"Slam"

In the movie “Slam” written by Saul Williams, a young Black man named Raymond Joshua is subjected to the oppressive prison industrial complex. He is growing up in urban America and has he struggles to survive in this world he resorts to selling weed. One night while he was buying marijuana, his counterpart is shot in the head. Ray gets caught by the police and told by his district attorney that he can plea guilty and get two or three years, or if he chooses to take the case to trial he will most likely get up to ten years for possession of a quarter pound of marijuana.

The significance of this first few moments of the movie is that it shows how our justice system is designed to fail. At the time of its creation, our justice system worked wonderfully. However over time, and with the incorporation of corporate America into our correctional facilities it has failed. Or has it? Perhaps this is exactly what our government wanted. Perhaps they needed to harness the slave labor of incarcerated persons in order to advance our economy and so they began to target our low socioeconomic status communities because they have the least power and therefore are the least likely to fight back. One of the core ideologies of this country is that money is power and perhaps our government has used this statement in the reverse intention in order to advance their own interests and goals of the elite.

“Slam” does a wonderful job laying out the paradox of why a poor black man growing up in a low socioeconomic area is 30% more likely to be incarcerated at some point in his life than the rest of the male population. These reasons themselves do not make sense however, that it is why it is important to explain them to the public and address these issues as well as ask questions. People do not often realize the system is like this and the general population often assumes that people in prison did something wrong and got caught. They don’t look further into why this is and that is why this movie is so good, because it raises many of these questions. 

Introduction to the PIC

The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) refers to the fairly recent phenomenon of using incarcerated persons as cheep and almost slave labor.  There are many problems associated with this complex that correlate to issues of class, gender, sexuality but mainly racial inequalities. The private and governmental organizations that thrive off of incarcerated labor argue that they are using this “resource” to solve social and economic problems. However, in actuality, they are feeding off of the powerless in order to advance their own agendas.

            An interesting statistic I found on prisonsucks.com was that during South African apartheid (1993), 851 of ever 100,000 black people were incarcerated. While in 2006 under president George W. Bush, 4,789 of ever 100,000 black people were incarcerated in the United States. So, how do we get a 5.8 times higher rate than the most openly racist country in the world? I believe the hidden agendas of government officials along with the for-profit companies such as AT&T (largest employer) that make this sort of statistic happen. In order for our economy to run the way it does, we need this extremely large population to use, sometimes paying as low as $0.17 an hour.

            Does all of this evidence mean that prisons are obsolete? I will discuss a lot of Angela Y. Davis’s ideas from her book, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” where she discusses the issues of the PIC along with explaining the Prison Abolition movement. Some of her main points include the idea that prison labor and prisons in general are mirrors of slavery, that the prison system along with the criminal justice system is designed to incarcerate as many people of color as possible and that there is nothing being done in order to reform this organization. Here are some statistics to support this point:

• “Almost two million people are behind prison and jail bars in the United States. 70% of those incarcerated/locked down/made to disappear are people of color. 

• The fastest growing group of prisoners is black women. Per capita the most numerous group are Native Americans.

• In 1994, one in three black men between the ages of 20-29 were in prison, jail, on probation or on parole. In 1995, 47% of state and federal inmates were black, the largest group behind bars

• Black men were 7 times more likely than white men to be in prison. In 1993, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaskan natives made up 2% of prison population. Native Americans are 10 times more likely than whites to be imprisoned. Latinos are the fastest growing group behind bars.

• Between 1985 and 1995 Latinos jumped from 10% of all state and federal inmates to 18%. In 1993, whites made up 74% of the general population, but only 36% of federal and state prison inmates. In 1970, there were 5,600 women in federal and state prisons.

• By 1996 there were 75,000. 60% of that population are black and Latina. In 1993, the overall incarceration rate for juveniles was 221 per 1000,000; for Latino youth it was 481 per 100,000; and for black youth it was 810 per 100,000.”

 

Sources:

Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? Steven Stories Press, New York. 2003.

Lenord, David CES 494 Syllabus http://www.libarts.wsu.edu/ces/FL07course&syl%20adobe/494leonard.pdf

Prison Policy Initiative. Prisonsucks.com, Northampton, MA September 10, 2008