Thanks 1bobcohn (Twitter) for the link to an article about surveillance of prisoners but I suspect there is a lot more to this than meets the eye, or ears, or ankles.
Prisons have become a big business ( I forget the name of the company that is a major stakeholder in airlines, credit cards, security and prisons all over the world - Google knows!) but I don't think that private enterprise controlling convicted criminals is a fair deal.
It is not "mandatory minimums' and 'draconian 3 strike rules' that place people in prisons for the safety of society, but big business interests that are feeding off the paranoia of the 'climate of fear' foisted on the the public since the debacle of 9/11. It seems easier for government to pass their problems onto private enterprise than actually address the factors that are leading to total cultural collapse of our society.
I don't fall for the spin that this process 'cuts crime', 'reduces costs' and aids management of our penal colonies. What is does is fulfill George Orwell's prophecies of "1984" - we are coming under increasing observation and recording of our activities, innocent or not, and we are slowly being indoctrinated to accept this as normal - it is not! It is an infringement of our rights.
Why don't we try doing something useful with our penal colonies if they are so overcrowded and unmanageable - like send them to desolate places on the planet to develop failed communities or wasted resources. Set them to work repairing the damage the vampire corporates do as they suck the resources and life out of this planet.
Why not put them all to sea on floating prison farms that scour the planet as mobile fix-it crews. Better still, why not just pack 'em all off to that 'Great Floating Pacific Garbage Patch' and set them to work for that Dutch group 'WHIM Architecture' to help fulfill that dream of turning all that floating rubbish into a compact artificial island.
Don't send 'em home alone where they can do drugs, don't get 'em behind walls busting up rocks and beating out car license plates - get them out recycling refuse and doing housework around the planet!
*(This is an essay dribbled by goblinono in response to an article titled "Prisons Without Walls" at :: - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/prison-without-walls/8195/)
