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Not too long ago, a mother told me, "I can talk to my son in the dark." (Operator voice: The prepaid collect call from an inmate at --)
不久前，一位母亲告诉我，“我在黑暗中和我的儿子说话。”(话务员的声音：来自xxx囚犯的预付付费电话。)
Her son was in prison and paying for phone calls often meant she couldn't afford her light bill.
她的儿子在监狱里，经常付电话费意味着她付不起电费。
See, families can pay as much as a dollar a minute to speak to a loved one in prison or jail.
你看，为了和在监狱里的爱的人通话，家人每分钟就要支付差不多一美元。
These egregious rates have created a 1.2-billion-dollar prison telecom industry and with visit costs forced one in three families with an incarcerated loved one into debt.
这些惊人的收费造就了12亿美元的监狱电信产业，而探视费用迫使三分之一的有被监禁爱人的家庭负上了债。
Eighty-seven percent of those carrying this financial burden are women.
承担这种经济负担的人中，有87%是女性。
And as a result of decades of racist policies and policing, they're disproportionately Black and brown.
由于几十年的种族主义政策和治安，她们绝大多数是黑人和棕色人种。
Prison telecom corporations claim that these high rates are necessary to pay site commissions to prisons and jails and provide security and surveillance.
监狱电信公司声称，这些高额费用是向监狱支付现场佣金和提供安全和监视所必需的。
While the government's hands are far from clean, these corporate claims are simply not supported by reality.
虽然政府的手本就不能说干净，但这些企业的主张根本没有得到现实的支持。
Consider this. In Connecticut, where families are charged as much as 32.5 cents per minute and the state takes a 68 percent commission, the telecom provider takes home 10 cents per minute.
考虑到这一点。在康涅狄格州，每个家庭每分钟的收费高达32.5美分，州政府收取68%的佣金，而电信运营商每分钟可以拿到10美分。
Now, in Illinois, where the state takes no commission, families pay the same corporation nine tenths of a cent per minute.
现在，在伊利诺斯州，州政府不收取佣金，每个家庭每分钟向同一家公司支付9/10美分。
In other words, even after the government takes its cut, the corporation makes 10 times more in Connecticut than it does in Illinois for providing the same service.
换句话说，即使政府抽成后，同样的服务该公司在康涅狄格州的收入是在伊利诺伊州的10倍。
And prisons in Illinois are no less secure than those in Connecticut.
而伊利诺斯州的监狱并不比康涅狄格州的监狱安全。
These are simply corporate arguments used to justify predatory business practices and distract from the very simple truth.
这些只不过是公司用来为掠夺性商业行为辩护的理由，分散了人们对非常简单的事实的注意力。
Corporations in the prison industry have a financial interest in seeing more people behind bars and for longer periods of time.
监狱行业的公司在看到更多的人被关进监狱并服刑更长时间方面有经济利益。
In reality, providing families and their incarcerated loved ones with regular communication is not just the right thing to do.
事实上，为家庭和他们被监禁的亲人提供定期的沟通不仅仅是一件正确的事情。
It's also the most fiscally responsible and safe thing to do.
也是在财政上最负责任、最安全的做法。
If you think taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for phone calls for people who have committed crimes, remember this.
如果你认为纳税人不应该为那些犯罪的人的电话买单，那么请记住这一点。
The most expensive rates are charged in jails where the majority of people are awaiting trial and not yet convicted.
最昂贵的收费在监狱里，那里的大多数人正在等待审判，还没有被定罪。
Prison wages range from nothing to a few cents an hour, so it's hard working, taxpaying families that are paying for calls.
监狱里每小时的工资从零到几美分不等，所以是一项艰苦的工作，需要纳税的家庭支付电话费来支撑。
And maintaining strong community ties is one of the most important factors in a person's successful reentry upon release.
维持强大的社区联系是是一个人在释放后成功重返社会的最重要的因素之一。
It improves housing, employment and social outcomes, making it less likely that people need government support or end up back in prison.
它改善了住房、就业和社会产出，使得人们不太可能需要政府支持或再次犯罪入狱。
The bottom line is that prison telecom corporations, and the thousands of others in the prison industry, prioritize profit as they promote the caging of people to exploit them and their families.
但问题的关键是，监狱电信公司以及其他成千上万个监狱行业的公司优先考虑的是利润，因为他们提倡囚禁犯人，以此来剥削犯人和犯人的家人。
See, prison telecom is just one sector in the 80-billion-dollar prison industry.
