What is the Prison: Industrial Complex?

by Carl Sack / February 2007

What is the Prison-Industrial Complex? 1

The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a complicated system situated at the intersection of governmental and private interests that uses prisons as a solution to social, political, and economic problems. The PIC depends upon the oppressive systems of racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. It includes human rights violations, the death penalty, industry and labor issues, policing, courts, media, community powerlessness, the imprisonment of political prisoners, and the elimination of dissent.

To fully describe the PIC, we have to look at the big picture of how it functions. For example, the prison construction boom can be linked to, among other factors, the huge increase in the number of people sentenced to prison terms with the onset of the war on drugs, the repression of radical movements by people of color for self-determination, and the anti-imperialist struggles of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The “war on drugs” and the national and local efforts to destroy radical political movements led to increasing police presence in communities of color and poor communities, higher arrest rates, and longer prison sentences.

This boom is also fueled by dramatic and racist reporting about “crime,” “delinquency,” and “rebellion,” creating a culture of fear in which it continues to be acceptable and desirable to lock people (primarily people of color, youth, and poor people) in cages for longer and longer in the interest of “public safety.” The way the many parts of the PIC interact is exactly what makes it so powerful and destructive.

This propaganda creates a certain view of crime and punishment. But does this outlook square with what’s really going on?

What is Crime?

What is considered a crime is determined by the societies we live in. The actions most commonly referred to as “crime” are personal crimes directed against other individuals and/or their private property. It can also refer to actions committed against the private property of business interests, and trade that is not an officially sanctioned part of the economy. Contrary to beliefs that were popular in the nineteenth century and remain in the background even today, the perpetrators of this kind of criminal activity are not genetically predispositioned to crime, nor is crime part of any racial or cultural background. People who commit crimes of this type are subject to the material conditions they live in, which often include poverty, racism, drug addiction, and overwhelming general stress.

There are other types of crime which are not readily acknowledged in a society controlled by the bourgeois elite. Property crimes committed by corporations against working people, such as the snatching of small farmers’ land for cash cropping or business infrastructure, are rarely prevented and almost never prosecuted. Social scientists call such actions “structural violence,” which is inherent to the capitalist system. Another example of structural violence is layoffs of workers, which can trigger a host of social ills including depression, alcoholism, domestic abuse, and homelessness. Instead of addressing such “corporate crime,” the system focuses solely on the secondary results, re-victimizing those who are already the real victims of the vicious profit drives of the capitalists.

Even personal crimes are selectively punished to exclude those in power, an example being assaults of unarmed Blacks by police officers in New York, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and other major cities. When there is a prosecution in these cases, cops are invariably either acquitted or given a small slap on the wrist. They almost never serve time in prison.

Who is in Prison in the US?

The US currently has over two million people locked up in its jails and prisions, which represents the highest per-capita incarceration rate of any country in the world. Overall incarceration rates are 393 per 100,000 for Whites, 957 per 100,000 Latinos, and 2,531 per 100,000 Blacks. An estimated 12% of black males, 3.7% of Hispanic males, and 1.7% of white males in their late twenties are currently in prison or jail. 4,919 per 100,000 black males are currently serving time in the US, while under Apartheid the rate of blacks in South African jails was 851 per 100,000. An estimated 25% of black men have been or will be incarcerated at some time in their lives.2

While the number of inmates in the US has jumped 500% since 1970, violent crime has actually declined. The greatest increase in prison population has been among women, at nearly double the rate of men. The majority of prisoners are held for non-violent offenses; between 1978 and 1996, 52.7% of state prison inmates, 73.7% of jail inmates, and 87.6% of federal inmates were imprisoned for offenses which involved neither harm, nor the threat of harm, to a victim. Only 49% of state prison inmates have committed a violent crime. Almost all the rest have been caught up in the so-called “War on Drugs.”3

The “War on Drugs” started in the 1980s to control substances deemed illegal supposedly because of their harmful effects. In 1995 alone, the program cost $45.5 billion, including incarceration costs. Profit margins in the illegal drug trade and the usage of narcotics by the general public have both increased dramatically since the program was begun, while increasingly severe “get tough” drug laws have been used to disproportionately lock up the poor and people of color. Recently, many provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act have been used to increase the “effectiveness” of drug laws – i.e. increase the already astronomical incarceration rates of nonviolent offenders.

