The mass exodus of the middle and working class has added to the growth of the prison industrial complex because it forced the poor lower class, generally people of color, into the inner cities creating a smaller and easier place for the police to patrol. Also, with the war on drugs this centralization of lower socio-economic population made it easier to arrest these people under the “war on drugs” created by the Nixon administration.
“Reganomics increased class and racial polarization, destroyed inner cities, sacked public education and public health services, created epidemic homelessness, increased exploitation of workers and caused the intensified spatial concentration of a permanently unemployed class.” Finally, the mass exodus of manufacturing jobs outside the U.S. contributed to the prison industrial complex because businesses realized that they could profit more if they exported their jobs to third world nations where they could pay the workers much less then they would in the U.S. Along with third world nations, institutions also realized they could bring their businesses to correctional facilities where they could pay workers (slave laborers) even less.
I believe prisons are a space for state-sponsored terrorism. I believe that prisons are a breeding ground for gang violence including but not limited to, violence, rape and other crimes. If the goal of prisons is to punish people for the crimes they have committed so they will become a “better person” when they get out, as a society we are not doing a successful job. If the majority of people in prisons are there for non-violent property and drug crimes, how is putting these people in an environment that breeds this kind of behavior helping anyone? Well, forcing these prisoners into this “prison culture” causes them to continue this behavior when they get out and then get caught again getting wrapped up in the cycle of the system which some including myself believe this is intentional.
2 comments:
Prisons are just America's way of institutionalizing something that was supposed to be gone a long time ago, slavery. The idea of prisons didn't come along until slavery was abolished after the Civil War, and was just a way that the government found to try and keep black people captive to the best of their abilities. I never thought of Reganomics' forcing of people of color into urban cities as a way to be able to patrol a greater population, but it makes more sense now. Police are constantly patrolling urban cities, as if to assume something suspicious is going to be going on.
As for the supposed "war on drugs"; it is another war that we are being forced to fight by our government, but this is more of a civil war. The only thing that differs this is that the acclaimed "war on drugs" is an imaginary war that is not meant to be won. It was created by the government to make extreme amounts of money for the already rich, and like Vietnam, was not meant to be won, but just to be sustained so that some rich people could get a lot richer.
I don't agree with you about prisons being a space for state sponsored terrorism, but I do agree with them being a breeding ground for additional crimes. For a lot if inmates, prison is there only home. It is a place where they can be taken care of and be part of a social group even though it's not the best group to be part of. I am a little bit torn on my feelings about prisoners taking over jobs that non-prisoners used to have. I don't think that it is right for a company to leave millions of families unemployed for the cheaper labor of inmates, but at the same time, I believe that inmates who will get parole should have the opportunity to learn a job skill that will help him/her on the outside. It seems like very few actually rehabilitate enough to survive on the outside. I have an uncle who has been in the system since he was fourteen years old and has a hard time staying out of prison. When he is out, he has a difficult time finding employment which leads him right back into the situations that put in the system to begin with.
Post a Comment