is a vivid reminder of the close links that bind this country to its history of slavery, which still haunts our national conscience.

As I recently discovered, we maintain what can only be called legalized slavery today — the utilization of prison labor for public and private profit. Many, if not most, of these inmates are themselves the descendants of slaves. And they are making fewer license plates and more defense electronics and oil spill cleanups. Today, prison labor is a multibillion-dollar business in the U.S. We also have the highest prison population in the world. Are economic incentives at the heart of our sky-high incarceration rates?

History can offer us a guide to answering this question. In Britain, slavery was abolished in 1833, earlier than in the U.S. In spite of its economic lure, it was outlawed, at least in part, because of the persuasive voices of inspired political leaders and artists. The painting The Slave Ship, a J.M.W. Turner masterpiece, depicts the famous episode of the British ship the Zong in 1781. One hundred thirty-two African slaves headed for sale in the United States were deliberately thrown overboard and perished mid-sea, due to a lack of drinking water on board. In his new book, The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery, Professor James Walvin concludes that this event, and the public outcry against it, was the turning point that resulted in the end of the slave trade in Britain. The U.S. was not so lucky, or perhaps the entrenched interests were too deep, and so a much bloodier battle that ended 600,000 lives ensued, and it took an additional 30 years to abolish slavery.

It is worthwhile to study this history, and to hold its lessons close, because slavery remains in other forms, if not by name, in the 21st century. Mauritania still has a slave population that is some 18 percent of its population, about half a million people — although it is technically illegal. The poverty and harshness of Western Sahara and the lack of economic alternatives make it a hard practice to eradicate. We might expect this in the Third World, but we have versions of it in the U.S. Beyond the plight of the working poor, in the U.S. the practice of involuntary labor continues in our prisons, with little public scrutiny. This practice has developed since the Civil War, particularly in the South, for historical reasons. It incarcerated former slaves on minor or fabricated charges for extended periods of time so they could work as inmate laborers for the profit of the state and its contractors.

"In the nineteenth century, Texas leased its penitentiary (which survives today as the Huntsville "Walls" unit) to private contractors. For a few dollars per month per convict, the contractors could sublease their charges to farmers, tanners, and other business owners. It was not long before the inmates appeared in poor clothing and without shoes. Worked mercilessly, most convicts died within seven years of their incarceration. Escapes and escape attempts were frequent. Conditions were so horrid that some inmates were driven to suicide while others maimed themselves to get out of work or as a pathetic form of protest."
- John DiIulio, Jr. The Duty to Govern, 1990                                  

Eventually, the prisoner-for-lease system became such a scandal that they outlawed it 100 years ago. But in the 1980s, conditions were ripe for reversion. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery contains a loophole that allows the exploitation of prison labor:

Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Today, the U.S. prison system delivers profits to both government corporations and private enterprises in several ways: 1) Through the use of inmate labor to produce goods and services in federal and state prisons 2) Through the contracting of this labor to private companies at below-market wages and 3) By privatization of the prisons and detainment centers themselves. Given these perverse incentives to maintain a high inmate population, is it any wonder that the number of prisoners and the length of their sentences — Americans comprise 5 percent of the world's total population but 25 percent of the world's prison population — have skyrocketed since privatization began in 1984?

One might ask if this population surge could be because of a sudden increase in violent crime in America. A much smaller percentage of prisoners than one would imagine have histories of violence. Just 3 percent of those in Federal prisons, and a third of those in state prisons, have been convicted of violent crimes that are not true. A majority of those in city and county prisons are merely awaiting trial and cannot make bail. As any police officer will tell you, much criminality would be eliminated if we changed drug laws. Of the total prison population, it is estimated that 16 percent are suffering from mental illness, according to Vicky Pelaez in Global Research in Canada. And did I mention, the vast majority are black males?

What is the failure of our society that has led to the forced segregation from a society of so many of our citizens, many of whom are the descendants of slaves, on this scale? In 1860, the U.S. had 4 million slaves. Now, according to Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker (Jan. 30, 2012):

Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today — perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. There are more black men in the criminal's grip-justice system — in prison, on probation, or on parole -- than were in slavery then. Overall, there are now more people under "correctional supervision" in America — over six million — than we were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.