In addition, over half of the prisoners in the US suffer from some form of mental illness, according to Human Rights Watch. This striking figure points directly at the failure of the government to provide meaningful mental health services, opting instead to throw those already victimized by a callous society into the general pool of prisoners.

In addition to increasing incarceration for non-violent drug offenses, the PATRIOT act has made it easier to imprison people for suspicion of “terrorist” activity without due process. This has led to mass detentions of immigrants and increasing incidents of political prisoners in the US.

What are the Conditions in US Prisons?

Occasionally, particularly disgusting episodes of prisoner abuse will emerge into the headlines of newspapers, then quickly be forgotten. Most recently, several hundred prisoners in New Orleans Parish Prison, one of the most notoriously hideous prisons in the US, were left to drown as the floods of Hurricane Katrina swallowed the city. But in general, little media attention is given to the deplorable conditions in US prisons.

Conditions at jails and prisons in the US vary widely. Overall, though, with the massive number of inmates flooding the prison system, it is simply impossibly to build prisons fast enough to house all prisoners. Overcrowding has become a major problem, which leads to unsanitary and inhuman conditions. Unsanitary food and inadequate health services for prisoners are the norm.

Discipline in prisons is usually harsh and often arbitrary or influenced by personal relationships between guards and inmates. Common methods including beatings, use of dogs, solitary confinement (where prisoners are placed in a small, windowless cell with no human contact, for days, weeks or even months), and sexual abuse. Amongst male inmates, sodomization of prisoners has become widely known of by the free population, but little spoken of. Gangsterism and smuggling in prisons is also widely known of, and prison guards sometimes participate by giving preferential treatment and receiving kickbacks from certain inmates. Social heirarchies develop that are a crude caracature of society at large, with some better-off prisoners controlling the lives of those of lesser means.

Aside from US detention centers at Abu Gharaib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the worst problems have been exposed at privately-run prisons. The Corrections Corporation of America, the main for-profit corporation running 3% of prisons in the United States, has faced numerous lawsuits and scandals over failure to provide adequate medical care for prisoners, failure to control violence in prisons, untimely deaths of prisoners, and criminal activity of its employees. The Corporation is a model of what happens when an already troubled public institution is turned over to private management looking to cut corners and turn a profit.

Do Prisons Rehabilitate?

In 2005, the case of Stan “Tookie” Williams became high profile in the run up to his execution by lethal injection in California. A Death Row inmate since 1981, Tookie had been a founding member of the Crips, one of the most notorious street gangs. While on Death Row, he reformed and began working as an anti-gang activist, brokering peace agreements between gangs and writing books against gangs for youth. His work earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and a commendation from President George W. Bush. It was not, however, enough to earn him a legal repreive from the death penalty or commuting of his sentence by Governer Arnold Schwartzanegger. Tookie was killed by the State of California on December 13, 2005.

Tookie’s case brought under public scrutiny the nature of the criminal “justice” system in the United States, highlighting in bold relief that rehabilitation does not matter to those who run the system. Numerous studies have shown the effectiveness of arts and education programs in prisons for reducing recidivism rates, but such programs are small and unevenly implemented where they exist at all. Rehabilitation programs on the outside and halfway houses are inadequate and underfunded. The overwhelming majority of funding in the criminal justice system goes to pay for prison guards, security measures, and prosecution costs.

The “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality is also exhibited by the prevalence of “Three Strikes” laws. In many states, those who are convicted three times of certain offenses are automatically sentenced to life in prison. While such laws have been implemented in about half of the states, California has the toughest three-strikes law, under which any felony counts as a strike. This raises the real spectre of people being locked up for life for pot possession. About 65% of second and third-time offenders in three-strike areas are serving time for non-violent, non-serious offenses. While increasing the inmate population by thousands and the cost to taxpayers by hundreds of millions, Three-strikes laws have been shown to have a negligible impact on crime rates in all areas in which they have been implemented.4

Another aspect of the system that acts as a message to convicts that they are not wanted by society is the disenfranchisement of the democratic rights of felons. Most states bar prisoners and those on parole from voting, while a minority of states bar felons from voting for life after they are released.

The Death Penalty5

A particularly cruel facet of the American prison system is the Death Penalty. Capital punishment was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1976 and is now used in 38 states, with 3,344 people on death row as of February 1, 2007. The death penalty is disproportionately given to racial minorities and in cases where the victim was White. Not much care is taken to insure that those receiving the ultimate punishment actually committed the crime; over 120 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1976.

