Today we had a service project in which we picked and packed books to send to women in prisons across the U.S. The nonprofit works to put idle reading materials into the hands of women that really want to read up on various topics. In a really brief summary, the women send in requests for different books / topics and the nonprofit sends the books or like-theme books to the women. The nonprofit is totally run by volunteers and off of donations -- no grants.
I was really moved in an unexpected manner as I selected the books that would hopefully be of value to someone else in a not-so-comfortable environment. I learned that many of our prisons have guards that are not employed by the government! Go figure that a person who is sent to prison can then be further influenced to have an extended sentence by people that are not employed by the government!
For me, I think there's an inherent flaw because these corporations and their employees have a power and, I dare say, an interest in having people in prisons. I don't like it and see a conflict of interest in this system. Why? Well, government employees still have that "power" but there's supposed to be a check and balance and ultimately a responsibility back to society (via tax payers.)
I'm not sure that really exists with corporations acting as agents for the government. Any thoughts?
There's got to be a study about this whole topic. Anyway, I was also reminded that whatever these women did to get into prison did not make them less human.