Prison Industrial Complex
“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.”
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 7 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is The Prison Industrial Complex. The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems. This term is derived from the "military–industrial complex" of the 1950s and describes the attribution of the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies for profit. Let’s get into it!
Key Terms
Prison Industrial Complex: Describes the attribution of the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies for profit. The term also refers to the network of participants who prioritize personal financial gain over rehabilitating those that have been imprisoned.
The 13th Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Scholars, activists and prisoners have linked that exception clause to the rise of a prison system that incarcerates Black people at more than five times the rate of white people, and profits off of their unpaid or underpaid labor.
Let’s Get Into It
Though only 5 percent of the world’s population lives in the United States, it is responsible for approximately 25 percent of the world’s prison population. (Washington Post) The Prison Industrial Complex helps maintain the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that perpetuate stereotypes of marginalized communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant.
The most common agents of the Prison Industrial Complex are corporations that contract cheap prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, companies that operate prison food services and medical facilities, correctional officers unions, private probation companies, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them.
The portrayal of prison-building/expansion as a means of creating employment opportunities and the utilization of inmate labor are particularly harmful elements of the Prison Industrial Complex as they boast clear economic benefits at the expense of incarcerated human beings.
Do You Know What Happens To Your Rights When You Get Convicted?
Essentially, your citizenship is revoked. You serve your time and upon release, you are left with very little. In America, the systems in place don’t allow you to pay your debt to society and rehabilitate your life, they insist that you are punished for the rest of your life.
Right to Bear Arms
Right to Vote
Jury Service
Right to Travel Abroad
Parental Rights
Public Assistance and Housing
Employee Discrimination
“The term “prison industrial complex” was introduced by activists and scholars to contest prevailing beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause
of mounting prison populations. Instead, they argued, prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these new structures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit. ”
— Are Prisons Obsolete, By Angela Davis
Consider for a moment the term “crime and punishment” and how it is so often linked together. What about crime and rehabilitation? Or crime and social work? Or crime and therapy? Or crime and oppression? Can we envision a world where the answer to crime is not to put human beings in cages where corporations make millions off of their life and labor, but confront the human rights catastrophe that is mass incarceration?
Resources
This week I am only including one resource in the hopes that every single person that takes the time to read this blog follows through and watches this film. The documentary 13th is available in its entirety, for free, on YouTube. I urge you, I beg you, I implore you to watch this film immediately.
Support: The Bail Project
Support: The Equal Justice Initiative
Support: The ACLU
Next week we are talking about Voting! There are less than 100 days until elections and abstaining from voting is NOT. A. CHOICE. This is an opportunity to be the change you want to see in the world. It’s on every newsletter because this is the motto to which I live my life: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. See you there!
