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kleinbl00  ·  4762 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 3x3
The prison system is almost wholly privatized. Check it:

http://www.blackmarketarts.com/#!/scribbles/beast-bars

For reasons we need not get into right now, I had a 17-year-old friend released into my custody at the tender age of 18. Thus started my long and sporadic familiarity with the prison system in the United States. That was 1992 or so... and back then, the jail I picked him up at was private, with private guards wearing private uniforms, driving private paddy wagons and requiring me to fill out private paperwork to get him out of the clink. The most public thing in the whole place was the pay phone.

This was Santa Fe, down on Airport Road, right off of St. Francis. The irony struck me for the first time there; at the corner of Airport and St. Francis is a gas station. Right next to it is a sporting goods store. Right next to the sporting goods store is the police; right next to them is the jail. And on the other side of the jail? A bail bondsman.

Frickin' microeconomy in the space of a city block.