Curriculum v. Corrections- Act III

Hey guys, D. Politopolous here again.  Apologies again for another delay, but I have returned and looked back over Jinx's questions from an earlier "Act I" post.  So I'll to continue this discussion onto the second question:

"Are there any business incentives or underlying motives for spending so much time and money to purposely incarcerate adults?"  Jinx, the answer to this question would be a definite yes in the form of what are referred to as "million dollar blocks."

When looking at the communities and neighborhoods in which people have criminal records, many of them are impoverished neighborhoods in urban areas.  In addition, these areas statistically have suffered from lack of quality education funding and resources.  High concentrations of these inmates have originated from these million dollar blocks.  Even more statistically unsettling, the mass majority of these poor neighborhoods are primarily populated by people of color.  These neighborhoods see tremendous public sector investments in incarceration of residents.  On the opposite end of this bargain, the schools in these neighborhoods are very low performing.  The areas also are densely populated, thereby maximizing corrections investments.

An adequate example of this trend is the controversy surrounding the city of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.  In 2009, the city was left with a $160 million loss in state funding, resulting in a $147 million dollar shortfall.  During this same time period, taxpayer money geared towards imprisoning residents totaled $290 million.  The source of these inmates was a mere 11 neighborhoods in the city, yet the areas held one quarter of Philadelphia's population.

In correspondence to these statistics, sixty-six percent of the city's lower-performing schools are densely located within and/or near these neighborhoods.  Contrasting this, 75 percent of Philadelphia's more equipped and well-performing schools are in neighborhoods with the lowest rates of incarceration.

This is the blueprint of the prison business in America.  And with that, D. Politopolous on recess for now.  I'll answer the final question as soon as I can.