Having pulled out of Vietnam, no longer threatened by the former Soviet Union's communism, and without being engaged in any other major war requiring foot soldiers, the US has significantly altered its economic course. Equipped with technologically superior wartime capabilities, instead of directing a major portion of the country's production of goods and services toward sustaining an armed military, the US economy is now being energized through the building and maintaining of prisons. Reaping profits from incarcerating people has become big business in America. Investments in penitentiary construction and associated enterprises are high. Suburban dwellers have business related employment.
Corporations now reap benefits from contracted out inmate labor.
Part of an overall systemic master plan, this modern day form of enslavement is clearly on the rise. A case in point can be seen with the state of California. Since the mid 1980s, California has built more than 20 penitentiaries and only one university. Authorities recognized long ago the failure of the state's educational system to prepare students for higher learning. Using the media to mislead the public so that voters would ignore building and funding schools, as well as, avoid budgetary spending on preventative community activities, their so called war on crime effort has simply been the increased policing and detention of the population.