Article: Hip Hop and Prison as Profit

I read this really great article about Hip Hop and Prison together as profit. It links how the media markets "criminal" rap to our culture which causes the enrollment of prisoners to increase. I'm not a great paraphraser, so I will give the facts. You read the article yourself, don't be lazy like me.

• Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the biggest name in the private prison industry, contacted 48 states offering to buy their prisons. 
• Two months later, an anonymous email was sent out to various members of the music and publishing industries saying it determined that hip-hop music would be manipulated to drive up privatized prison profits. Some called it fraud because no name was listed. 
• Ninety percent of what Americans read, watch and listen to is controlled by only six media companies. #MESSAGE
• Last year 232 media executives were responsible for the intake of 277 million Americans, controlling all the avenues necessary to manufacture any celebrity and incite any trend. #MESSAGE
• The people who own the media are the same people who own private prisons. 
• Likewise, the largest rise in incarceration that the US has ever seen is in the early-80′s. (Crime has decline since then) 
• "The vast majority of the prisoner increase in the United States has come from African-American and Latino citizen drug arrests.”
• The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal prison system, even where convicted for the exact same crimes, people of color received prison sentences 10% longer. 
• Mainstream media continue to support hip-hop that glorifies criminality (drug trafficking and violence), and private prison interests. 

Make sure you read the article and get some knowledge. 

[ Via RapRehab ]