The Big House (Prison Industrial Complex) That Wayne LaPierre Built

[unhappycamper]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/wayne-lapierre-crime-strike-three-strikes

The NRA spent millions in the 1990s pushing the largest prison construction boom ever—and harsh sentencing to keep them full.

The Big House That Wayne LaPierre Built
—By Tim Murphy | Fri Feb. 8, 2013 3:11 AM PST

It sounded like a throwaway line. Toward the end of a four-hour Senate hearing on gun violence last week, Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s executive vice president of over two decades, took a break from extolling the virtues of assault rifles and waded briefly into new territory: criminal justice reform. "We've supported prison building," LaPierre said. Then he hammered California for releasing tens of thousands of nonviolent offenders per a Supreme Court order—what he'd previously termed "the largest prison break in American history."

But California's overflowing prisons, which the Supreme Court had deemed "cruel and unusual punishment" in 2011 because of squalid conditions, were partly a product of the NRA's creation. Starting in 1992, as part of a now-defunct program called CrimeStrike, the NRA spent millions of dollars pushing a slate of supposedly anti-crime measures across the country that kept America's prisons full—and built new ones to meet the demand. CrimeStrike's legacy is everywhere these days.

CrimeStrike arose out of necessity. The NRA had come into its own as a political power during the Reagan era, but by the early 1990s, it was strapped for cash. The organization ran up a $9 million deficit in 1991 and was on pace for a $30 million shortfall in 1992, even as it was preparing to go to the mattresses over assault weapons and background checks. The NRA needed a shot in the arm.

LaPierre launched CrimeStrike that spring with $2 million in seed money from the parent organization and a simple platform: mandatory minimums, harsher parole standards, adult sentences for juveniles, and, critically, more prisons. "Our prisons are overcrowded. Our bail laws are atrocious. We'll be the bad guy," he announced.

[Heather MC]

1. And they rounded up all the black and latino men

tossed them in jail for petty non violent "crimes" and took away their right to vote. brilliant. if you can't beat them, neuter them

[Heidi]

2. Kick!

[libtodeath]

3. No gun laws allowed in his world but throw away the key for a little recreational drug

use that hurts no one.
What an upside down world we live in.

[spanone]

4. k&r...

[woo me with science]

5. K&R

[Initech]

6. Prison industrial complex. Fuck Wayne LaPierre.

[farminator3000]

7. here's a good 10 pages on the prison-industrial complex

it sure is COMPLEX!!!

here's the 1st half of the last line:
"And every one of them, every brand-new prison, becomes another lasting monument, concrete and ringed with deadly razor wire,..."

the Atlantic has some crack editors, i've never seen a typo!
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/304669/1/