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> There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. How are food, clothes, supplies, etc. sourced
by mieseratte 8y ago
> There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government.
How are food, clothes, supplies, etc. sourced? Who builds the prison? Is this all done by the government down to the farmer? Or is there a supply chain that makes profit by selling to prisons? If so, there is a prison industrial complex.
How about the staff? Are they paid? Do they have a union?
If there is a profit motive, there is a potential for political lobbying / corruption.
- teekert 8y agoA farmer can also feed people who are not in jail, an industrial prison complex cannot make people who are not in jail perform free labor. To the farmer/clothing producer the prisoners are equal to free people, to the stake holder of an industrial prison complex, they are not.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoRight, and I guess because the tax office buys its furniture from private companies there is a tax-industrial complex too? I'd say you are now pretty clearly arguing for diluting the meaning of the "military-industrial complex" context to nothingness.
- mieseratte 8y agoI suppose you're right, but that wasn't the intent. I took the line off thinking off the logical cliff. However, in the US it is common for major inter/national firms to service entire state prison systems. This is surely a representation of the prison industrial complex, and that's what I was getting at. Simply having publicly run prisons does not preclude this type of situation, a major firm holding large contracts and thus having an incentive to grow the criminal population, unless it would be wholly socially and politically unacceptable to do so.