Prisons Earn $878 Million Annually by Poisoning Inmates and Guards, Lawsuit Alleges

Freda Cobb alleges that she and more than 300 other people were poisoned by a Florida prison.  Cobb and 25 other plaintiffs are suing the Federal Corrections Institute in Marianna for exposing them to dangerous lead levels while prison laborers burst computers with hammers to extract gold from within.  Prisons reportedly earned $878 million each year while under contract to Dell and Hewlett Packard by exposing inmates and employees like Cobb to high levels of lead and toxic chemicals.

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WMBB News 13
12/09/08

Woman Sues Prison System

Marianna, FL ~ A former corrections officer sues the prison system, saying the employees and inmates are being poisoned to death.

Freda Cobb, 48, says she was one of hundreds exposed to toxic chemicals at the Federal Corrections Institute in Marianna.  “My female organs had enlarged three times the size they were,” Cobb says.  “Five weeks after my first surgery, my gallbladder was practically to burst.”

Fourteen years ago, the Federal Corrections Institute in Marianna began recycling obsolete computer parts from various government facilities.

“They (inmates) would bust the monitors from hammers to retrieve the gold out of it to send back to the Dell or Hewlett Packard companies because they have contracts with them to refurbish and reuse them in the new computers,” she says.

Cobb says hers was one of seven federal prisons across the country under contract.  “They made quite a bit of money like $878 million a year with all the institutions together.” While the prisons were making money, Cobb says the inmates and employees doing the work were getting sick.

“We were told it was safe, but they lied.  There’s eight pounds of lead, in one monitor.” And Cobb says they were busting thousands of monitors a day.

Cobb says she was also exposed to massive amounts of Cadmium, Barium, Beryllium, and Arsenic.  All of it spread through the facility in the form of dust.

“In the summer it was 127 degrees inside the building,” Cobb says “We would sweat and wipe our face and eyes.  It was on us and in our mouths.”

Cobb says 100 inmates would spend eight hours a day in these conditions and also got extremely sick.

“We were helping inmates on ambulances, because their heart wanting to stop or they had kidney infections.”

See full article at this link:   http://www.panhandl eparade.com/ index.php/ mbb/article/ woman_sues_ prison_system/ mbb7712472/

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Taxpayers pay around $50,000 per year for incarcerating each inmate, but additional profits from prison labor substantially augments the financial portfolios of investors who capitalize off imprisoning 2.3 million Americans (called legalized slavery by some).   Taxpayers believe that a large prison system is necessary to keep citizens safe, but most do not realize that two-thirds of inmates are incarcerated for non-violent offenses, and more than half of prisoners are mentally dysfunctional people who were imprisoned because mental illness is criminalized in the U.S.A. 

Providing safe working conditions and good health care for inmates is actually contrary to the bottom line for prison investors.  Lead poisoning, like inmates suffered at Federal Corrections Institute in Marianna, causes serious health problems.  Chronically ill and and mentally deficient inmates are worth more to prison profiteers than healthy inmates because taxpayers pay substantially more for incarcerating such persons:  approximately $100,000 more per year, per sick inmate.  Therefore, having inmates work in dangerous conditions is a win/win situation for prison investors.  Inmates who live through lead poisoning and exposure to "massive amounts of Cadmium, Barium, Beryllium" will continue to work as slaves, but each and every inmate who gets deadly sick from the chemical exposure brings in an additional $100,000 per year from taxpayers.  More information about the dangers of lead poisoning that prisoners were forced to face are at this link:  http://children.webmd.com/tc/lead-poisoning-topic-overview.

See more about how prison investors profit from prison labor at this link:

Is America's Prison System Legalized Slavery?
http://my.nowpublic.com/health/americas-prison-system-legalized-slavery 

Closing mental hospitals resulted in substantial profits to prison investors.  About 1.25 million prisoners who might have been hospital inpatients 30 years ago are presently prison inmates, instead.  It is actually bad business to treat mental patients for their dysfunctions, because to do so decreases their profitabality.  Therefore, rather than treating mentally ill inmates, many times such prisoners are incarcerated in conditions that are guaranteed to exacerbate their illness.  Such sick Americans are regularly subjected to years of solitary confinement and torture through gassing, Tasering, and use of restraint chairs and tables.  Even healthy minds might break under such torture, so this is a very smart way to keep sick people sick while keeping the portfolios of prison profiteers very healthy. 

An example of the cruel and unusual punishment mentally ill Americans are subjected to as prisoners is at the link below:  the story of one paranoid schizophrenic young man named Jeremy, whose IQ range is between 50 to 70.  Jeremy was kept naked in solitary confinement in a space slightly larger than a closet for four years, called "the hole," because he did not know how to "act right" in jail.  While living as a trapped animal for four years, Jeremy lost 60 pounds and his ability to speak in whole sentences.  Jeremy got so deranged that he was eventually transferred to a mental hospital, but he is now back in prison and again condemned to the hole:  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/JusticeForJeremy. 


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Mary Neal

Website:  http://wrongfuldeathoflarryneal.com

Author's Page:  http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=513396753

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.  ~ Matthew 25:37-40