America has now created its own Gulag, and it makes much more than just license plates. Of the 2.3 million prisoners now being held, over 100,000 work in federal and state prison industry programs. This doesn't mean the usual cooking, cleaning, and peeling potatoes, but work that produces products for sale -- about $2.4 billion dollars annually and has its own trade shows. UNICOR, the trade name of the government-owned Federal Prison Industries, cites the following products on its website:

The government, particularly the Department of Defense, is the biggest customer for federal prison labor. Federal inmates make most military clothing, furniture, and helmets. It is very likely that they made the furniture at your local post office. Calling directory assistance? You might well be talking to a felon. Clearly, UNICOR has expanded beyond clothing and furniture. Look at just one category: electro-optical assemblies:

Our electro-optical and circuit board assemblies and electrical connectors are used around the world. They have broad applications in missile guidance, tactical combat and emergency communications, radar, and avionic and submarine control systems. UNICOR/FPI is highly proficient in electrical and fiber optic cable convergence technology, which is used in applications requiring faster transmission of signals over a longer distance and with less weight. Our electro-optical cable assemblies are used in avionic and missile controls, submarine navigation, and tactical observation and targeting systems in fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, and other armored vehicles.

Our expertise in manufacturing electro-optical assemblies is proven in numerous programs, such as the Bradley eye-safe laser rangefinder and the Patriot missile guidance system. We are talking about guided missile components here! UNICOR had revenues of about $900 million in the fiscal year 2011, of which 7 percent went to pay inmates. According to my estimates, based on their annual report, this averages $3,000 per inmate, at least half of which must be used for fines, victim restitution, and family support. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks a year (there are no holidays in prison) that would amount to pay off about 75 cents per hour, which "may be spent in the prison commissaries," according to the UNICOR annual report. This puts the federal prison worker on par with his Chinese counterpart. No wonder this labor group is attractive to industry: no unions, OHSA, health care, or retirement funds to fret about. As UNICOR boasts on its website: "All the benefits of domestic outsourcing at offshore prices. It's the best-kept secret in outsourcing!" Actually, it is even better — although we will not accept imports from Chinese laogai, or prison factories, there is no U.S. law that prevents the export of our prison labor products.

Federal prison workers, however, are the envy of state inmates, some of whom earn nothing for 60-plus-hour weeks. Texas and Georgia offer no compensation at all. (It is no surprise that these states have highly privatized prison industries as well.) In The Nation, Abe Louise Young writes about the use of Louisiana state prison labor to clean up the toxic waste that resulted from the BP oil spill:

Work release inmates are required to work for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, sometimes averaging seventy-two hours per week. These are long hours for performing what may arguably be the most toxic job in America. Although the dangers of mixed oil and dispersant exposure are largely unknown, the chemicals in crude oil can damage every body system, cell structures, and DNA.

Inmates can't pick their work assignments and they face considerable repercussions for rejecting any job, including loss of earned "good time." The warden of the Terrebonne Parish Work Release Center in Houma explains: "If they say no to a job, they get that time that was taken off their sentence put right back on, and get sent right back to the lockup they came out of." This means that work release inmates who would rather protect their health than take part in the non-stop toxic cleanup run the risk of staying in prison longer. PIE (Prison Industry Enhancement), a program run by the Department of Justice, which allows both UNICOR at the Federal level and state prisons to partner with private enterprises, enabled this kind of cooperation. It is not just the government prisons that have perverse incentives for maintaining high prison populations. It is the very business of warehousing human beings which were privatized in the mid-80s that is, to me, the most disturbing. Here is a map of private prisons in Texas created by the website Texas Prison Bid'ness:

It just seems to me that judicial punishment is one of those functions that is uniquely the business of the state and that somehow it is immoral for anyone to profit from this. In fact, two big players, CCA and GEO, weren't doing all that well until 9/11. Since that time, they have also been building immigration detention centers at a very fast pace. No secret that privatization has had the greatest momentum in the border states, including Vermont. It is hard to forget the awful "Cash for Kids" debacle in which two judges (now themselves recently sentenced to prison) took kickbacks for sending children to for-profit juvenile detention centers. Dave Reutter in Prison Legal News quotes Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research: "Privatization just doesn't work" he stated. "It's a way for politicians to throw business to their friends. "

A compelling economic argument against prison labor is that it competes unfairly with free labor. Diane Cardwell writes in the New York Times that UNICOR is now getting into the production of solar panels and other forms of alternative energy. "This is a threat to not just established industries; it's a threat to emerging industries," said Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who is the lead sponsor of the proposed overhaul legislation. "If China did this, — having their prisoners work at subpar wages in prisons — we would scream bloody murder.                                                                                                                                                                    "There is now pending legislation to create a wage floor for prison inmates, as well as require basic safety standards. The discussion is not just about protecting inmates. In an era of high unemployment, jobs matter. Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina has said, "It is simply wrong for the U.S. government to administer a military procurement policy that favors giving jobs to felons over law-abiding Americans. That is especially true during these difficult economic times." There is also concern about quality control for defense-related production. Reportedly, 42 percent of UNICOR's orders overall were delivered late.

