The US prison system does not punish criminals, it controls black people (dap @ Lee Wood)

Posted by the ghetto intellectual 2/10/2010

Dig it!

This is VITAL information that every black person should know. 

Douglas Blakmon's research traces the origins of the prison industrial complex to so-called "vagrancy" laws. This bogus law was used to locked up 10s, perhaps 100s of thousands of mostly black men in prison and sold their labor (i.e. "slavery by another name." for the post Reconstruction era (c. 1880) to the 1950s. The prison system is not really about punishing crime. Its primary purpose is to control Black people. 

Click on title below to watch Blakmon talk. 

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME:BOOK TALK AND DISCUSSION WITH AUTHOR DOUGLAS BLACKMON 

Prisoner being punished in a forced labor camp, 1930s, Georgia

tags: crime, criminalization, political prisoners, prison industrial complex, racism


image source: Black Superwoman