Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)“A Re-Constitution of Slavery”

“JUST THE FACTS RBG”

Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)

“A Re-Constitution of Slavery”

Presentation compiled and designed by RBG Street Scholar using data from the Critical Resistance

website and additional resources that are listed and hot-linked at the end. criticalresistance.org

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RBG Street Scholar, 2008-Last Updated 2012 2

Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)

“A Re-Constitution of Slavery”

► "Building more prisons to address crime is like building more graveyards to address a fatal disease." -- Robert Gangi, Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York

► “We've been referring to the 'War on Drugs' the last few years as 'America's new Jim Crow” –Deborah Small”


Prison Population

► 500% increase in prison population, 1970 (200,000) to 2000 (2 million) vs. total population growth of approx. 45% (between 1-2% annually) over same period

► Nearly 1.2 million were incarcerated during the 1990s alone

► As of 2000, the total men and women behind bars, on parole, and on probation has reached 6.3 million, more than three percent of adult population


Super Power

► US imprisons more raw numbers (2 million) and per capita (700 per 100,000 or 1 in 140) than any other country.

► Six times more than the nearest western competitor (UK). Holds the most known political prisoners of all Western democracies (nearly 200)

► US (280 million) accounts for 4.7% of world population (6.2 billion) and over 25% of world’s 8 million prisoners (a 500%+ disproportion)


Why– Short History Lesson

Counterinsurgency for Political Dissidents Shifts were justified and took place within a

context of political upheaval:

►Politicians played on white fears, blurring lines

between “criminals,” “gangs” and political

organization (those not obedient)

►Played on longstanding “police science” in

terms of arrest records as evident of crime and

justification for increased police


Economic Shifts –

De-industrialization

►During this period of political/policy

change, in terms of police repression,

America also faced increasing

deindustrialization:

►NO JOBS; DISPLACEMENT;

► UNEMPLOYMENT

(NEVER LISTEN TO % or White Stats)


Results / Consequences

►Plant Closures

►Erosion of Social Services

► Increased Profit for Rich

► Increased Part-Time Labor

►Recession

►Unemployment

► Increased Poverty

►Declining Social Services


“What to do with Surplus Population” ► ERASE THE SPECTACLE; CONTROL BODIES THROUGH

SURVEILLANCE, CREATION OF DOCILE BODIES AND OTHER FORMS

OF CONTROL / FORCED OBEDIENCE (Joy James)

► Politicians launched contemporary War on Crime/Drugs

► A coordinated effort to expand the police state and the prison industrial complex

► Ronald Reagan laid the foundations, George Bush continued the project, and Bill Clinton accelerated and polished the machine in ways the other two could only hope to

► George W. has taken things to an entirely new level (discuss later).


A Geographic Solution for a

Social- Economic Problem

► Capitalism needs the poor and creates poverty, intentionally through policy and organically through crisis.

► Yet capitalism is also directly and indirectly threatened by the poor.

► Capitalism always creates surplus populations, needs surplus populations, yet faces the threat of political, aesthetic, or cultural disruption from those populations.

► Prison and criminal justice are about managing these irreconcilable contradictions

► Prisons serve as geographical solution to socioeconomic problem.

► “Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.”


Summary of Affects

►Structural adjustment requires cuts in social

services, privatization of state-run industry,

repeal of agreements with labor about working

conditions and the minimum wage, conversion

of multi use farm lands into single cash crop

agriculture for export (rural communities seek

out prisons to replace farm economy), and the

dismantling of trade laws which protect local

economies.

► It means more prison, police and military


Prison Construction ► Between 1971 and 1992, government spending on

prisons increased from 2.3 billion dollars to 31.2 billion.

► In 1995 alone, money allocated for university construction dropped by $954 million, while expenditures for prison construction jumped by $926 million dollars.

► Since 1984, 20 new prisons have been built in California, compared to a single university; 1996-97: 8.7% of the state’s budget went to higher education, compared to almost 10% for corrections. In 1996 alone, construction began on twenty-six federal prisons and ninety-six state prisons throughout the U.S.