What are the benefits to society of prison labor? I have read articles that it helps and doesn't help recidivism. That there are better ways to prepare inmates for life after jail, such as education, training, and addiction counseling. What is the overall impact on the economy? According to Jeffrey Kling and Alan Krueger of Princeton University and NBER, 100 percent utilization of prison inmate labor would result in a rather small economic benefit -- 0.2 percent of GDP at most. Because this is mostly unskilled labor it could, in fact, reduce the wages of high school dropouts in the private workforce by 5 percent -- which would increase the overall rate of poverty. (Note, however, that some estimates suggest that people with wages under $13,000 spend 9 percent of their income on buying lottery tickets.)

In concert with privatization, we suggest that inmate workers be covered by all relevant labor legislation that applies to private sector firms: including the right to form a union, fair labor standards, and workplace safety regulations. 

That is the very minimum that must be done. We need to do some national soul-searching about all of the reasons we have so many people in jail. But it is an election year -- and felons don't vote -- so the probability is high that nothing will be done. But let's begin the discussion. As I finish this article, by weird coincidence, police cars are flashing their lights outside my house. A young man, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, crashed into the gate of our driveway as he was pursued by an unmarked car for speeding. I saw him as he was led away in handcuffs, in tears. I hope his parents have a very good lawyer.

As Adam Gopkin reminds us, “mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850.” The racialization of this process, popularized by author Michelle Alexander as The New Jim Crow, has meant that African Americans in the U.S. now have more than triple the incarceration rate of Blacks in South Africa at the peak of apartheid. In the haste to impart some rationality to all this, many activists and analysts have been quick to point to corporations as the sole culprits behind the prison-industrial- complex (PIC). An important component of this perspective is the notion of prisons as “slave labor camps”.  In this scenario, a sea of multinational corporations super-exploit hundreds of thousands of contract prison laborers to heartlessly augment their bottom lines. Late last year researchers Steve Fraser and Joshua Freeman took up this point in a study that they presented in a CounterPunch article, arguing that “penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work.  The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.”

Their perspective has resonated with a number of news services, anti-mass incarceration blogsters, and activists.  For example, a recent report from the Russian news service RT claimed prisons are “becoming America’s own Chinese-style manufacturing line”.  Huffington Post picked up the story, quoting Fraser and Freeman:

“Nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.” The HuffPost named Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, Starbucks and Walmart as major participants in what they called a “competitive spiral” to capture prison labor at the lowest possible wage levels.  Vicky Pelaez, writing for Global Research earlier this year called prison industry a “new form of slavery” identifying over twenty corporations involved in contract arrangements.  Her list included IBM, Pierre Cardin, Target and Hewlett Packard. She concluded that, “thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets.” As appealing as these scenarios are to our sense of moral outrage and the role of multinational corporations as the villains of our era, such assertions about prison labor are off the mark.  I spent six and a half years in Federal and state prisons at high, medium, and low-security levels.  In all these institutions, very few people were under contract to private corporations. My memories of prison yards feature hundreds and hundreds of men trying to pump some meaning into their life with exercise routines, academic study, compulsive sports betting, religious devotion, and a number of creative and entrepreneurial “hustles.”  But being under the thumb of Bill Gates or entering a Nike sweatshop was just about the farthest thing from our warehoused reality.

