Letters to the Editor

This letter is associated with the following article:
Two journalists put the "boy crisis" in context.
  • whew... prison as a growth industry is here to stay....

    ...for a minute there I thought I should dump my economic interest in the private prison industry. I was afraid some of those folks running around acting like they hold humanitarian concerns may actually mean it this time. Luckily nothing has changed, no one cares about the poor urban blacks guys or the rural hick crackerjack boys who make the prison industry so profitable for us. These groups serve all kinds of groups very well; the are the whipping boys for republican law and order types, they are the traditionally minded folks who women rightly bitch about and implicitly extend the sterotype to include most males, and they help democratics justify social welfare programs for the poor. I can't think of one social or political group that even remotely gives a shit about poor urban black guys or poor rural white guys. I think we all benifit from their situation (so please keep writing them off as unimportant lest we lose our useful and profitable scapegoats/future prisoners/dead soldiers).