Fill those Beds ► TWO MILLION PEOPLE IN PRISON

► Additional 5 or 6 million on probation or parole bringing the number of those tied into the system, under some form of official state surveillance to 1 in 56 (7 to 8 million). 3% of the U.S. adult population -- 1 in every 34 adults.

► “There are currently more than 50 million criminal records on file in the US, with at least 4 to 5 million ‘new’ adults acquiring such a record annually. This record sticks with a person, whether or not charges are dropped or there is a subsequent conviction” (Jerome Miller).


Incarceration Race ► In the United States, in 2000, the rate of

incarceration for white women was 34 per

100,000, for Latinas was 60 per 100,000and for

African-American women was 205 per 100,000.

► The rate of incarceration for white men the rate

was 449 per 100,000, for Latino the rate was

1,220 per 100,000, and for African-American

men 3,457 per 100,000


Who’s in Prison ► Over 93% men, 7% women. But women are the fastest

growing prison population in the country.

► At present, people of color over 70%, nearly 20% Latino; black people alone over 50%

► Over 1 million black people (out of 35 million total), 1 out of 35; split it in half, 1 out of 17 men, remove the very old and very young, the number drops to 1 in 10; including those on parole or probation the number is 1 in 4; for those in their 20s its 1 in 3; black males have 30%+ chance of doing time at some point in their lives or 1 in 3. Latinos around 16% (1 in 6) and whites around 4% (1 in 24)


►Native Americans account for 1-2% of those in prison, but are incarcerated at rates just below blacks with a rate of 709 per 100,000 (largest group per capita)

►Both black men and women are incarcerated at 8 times the rate of whites, twice the rate of Latinos

►Black women fast growing group of prisoners

Who’s in Prison (2)


More Prison Facts ► In 1994, one in three black men between the

age of 20-29 were in prison, on probation or on parole

► In 1995, 47% of state and federal inmates were black

►B/t 1985-1995, Latinos jumped from 10% of all state and federal inmates to 18%

►B/t 1970 and 1996, women in federal and state prisons grew from 5,000 to 75,000; 60% of that population are black and Latina


Prison Population ► African Americans and Latinos account for 65 percent

of those incarcerated in federal prisons (68% of all people in prison and jail are people of color)

► Almost 600,000 black men between ages of 20 and 39 are currently in prison; four percent of Latino men b/t ages of 25 and 29 are in jail (only 1.6% of white men in this category are in jail)

► Black women are nearly 2.5 times more likely than Latina women and over 4.5 times more likely than white women to be imprisoned


Myth-breaking ► Vast majority (over 2/3) sentenced for non-violent drug offenses

or property crimes

► Violence occurs in less than 14% of all reported crime, and injuries occur in just 3%

► Almost all prisoners are poor or working class people

► Most have not finished high school. Many are functionally illiterate.

► Nearly 1/3 were unemployed at the time of their arrest, of those that were employed, most had jobs paying at or below the minimum wage

► Nearly 2/3 were under the influence of alcohol or drugs during the time of arrest

► Statistics indicate that anywhere from 40 to 88 percent of incarcerated women have been victims of domestic violence and sexual or physical abuse prior to incarceration, either as children or adults


More myth Busting:

Beyond Ossification of Prisons ► 21 percent of inmates in seven Midwestern prisons had experienced at

least one episode of pressured or forced sex since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facility.

► And an internal departmental survey of corrections officers in one southern state found that line officers — those charged with the direct supervision of inmates — estimated that roughly one-fifth of all prisoners were being coerced into participation in inmate-on-inmate sex.

► At least one in six prisoners in the United States is mentally ill – well over 300,000 men and women. There are three times as many mentally ill in U.S. prisons as in the country's mental health hospitals, suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, among other illnesses


► In the U.S., in 1994, rates of AIDS were nearly six times the incidence found in the general adult population.

► The level of TB in prisons has been reported to be up to 100 times higher than that of the civilian population.

► Cases of TB in prisons may account for up to 25% of a country's burden of TB.

More myth Busting:

Beyond Ossification of Prisons (2)


Prison Abuse ► Human Rights Watch documents the unnecessary and

abusive use of physical force at the prison.