监狱电信只是800亿监狱产业中的其中的一个行业。
When I say prison industry, I'm talking about food service corporations that serve rotten meat to people behind bars, health care providers that deny incarcerated people care,
当我说“监狱产业”的时候，我指的是那些为监狱里的犯人提供腐肉的食品服务公司，那些拒绝为被监禁者提供医疗服务的医疗服务提供者，
and architecture firms that design windowless six-by-nine-foot cells for solitary confinement, where people spend weeks, months and even years.
以及那些把犯人要待上几周、几个月甚至几年的没有窗户的6×9英尺的牢房设计成单独监禁的建筑公司。
We invest in these corporations through our retirement funds, public pensions, university endowments and private foundations, and we celebrate their executives on the boards of our favorite cultural institutions.
我们通过我们的退休基金、公共养老金、大学捐赠基金和私人基金会投资这些公司，我们在我们最喜欢的文化机构的董事会里为他们的高管庆祝
And in all fairness, it's not just the private sector.
平心而论，不仅仅是私营部门。
It's also government agencies that charge excessive fines and fees and abuse free or grossly underpaid prison labor to manufacture license plates, staff DMV call centers, fight wildfires and, yes, even pick cotton.
政府机构也会收取过高的罚款和费用，滥用免费或低薪的监狱劳动力来制造车牌、让他们在车管所呼叫中心工作、扑灭野火，是的，甚至是摘棉花。
So this begs the question, how can we address our crisis of mass incarceration if an entire segment of our economy is fighting to put more people behind bars and for longer?
所以这就引出了一个问题，如果我们的整个经济部门都在努力让更多的人被关进监狱待更长的时间，那么我们该如何解决大规模的监禁危机呢？
We can't. But we can demand and create change.
我们解决不了，但我们可以要求和创造改变。
The key is running coordinated policy and corporate campaigns.
关键是实施协调的政策和企业活动。
That's the playbook I put to use when I founded Worth Rises, a nonprofit prison abolition organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry.
这是我在创立“Worth Rises(价值上升)”时使用的说辞，“Worth Rises”是一个非盈利的致力于瓦解监狱产业的监狱废除组织。
Let's go back to prison telecom for a quick example.
下面咱们快速回到一个监狱电信的例子。
In 2018, we led a campaign in New York City that passed the first piece of legislation to make jail phone calls free,
2018年，我们在纽约市领导了一项运动，通过了第一项法案，该法案使得监狱里的电话免费，
saving families with incarcerated loved ones, nearly 10 million dollars a year and increasing communication by roughly 40 percent overnight.
使得有被监禁亲人的家庭得以挽救，每年节省了近1000万美元，并在一夜之间增加了大约40%的通讯。
In 2019, we helped local advocates in San Francisco introduce a similar policy and launched several statewide campaigns to do the same.
2019年，我们帮助旧金山的当地倡导者引入了类似的政策，并发起了几次全州范围的运动来做同样的事情。
That same year, we fought the consolidation of two major market players in front of the Federal Communications Commission and won.
同年，我们在联邦通信委员会面前为合并两家主要市场参与者进行了斗争，并取得了胜利。
We blocked 150-million-dollar investment by a public pension with a private equity firm that owned a prison telecom corporation.
我们拦截了一家拥有监狱电信公司的私人股本公司投资的1亿5千万美元。
And we removed one of the largest investors in the field from a major museum board.
我们将这一领域最大的投资者之一从一家大型博物馆董事会除名了。
In just two years, we toxified the industry and threatened its business model, causing an investor sell-off.
在短短两年内，我们毒化了这个行业，并威胁到了它的商业模式，导致投资者抛售。
But more importantly, that means millions of families connected and billions of dollars protected from the predatory hands of prison profiteers.
但更重要的是，这意味着数以百万计的家庭联系到了一起，数十亿的美元被保护起来免受监狱奸商的掠夺。
It means fewer dollars invested in and promoting human caging and control. And it means at least one mother won't have to sit in the dark to talk to her son again.
这意味着有更少的资金投进来，意味着促进了犯人的监禁和控制，意味着至少有一位母亲不用再坐在黑暗中跟她的儿子说话了。
(Operator: You may start the conversation now.) Thank you.
(话务员：现在可以开始通话了。)谢谢！
