Titans of Industry

Undeniable is currently finishing up her time at boot camp to become a corrections officer in the prison system. God bless her and the 150 other recruits doing the same thing. But as she was alternating between scary stories of prisoners and disheartening tales of some of her dullard classmates, she informed me that the prisoners were responsible for manufacturing the furniture in college dorms and residential facilities like the one that employs me.

In another lockdown facility, they even have an eye lab that makes glasses that some of my kids where. I used to just ignore the rhymes about the prison industry complex that populate the more conscious of my rap choices. But Undeniable's experience shows just how prevalent it is.

Then I thought about how lucrative it is. In exchange for giving criminals some alternative to a completely banal experience, the state gets cheap labor to make goods that they profit from. Now I understand why there are so many conspiracies as to why the American prison population is so large, and why minorities are overrepresented on the inside.

But really I'm just a little bothered. Actually more than a little. Isn't it wrong for the state to profit from its failures, especially when they are human and cannot speak for themselves?