Criminalizing Poverty 1 focused on L.A.'s "Safer Cities Initiative" which was launched by Mayor Villaragosa in 2006 and enforced by the LAPD under Chief Bratton.

I also included a devastating 2006 critique by UCLA Professor Blasi as well as background info about the rolr of The Manhattan Institute and Broken Windows fanboy George Kellering.

Today let's start with Chris Hedges:

Being poor has become a crime. And this makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.

Our civil liberties have been transformed into privileges—what Matt Taibbi in “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap” calls “conditional rights and conditional citizenship”—that are, especially in poor communities, routinely revoked. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe.

Of the 2.2 million people we have incarcerated at the moment—25 percent of the world’s prison population—2 million never had a trial. And significant percentages of them are innocent.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/chris-hedges-if-youre-poor-justi...

Next up, The Logic of the Police State from Naked Capitalism. What motivates The Prison Industrial Complex? Follow the money! Legal Plunder!

Welcome to America’s civil asset forfeiture laws, another product of law enforcement’s failed war on drugs, updated for the twenty-first century. Originally designed to deprive suspected real-life Scarfaces of the spoils of their illicit trade — houses, cars, boats — it now regularly deprives people unconnected to the war on drugs of their property without due process of law and in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Not surprisingly, corruption follows.

Federal and state law enforcement can now often keep property seized or sell it and retain a portion of the revenue generated. Some of this, in turn, can be repurposed and distributed as bonuses in police and other law enforcement departments. The only way the dispossessed stand a chance of getting such “forfeited” property back is if they are willing to take on the government in a process where the deck is stacked against them

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/the-logic-of-the-police-state-in-...

Of course The Prison Industrial Complex requires racketeering capitalists to be complete and give Hillary substantial campaign contributions. From Salon:

It’s a crime: How private prison companies encourage mass incarceration

Prisons are full.
By seeking people to imprison in facilities they own, private prison companies contribute to mass incarceration. Currently, CCA and GEO Group — the second largest private prison company in America — own 87 facilities across the country. When these companies, both publicly traded corporations, lose contracts at their prisons, they seek out other people to incarcerate from state corrections departments, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), sheriffs’ offices, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In doing so, they encourage decision makers to put people behind bars, diverting attention and resources away from making the criminal justice system more humane. Lobbying disclosure records show that CCA and GEO Group have strong presences in the offices of government officials. In 2014, CCA had 103 lobbyists working in 25 states and 25 lobbyists in Washington, D.C. GEO Group had 68 lobbyists working in 15 states and 14 lobbyists in D.C

When it comes to tackling mass incarceration, preventing private prison companies from filling their empty beds is a significant part of a broader strategy, especially in places where we should be investing in alternatives to prison. Companies that have a vested interest in incarceration are a powerful impediment to creating a just and safe society. Corrections officials and criminal justice reform advocates should start treating them as such.

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/26/its_a_crime_how_private_prison_companies...

God Bless Amerika! Land of the incarcerated and the impoverished.