Prisons, with few exceptions, are not intended for rehabilitation. They are institutions societies use for vengeance and punishment. There are the most gruesome hellholes around the world the US takes full advantage of just in the prisoners it "renditions" for attempted information extraction by some of the worst physical and psychological tortures the human mind can conceive. But this essay is about what goes on in US prisons within our borders, and what you'll read below will sound like reports about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Get ready to feel your skin crawl.

Everything we saw on TV months ago about prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib (and heard goes on at Guantanamo) happens in our state and federal prison system right here at home and lots more we didn't see or hear about. These are the lessons and techniques first devised and used in US based torture-prisons and then exported for use in our comparable torture-prisons around the world. That's the way things are in all our prisons, and in the language of author Gertrude Stein when she referred to roses: a prison is a prison is a prison. The main difference between San Quentin and Abu Ghraib is their location. What goes on at both and all others includes savage beatings by prison guards; attacks by fierce dogs that inflict real bites; severe shocking with cattle prods and 50,000 volt emitting Taser electro-shock guns often used multiple times that make the victim shake for hours after being struck and can also kill and often do; assaults by toxic chemicals like pepper spray strong enough to inflict severe pain, second degree burns, temporary blindness, and even death in a vulnerable victim; and all this happening at times with prisoners stripped naked including brutal rapes by guards, other prisoners and much more.

A courageous woman activist imprisoned for several months for her actions told me the case of a woman she saw stripped naked in her cell and then bound suspended in spread-eagle form on her prison bars and left there for hours to suffer. The experience devastated her and nearly killed her. And she was another activist being punished for her courageous acts. Hard to believe? You'd better believe it because it goes on every day in all prisons routinely throughout the country - acts of deliberate barbarity and sadism, so severe they can and do kill and often leave their victims an emotional shell when they don't. Whenever you hear reports about prisoners committing suicide, you'd better think hard about it. It's most likely they were murdered by prison guards and reported as suicide. It may be from repeated Taser shocks, from being beaten to death so savagely every rib in their body was broken or just from a body giving out from repeated and brutal maltreatment over a long period with nothing more to look forward to but more of the same. How many can endure the worst of that? No one in a civilized country should ever have to. And no civilized person should believe they had it coming. [...]

The for-profit side of running a gulag began to explode during the Reagan years when incarceration rates began increasing dramatically. Along with a growing private prisons industry (a small slice of the prison pie still largely a public enterprise), a vast array of private businesses wanted a piece of the action and got it. These include architectural and construction companies; food service contractors; all sorts of equipment, hardware and other suppliers of steel doors, razor wire, communications systems, and health care and medical supplies. There's also a big need for uniforms and assorted weapons including dangerous products to restrain like clemical sprays that can injure, cause severe pain, second degree burns, temporary blindness or worse and taser electro-shock guns that emit 50,000 volts of electricity (enough to flatten an all-pro NFL lineman in peak form) that can and have killed as many as 167 victims from it's use through January, 2006. And there's loads more. The (mal) care and feeding of a couple of million humans takes a lot of supplying to keep the system going. Add it all up and it's big business, and it gets bigger with every new prison and the inmates to fill them. Not to worry. Unlike oil, there's no chance of running out bodies.

The big players in this growing industry are the private companies that run the hellholes. And the ones they run are even more hellish than the public ones. Private, publicly owned corporations with shareholders and Wall Street to please always need a growing revenue and profit stream and strict cost control to maximize the bottom line part of it. That means understaffing, low pay for poorly trained staff, poor and unsafe conditions, little or no life-enhancing or self-help programs like educational opportunities or counseling services to rehabilitate those in need like ilicit drug users, and even worse medical care than the third world kind in the publicly run system. Why bother, they all cost money, reduce profits and constrain shareholder equity. Private contractors can also exploit prisoners as de facto chattel. They're not obliged to pay wages or benefits and can take full advantage of all those bodies free of charge. Why would they ever pass that up. It's one more revenue and profit stream.

The private side of running prisons is still a small part of the total. But it's growing, and as it does, it's darker side may just get darker. Unlike most businesses, quality control is not one of their concerns. If humans suffer to enhance the bottom line, who will care. In running a gulag, you just gotta keep 'em under control locked in cages, and if you use, abuse and lose some along the way, there's plenty more supply to fill the available beds. That's how it works in a nation that commodifies its masses and exploits them. [...]

Our prison system alone is a stark symbol and reminder of a society based on militarism and imperial conquest abroad, the shredding of our civil liberties at home, and the dismantling of our social contract obligation along with the transfer of wealth to the privileged and powerful. It reflects a nation descending into the hell of tyranny and despotism that threatens to become worse and affect us all except those at the top. We've created the monster of a national security police state (run by the new Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence) to control a growing restive population that will likely grow larger. It will include many more of us as those in need grow in numbers and new demons are easily found, targeted and moved to prison cells to maintain absolute control. That's how it works in all tyrannical states, even ones claiming to be democracies like ours but which, in fact, are not.