Prisons and Libraries: Prisons Always More Popular Than Libraries

Off the Markley

Please take the time to read Beau Hodai’s fascinating report on the issue for In These Times. The prison-industrial complex is one of the most insidious corporate interests in the United States. The industry lobbies for and makes money from counter-productive drug laws, and–you guessed it–the continued deterioration of our public education system.

Because based on how we allocate our resources as a society, it appears as if we care more about locking people up than we do about arming them with the tools to have a productive life, so they never consider the shit that will get them imprisoned.

Illinois’s prison population has absolutely exploded in the last thirty years, and you know what the cost of locking all these people up was in 2009? $1 billion. Almost $25,000 per inmate. Spending on students differs drastically, depending on the school, but one can’t help but draw a pretty simple conclusion from all this:

via Prisons and Libraries: Prisons Always More Popular Than Libraries – Off the Markley.