It isn’t that hard to think about how the prison industrial complex influences people who are caught up in it. Mothers and fathers have to pay massive loot to talk to their kids in jail, to even get to the prisons in some cases. Jails themselves are focused much more on punishment than on rehabilitation so the prisoners come out with a limited set of skills and often end up going right back to where they were.

But what about the rest of us?

Earl linked to New York Times editorial condemning the use of prisoners in counting local populations. (ed: the previous version linked to an earlier story. thanks Peter for the heads up.)