MARRIAGE EQUALITY NATIONWIDE

[TaraJo]

I dunno.  Children are already a big issue politically, since every politician out there seems to be scrambling to put kids at the forefront of whatever their cause is.  But prisoner rights might be a place where we need some improvement.  Truth is, part of the prison industrial complex involves private prisons cutting corners as much as possible in an effort to save money, with no serious regard for how it impacts the prisoners.  The end result is too many people being crowded into prisons that are falling apart, being monitored staff that doesn't care.  I could certainly see a lot of room for improvement there.

I've long said that prisoners' rights will be the next generation's crusade.  I don't mean that as "we shouldn't worry about it/try to make it our generation's crusade"; it's just that I don't think the sociopolitical climate in the US will be ready for another 30 or 40 years.  But I definitely see prisoners' rights as one of the next steps towards modernity.

I'd like to see us take steps towards reforming prisons, I really would, but the problem is that the same people who own the private prisons also own the media.  They aren't going to talk about prison reform, which will result in none of the politicians trying to pass any kind of significant prison reform.  Meanwhile, any time a law is passed that strips rights from prisoners, the public just shrugs and says "They shouldn't have committed a crime if they didn't want to be punished."  

So I want to see this fixed, but I think we need a lot of reforms for it to actually happen.  Perhaps a good starting point would be to deal with this nearly monopolistic control of the government that big business seems to have.