► Staff have fired at inmates with shotguns for misconduct that should have been handled by unarmed staff.

► They have also shocked inmates with electronic stun devices.

► Georgia, a senior prison official watched while guards brutally beat handcuffed inmates.


► Correctional officers in California encouraged combat between prisoners by placing rival gang members together in the prison yard and then shot inmates when they fought.

► The practice of overcrowding cells and subjecting prisoners to unsafe and unsanitary living conditions also continues to exist.

► The Constitution protects prisoners from cruel and unusual punishment; it is essential that their rights be protected and that inhumane treatment be prevented.

► Sexual Violence and Harassment against women

Prison Abuse (2)


Crime Rates ► Though crime index rose steadily during the 1970s and

1980s (due largely to drug-related arrests, the introduction of heroin and crack), it leveled off and fell slightly during the 1990s, during the time of the most intensive prison and police build-up.

► Thus, the crime index does not correspond in any direct way to the rates of arrest and incarceration (though they generally correspond to rates of poverty and unemployment).


►While crime rates among youth of color have dropped faster than the general population (despite worsening youth poverty), rates of arrest and incarceration continue to rise.

► Imprisonment, therefore, has semi-autonomous a political and economic logic (of life) of its own.

Crime Rates (2)


Arrests and Profiling ► Blacks are five times more likely than whites to be stopped on the

New Jersey Turnpike

► The Colorado Sheriff in Eagle County ordered its deputies to stop all black and Latino motorists with CA license plates driving through the state

► On Interstate 95 in Maryland, African Americans reflected 17% of drivers, but accounted for 56% of those stopped and searched by the police

► Black women are 20 times more likely than white women to be searched by U.S. Customs and even forced to take laxatives, even though white and Latina women are just as likely to be carrying drugs

► For every white arrest, there are 3 African American arrests; for every white prisoner there are 7 African American prisoners


Racial Differences during every step

►Black and Latino Defendants pay twice bail as white defendants

►Whites have a greater chance at getting charges dropped, getting cases dismissed, avoiding harsher punishments, avoiding extra charges, and having their criminal records reduced – drug cases in CA, whites are twice as likely to get rehab than Latinos and African Americans


Sentencing ► Afrikans in American are:

1. Five times more likely to be arrested for felonies

2. Seven times more likely to be sent to prison

3. 13 times more likely to be sentenced under the State's "Three Strikes" law (44% of those convicted under three strikes)

4. Women of color are 64% of the female prison population and serve longer sentences for the same crime as do white women or men of color


War on Drugs ► More generally, while African Americans constitute 13%

of all monthly drug users, they represent 35% of arrests for drug possession, 55% of convictions and 74% of prison sentences.

► The number of black women incarcerated for drug offenses in state prisons increased by 828% from 1986 to 1991, first five years of Reagan’s War on Drugs

► Racial Minorities account for 79% of all state prison drug offenders

► In Texas, only one out of 25 people arrested for drugs have access to drug courts: special court that pushes rehab


► Since the 1980s, older (over age 30) white adults have suffered rising rates of drug abuse while drug abuse declined sharply among younger (under age 30) people and among people of color.

► However, increases in imprisonment for drug offenses have been two to three times greater for people of color than for Whites over the period (as measured by absolute increases in drug imprisonments adjusted for population growth by age and race, the most accurate measure).

War on Drugs (2)


Crack v. Cocaine

► Crack to powder cocaine sentencing 100:1 ratio (500 grams to 5 grams for same 5-year sentence)

► Crack is racialized black and poor, powder as white and rich

► Moreover, most crack users are whites between 16 and 36 (nearly 2/3), but they are not policed in the places that they use it (racial profiling and targeted patrols). When they are arrested, they are rarely prosecuted. When they are prosecuted they are less likely to be convicted.


► When convicted, they are sentenced to less time in lower security prisons or sent to rehab. Defendants convicted of crack possession in 1994, for example, were 84.5% black, 10.3% white, and 5.2% Hispanic.