Statistics bear my memories out. Virtually all private-sector prison labor is regulated under the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP).  Any prison wanting to publicly market goods worth more than $10,000 must register with PIECP.  The PIECP statistical report for the first quarter of 2012 showed 4,675 incarcerated people employed in prison or jail PIECP programs, a minuscule portion of the nation’s more than two million behind bars. Likely the largest single user of contract prison labor is Federal Prison Industries, which handles such arrangements for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Of the nearly 220,000 people housed in BOP facilities, just 13,369, representing approximately 8% of the work-eligible “inmates” were employed as of September 30, 2012. However, the overwhelming majority of this production was for government departments like Defense and Homeland Security, rather than private corporations. There is economic rationality as to why prison labor is so infrequently used. While incarcerated people may make up a captive workforce, in the era of mass incarceration, security trumps all other institutional needs, including production deadlines.  A fight in the yard, a surprise cell search, or even a missing tool can occasion a lockdown where all activities, including work assignments, come to a halt for hours, days, or, in some cases, even weeks or months. Multinational corporations accustomed to just-in-time production systems and flexible working hours don’t respond well to this type of rigidity. Portraying our prisons as slave labor camps satisfies a certain emotional appeal, but hunting down multinationals that are extracting superprofits from the incarcerated diverts us from the crucial labor issues at the heart of mass incarceration. Those behind bars make up a displaced and discarded labor force, marginalized from mainstream employment on the streets by deindustrialization in their communities and the gutting of urban education in poor communities of color.  More than half of all Black men without a high-school diploma will go to prison in their lives.  The school-to-prison pipeline is far more of a reality than slave labor camps. Plus, the shift of the prison system’s emphasis from rehabilitation to punishment in the last three decades has blocked opportunities for people to upgrade skills and education while incarcerated.  As the nuns used to tell me in grade school: “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop and idle hands are the devil’s tools.”  The brains behind our prison system clearly had the devil’s welfare in mind when they reoriented our institutions away from rehabilitation into warehousing millions of people while stripping away their opportunities for personal and collective development. As a result, purposelessness and excruciating boredom, not overwork, are the dominant features of most prison yards. For those trying to put an end to mass incarceration, framing the labor issues of the prison industrial complex in this way takes us down a very different road than upgrading the conditions of the minute numbers behind bars who are under corporate contracts (or as some unions are wont to do-portraying prison laborers as scabs who undermine hard-won working class gains). The chief labor concerns about mass incarceration are linked to broader inequalities in the economy as a whole, particularly the lack of employment for poor youth of color and the proliferation of low-wage jobs with no benefits. Employment creation and the restoration of much-needed state-provided social services like substance abuse or mental health treatment are the measures that will keep people on the streets. Forget about minimum wages for the mythical millions working for Microsoft in Leavenworth and Attica. But the labor aspect of mass incarceration doesn’t end there. People with a felony conviction carry a stigma, a brand often accompanied by exclusion from the labor market.  Michelle Alexander calls “felon” the new “N” word.  Indeed in the job world, those of us with felony convictions face a number of unique barriers.  The most well-known is “the box”-that question on employment applications that asks about criminal background. Eleven states and more than 40 cities and counties have outlawed the box on employment applications. Supporters of “ban the box” argue that questions about previous convictions amount to a form of racial discrimination since such a disproportionate number of those with felony convictions are African-American and Latino. Advancing these Ban the Box campaigns will have a far more important impact on incarcerated people as workers than pressing for higher wages for those under contract to big companies inside. However, even without the box, the rights of the formerly incarcerated in the labor market remain heavily restricted.  Many professions, trades, and service occupations require certification, and bar or limit the accreditation of people with felony convictions. For example, a study by the Mayor of Chicago’s office found that of 98 Illinois state statutes regarding professional licensing, 57 contained restrictions for applicants with a criminal history, impacting over 65 professions and occupations.  In some instances, even people applying for licenses to become barbers or cosmetologists face legal impediments. Those with felony convictions face further hurdles when trying to access state assistance to tide them over during times of unemployment.  In most states, those with drug convictions are banned from access to SNAP (food stamps) for life.  Many local public housing authorities bar people with felony convictions even if their parents or partners already reside there. Lastly, the very conditions of parole often create obstacles to employment. Many states require that an employer of a person on parole agree that the workplace premises can be searched at any time without prior warning-hardly an attractive proposition for any business.  In addition, tens of thousands of people on parole are subject to house arrest with electronic monitors.  All movement outside the house must be pre-approved by their parole agent. This makes changes in work schedules or jobs that involve traveling an enormous challenge.  Some basic changes to the conditions of parole could constitute an important step to easing the labor market conditions for people coming home from prison trying to secure and keep a job. All of this is not to deny that many corporations have made huge amounts of money from mass incarceration.  Firms like Arizona’s Kitchell Construction, which has built more than 40 state prisons and 30 adult jails have made millions.  The Tennessee-based Bob Barker Enterprises is a “household” name among the incarcerated.  With a corporate vision of  “transforming criminal justice by honoring God in all we do,“ Barker has reaped massive profits from producing the poorest quality consumer goods, including two-inch toothbrushes,  for people behind bars. Then, of course, we have private prison operators like CCA and the GEO Group. Although the privates control only 8% of prison beds nationally these two firms managed to bring in over 3 billion in revenue last year. While such profiteering continues, the prison-industrial complex remains driven by an agenda that is more about politics than profits. State-owned prisons and political agendas continue to lie at the center of mass incarceration.  The combined revenue of CCA and the GEO Group for 2012 was less than half of the California state corrections budget. Politicians, with important influence from pro-corporate organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have made the PIC possible by passing harsh sentencing laws, funding the War on Drugs, tightening immigration legislation, and creating isolation units like Pelican Bay, Corcoran, Tamms, and Angola.  They have built a base of popular support for the “colorblind” approach of “lock ‘em up and throw away the key.” So while we need to curb the opportunities for corporate profit from putting people in cages, the main target of any campaign against the PIC must be to counter the racist ideology of “punitive populism” and reverse the political processes which perpetuate mass incarceration and the criminalization of the poor.

They operated some of the Department of Corrections community contract facilities by for-profit, including several operated by GEO Group.