Prisons, Rehabs, & How "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" Victimizes America's Last Remaining Underclass

Drug addicts and criminals are the only class of people it's still considered morally acceptable - even laudable - to oppress in America. Certainly, criminals should experience consequences for their actions, but the way our society defines "crimes" means there is a horrific amount of collateral damage involved in the execution of 'justice.' Unfortunately, our need to believe that justice is being done leads us to shy away from examining the realities of the system, lest we see how unjust it actually is.
Diversion programs for addicts are an improvement over the 'throw away the key' policies of the past, but they're also ripe for abuse, as evidenced by the recent scandal in California that exposed the practice of 'body brokering' wherein rehabs trade patients for exorbitant 'finders fees' & huge insurance payouts for urine tests. These rehab facilities are enormously expensive and rarely offer scientifically-proven treatment, instead throwing the patient to the 12-step wolves and blaming them when they don't get better through this modern-day faith healing. If this was being done to anyone other than drug addicts, Americans would be up in arms. but who cares about a bunch of junkies, amirite? (as overdoses surpass all other accidental causes of death in this country - we all know at least one, whether we choose to admit it or not)

Watch the documentary Kids for Cash - search on YouTube, someone's uploaded it & i'm not going to rat them out by linking.

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