To begin our discussion on America’s criminal justice system and how it influences social issues, today we will be introducing the topic of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). The PIC is perhaps the most influential system upholding racial inequalities in the United States today. Eradicating this intricate network of control will be no easy task, but gaining a thorough awareness of the PIC and its history is crucial to understanding how systemic racism operates in the United States.
The Prison Industrial Complex can be defined as “the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems.” Prisons are no longer simply holding cells to keep the most dangerous people off the street. Incarceration has become a colossal moneymaker for private industries, which has corrupted the criminal justice system to its core. A key element to the PIC is that financial gain has been prioritized over the rehabilitation of prisoners. As financial incentives have grown, the prison population has boomed. Many offenses that incur fines or drug treatment in other countries earn sentences with harsh mandatory minimums in the United States. America now incarcerates more people than any nation in the world. Although the country represents only 5% of the world’s population, 25% of the world’s prisoners are American. On top of this, the Prison Industrial Complex operates in such a way that BIPOC, especially Black Americans, are disproportionately targeted and swept up into the prison system, which perpetuates cycles of poverty and a host of other issues. How did this dire situation come to be?
The Prison Industrial Complex has its modern political roots in the 1960s when Richard Nixon won the presidential election by capitalizing upon Americans’ fear of lawlessness during a time of escalating riots and crime across the country. Nixon was known for his “law and order” rhetoric, and he also declared a War on Drugs. During the 1970s, new legislation introduced prison labor into the private sector, where it was previously outlawed. This expansion was driven by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Prison Industries Act, and other federal programs. ALEC continues to be one of the hidden drivers of the PIC today. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, the War on Drugs became a true war. An onslaught of highly punitive criminal justice “reform” policies was pushed as the media relied on subtle racial rhetoric to stoke public fears of crime- and Black people. Black communities were hit the hardest during the War on Drugs, although White people use illegal drugs at approximately the same rate. This decade also saw the birth of private, for-profit prison companies that oversaw the growth of the prison industry and now generate profits in the billions. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton placed the final nail in the coffin when he vowed that no Republican could be tougher on crime than he was. Clinton’s $30 billion crime bill resulted in the “largest increases in federal and state inmate populations of any president in American history.”
The development of the PIC in recent decades represents a dramatic shift in the American criminal justice system. The changes begin to make sense when the profit factor is considered. A loophole in the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, exists: slavery and involuntary servitude are perfectly legal, so long as it is a punishment for a duly convicted crime. Today, prisoners are frequently leased out to private companies for unpaid or minimally compensated labor. Meanwhile, private companies profit immensely at the expense of the readily available prison workforce. Prisoners have largely become sources of profit extraction, rather than humans who are being rehabilitated.
There are many other ways in which the Prison Industrial Complex upholds racial inequalities and perpetuates injustice in the United States. Author Michelle Alexander has described racialized social control as something that has always existed in our country, simply morphing to fit the social norms of the time. Slavery morphed into Jim Crow Laws, and mass incarceration and the PIC were born after the defeat of Jim Crow. As previously mentioned, Black people were especially targeted during the War on Drugs, despite similar drug use among Whites. Many drug offenses incur a felony. When drug felons, most of whom are Black, are finally released from prison, they may find it difficult to reintegrate into daily life. Discrimination against felons in housing and employment is a perfectly legal and standard procedure, even if the offender is nonviolent. Many return to illicit means to make money out of desperation and many have been stripped of their right to vote. Furthermore, inmates face much higher rates of HIV and severe mental health issues. Beyond individuals, communities feel the effects of the PIC intensely. One out of every six black men between the ages of 25 and 54 has been incarcerated, stripping communities of voters, taxpayers, workers, and loved ones. Children of those who have been involved with the criminal justice system are at a higher risk for economic hardship, psychological problems, and issues in school. They are six times more likely to be involved in criminal issues themselves. In a myriad of ways, the Prison Industrial Complex helps to perpetuate crime and poverty and exacerbate racial inequalities, when the criminal justice system should be doing the complete opposite.
There is no doubt that the effects of the Prison Industrial Complex have been nothing short of devastating on individuals and communities around the country. Some White people and other BIPOC, while at lesser rates, have also suffered at the hands of the PIC and the disastrous War on Drugs. We can come together as human beings to replace this broken system, upon which countless other inequalities grow and flourish. We must focus on making small changes that help build a sustainable alternative to the PIC; a system that will end the cycle of racialized social control.
Sources:
Article: The Prison Industrial Complex - Eric Schlosser
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/304669/
Article: What is the PIC? What Is Abolition? - Critical Resistance
http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/
Article: Birth of a Prison State: the Bipartisan Disaster that put America Behind Bars - David J. Krajicek
https://www.salon.com/2015/06/04/birth_of_a_prison_state_the_bipartisan_disaster_that_put_america_behind_bars_partner/
Article: The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor - Mike Elk and Bob Sloan
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor/
Article: The History of Mass Incarceration - James Cullen
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-mass-incarceration
Article: The Dirty Thirty: Nothing to Celebrate About Thirty Years of Corrections Corporation of America - Grassroots Leadership
https://grassrootsleadership.org/cca-dirty-30
Book: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Article: The Societal Impact of the Prison-Industrial Complex, or Incarceration for Fun and Profit- Mostly Profit - Alex Friedmann
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2012/jan/15/the-societal-impact-of-the-prison-industrial-complex-or-incarceration-for-fun-and-profitmostly-profit/
Article: 5 Ways America’s Prison System Mimics Slavery https://www.bustle.com/articles/142340-5-ways-the-us-prison-industrial-complex-mimics-slavery
Article: Criminal Justice Fact Sheet - NAACP