► Trafficking offenders were 4.1% white, 88.3% black, and 7.1% Hispanic

Crack v. Cocaine


Legal Aids and Other Factors ► Law

Illinois –Selling or possessing controlled substance within 1000 feet of public housing is felony; but sale or possession within suburbs is charged as juvenile (different options

Minnesota Drug Law: Four years for first time crack offense and probation for first time cocaine offense (eventually overturned)

Sagging pants in Virginia

► Media/political misinformation: Fear – NYC: Giuliani released

report that was knowingly false concerning Crips and Bloods in NYC, prompting mass arrest of black, Latino and Asian youth


War against youth of color

► A black youth is six times more likely to be locked up than a white peer, even when charged with a similar crime and when neither has a prior record

► Blacks also account for 40 percent of the youths sent to adult courts and 58 percent of the youths sent to adult prison

► In 1993, incarceration rates for juveniles was 221 per 100,000; for Latino youth it was 481 per 100,000; and for black youth it was 810 per 100,000

► Among youth with no prior record arrested for violent crimes, including murder, rape and robbery, 137 out of every 100,000 blacks were incarcerated, compared with 15 out of every 100,000 whites.


Impact of prison industry ► All but two states (ME and VT) deny prisoners right to vote while

doing time, many deny that right to parolees and probationers, 7 deny that right to anyone convicted of a felony for life

► As a result, 4 million Americans have lost right to vote, 1 in 50 ► 1.5 million black men or 13% have lost the vote, 7 times the

national average; in 7 worst states, 1 in 4 or 25% of voting age black men are disenfranchised; nationally 1/3 of the coming generation of black men can expected to lose their vote; in the worst states between 40-50% can expect it

► In Florida alone, at least 200,000 former prisoners were denied the

vote in the past election 2000. ► In all, US has greater rates of felony voter disenfranchisement

than any other country.


► Those with felonies convictions are restricted as to what they can do upon leaving prisons: no student loans, no federal housing, no welfare, and many states limit what jobs felons can work (NEW YORK– 40)

► Since the 1980s, older (over age 30) white adults have suffered rising rates of drug abuse while drug abuse declined sharply among younger (under age 30) people and among people of color.

► However, increases in imprisonment for drug offenses have been two to three times greater for people of color than for Whites over the period (as measured by absolute increases in drug imprisonments adjusted for population growth by age and race, the most accurate measure).

Impact of prison industry (2)


Economic Cost ► The U.S. spends roughly forty billion dollars annually on maintaining

its prisons and close to one hundred billion each year to support the entire criminal justice system.

► Between 1971 and 1992, government spending on prisons increased from 2.3 billion dollars to 31.2 billion.

► In 1995 alone, money allocated for university construction dropped by $954 million, while expenditures for prison construction jumped by $926 million dollars

► Since 1984, 20 new prisons in CA, compared to a single university; 1996-97: 8.7% of state’s budget went to higher education, compared to almost 10% for corrections

► In 2001 state correctional expenditures increased by 145% (b/t 1982-2001, corrections spending increased by 529%; for police, 281%, for courts, 383%)


New Slavery ► “For private businesses, prison labor is like a pot of gold.

► No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers’ compensation to pay.

► No language barriers, as in foreign countries.

► New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls.

► Prisoners do date entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel mature, and make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria’s Secret, all at a fraction of the cost of ‘free labor.’

► From: Linda Evans and Eve Goldberg, Globalization and the Prison Industrial Complex


Profit ► Prison Industry Generates 40 billion dollars in profit each year

► At & T, Sprint and MCI charge Inmates and their families as much as 6 times the normal cost for long distance

► Companies like TWA, MCI and Victoria Secret use prison labor – Victoria Secret pays its “workers” 23 cents an hour

► B/t 1996-97, *CCA profits increased by 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million

► Other companies using prison labor or reaping prison profits include: Boeing, IBM, American Express, Compaq, Microsoft, Honeywell Motorola, WSU, Revlon, Pierre Cardin, G.E., NIKE, (note the such companies also impact numerous other industries), etc.

► Extrark offers a sizable cheap labor source, providing prisoners to Microsoft, Starbucks, JanSport, and US West for packaging and “literature assembly.”

*Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)

http://www.correctionscorp.com/






CCA

► UNICOR pays its prison workers $40/month for 40

hours per week

► It employs” 18,000 prisoners, offering different

products to state agencies.

► It provides everything from safety goggles, to

university furniture, to body armor for the Border

Patrol, and road signs for the Park Service.

► In 1998 alone, UNICOR produced 512 million dollars in

goods and services

*Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)







Private Prisons ► Corrections Corporation of America controls over half

of the private prisons in the United States, having amassed 63,000 prison beds.

► Globally, CCA runs almost eighty prisons in 25 states, Puerto Rico, Australia and the United Kingdom.

► Financially, CCA has proven to be a stable and successful company.

► In 1995, CCA went public at $8 per share. By the end of that year, its stocks soared 462.5 percent to $37 per share.

► In 1996-1997, CCA's profits increased by 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million.


Prison Industrial Complex ► Christian Parenti centers political and economic

interests within his definition of the prison industrial complex as “a government-backed juggernaut of mutually reinforcing corporate interests."

► Angela Davis agrees, offering a similar definition that repositions race and globalization in its rightful place at the core: “The notion of a prison industrial complex insists on understandings of the punishment process that take into account economic and political structures and ideologies rather than focusing myopically on individual criminal conduct to “curb crime.”


► The fact, for example, that many corporations with global markets now rely on prisons as an important source of profits helps us understand the rapidity with which prisons began to proliferate precisely at a time when official studies indicated that the crime rare was falling.

► The notion of a prison industrial complex also insists that the racialization of prison populations – and this is not only true of the United States, but of Europe, South America, and Australia as well – is not an incidental feature.

Prison Industrial Complex (2)


State Violence as Crime

► Blacks and Latinos make up nearly half of all those in poverty

► Unemployment for some groups is upwards of 25-50%.

► 1 out of 5 kids is born into poverty in the US, 1 out of 2 black kids and American Indian children; 1 out of 3 Latinos.

► As many as 10 million people are homeless or near homeless, most are women and children and half are black; 1 out of 4 Americans does not have basic health care. For all of these statistics people of color are, of course, disproportionately represented.


► In California alone, during the first five years of the Drug War (1986-1991), nearly 70,000 black people were incarcerated, a rate of 1000 per month or 1 every half an hour (for 5 years!).

► 30,000 Chicano/Latinos were put away and 15,000 whites over the same period.

► In all, nearly 120,000 people were subtracted from the public sphere in the State of California, the equivalent of the carnage produced by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

► 40% of women in prison for felonies are there because they killed an abusive partner/spouse

► In the 1970s, it is estimated that 30% of all Puerto Rican women, and 25-40% of American Indian women were sterilized without their informed consent

► In 1997 & 1998, NYPD stopped 45,000 people on gun suspicion of guns, yet arrested less than 10,000

State Violence as Crime


Nuff Said ► Therefore, as the emphasis of government policy shifts

from social welfare to crime control, racism sinks more deeply into the economic and ideological structures of U.S. Society. Meanwhile, conservative crusaders against affirmative action and bilingual education proclaim the end of racism, while their opponents suggest that racism’s remnants can be dispelled through dialogue and conversations. But conversations about “race relations” will hardly dismantle a prison industrial complex that thrives on and nourishes the racism hidden within the deep structures of our society. The emergence of a U.S. prison industrial complex within a context of cascading conservatives marks a new historical moment, whose dangers are unprecedented (Davis, Colorlines)


Reference Resources Link Outs: The Prison Industrial Complex and the Global Economy And the prison industrial complex is rapidly becoming an essential component of ... The prison industrial complex can grow only if more and more people are ... www.prisonactivist.org/crisis/evans-goldberg

THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX The prison industrial complex is not a conspiracy, guiding the nation's ... The inner workings of the prison industrial complex can be observed in the state ... www.thetalkingdrum.com/prison

What Is the Prison Industrial Complex? The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a complicated system situated at the intersection of governmental and private interests that uses prisons as a ... www.criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=what_is_pic

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http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/prison

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Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)“A Re-Constitution of Slavery”