The United States is the only advanced industrial nation with the death penalty. The justification for the Death Penalty is as a deterrent for violent crime. Yet, in one study, 84% of top criminologists rejected the truth of this presumption. The areas of the country with the highest executions also have the highest murder rates. Most disturbingly, the death penalty has been used against 22 people whose offenses were committed as juveniles, a dozen mentally retarded inmates, and over 100 others with some other kind of mental illness.

Prison Labor

The term “Prison-Industrial Complex” conjures up images of shackled, stripe-suited inmates standing at assembly lines or swinging sledgehammers on chain gangs. Both voluntary and slave labor are a big part of prisons in America. Prisons have become a source of cheap labor for profit-driven industries. In Washington State, for instance, prisoners in 2004 worked over 3 million hours while in jail, contributing almost $25 million at state minimum wage in unpaid labor.6

There are now over 80,000 inmates employed in commercial activity, some earning as little as 21 cents per hour. Some are paid more, but few earn more than minimum wage. This boils down to slave-like exploitation of prisoners, though in many states the programs are voluntary. Some states have instituted “payback” programs, where prisoners who can are required to work and “pay back” the cost of their incarceration through the meager wages they earn. Prison labor is being increasingly used in place of jobs previously held by union employees making many times what the prisoners are paid. Obviously, there are no unions in jail.

Prisons and the Economy

Prison-building has become big business. Business 2.0 Magazine estimates the prison economy at a staggering $37 Billion. The American prison system is full of opportunities for economic exploitation. One example is the $1 Billion collect-calling market among prisoners. Companies that build and supply prisons are paid somewhere around $30 Billion annually. And with the offshoring of factory jobs due to trade agreements such as NAFTA, the economies of many smaller towns have come to rely on prisons as a base. With such economic incentives, it is no wonder the number of prisoners and prisons is rocketing upward.

The Root Causes of Imprisonment

There are many different viewpoints on why the United States has so many people incarcerated. But neither the idea that prisons somehow act as deterrents to crime, nor that they rehabilitate the so-called “criminally-minded,” nor that they are at all socially beneficial under the current system, are borne out by the hundreds upon hundreds of studies regarding this country’s prison system.

Historically, prisons have been used as means of isolating political opponents to the powers that be. They are used to continue the marginalization of racial minorities, dividing the working class along race lines. They are used to divide already marginalized populations, isolating the emotionally unstable elements who may at some point decide to focus their anger on the system that oppresses them. The threat of prison hangs over the heads of those who might otherwise organize to fight their oppressors.

Those people caught in the prison cycle are continually cast back into the lowest income brackets. They become cheap labor for the capitalist robber barons, sources of rent for slum housing which may or may not be a step up from a jail cell, easy to reincarcerate if they step out of line. They are tempted by or forced into the higher-paying black market economy, which allows the capitalist overlords a pretext for throwing them back in prison and re-starting the cycle. They are a surplus population, but one much valued by many, many wealthy business-owners.

By contrast, those who commit the most heinous crimes, those which ruin the lives of vast scores of people, almost never see the inside of a jail cell. In 2001, Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, a friend of George W. Bush, knowingly committed massive accounting fraud, which eventually cost 21,000 employees their jobs and pensions. As “punishment” for his crime, Mr. Lay made off with a $900,000-a-year nest egg and a huge new house. (Because this case was so high profile, Lay was eventually found guilty of conspiracy and fraud, punishable by 25 to 40 years in prison, but died before sentencing. Such prosecutions are rare, though, while business fraud is common, and those that are prosecuted usually get very light sentences in minimum-security “resort” prisons). Then there is the case of President Bush himself and his Administration lackeys, who have so far sent over 3,000 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians to their deaths for extremely dubious reasons. Yet, far from facing a war crimes tribunal, Bush will not even come close to being impeached for the wars’ failures or its human toll.

This toll, when compared to all of the personal crimes for which U.S. citizens are currently serving jail time, gives new meaning to the word “petty.” We need a new society with a new justice system, one set up to help those traumatized by socioeconomic and environmental factors beyond their control. Those committing “crimes” with no victims other than themselves do not belong in prison, and those responsible for more serious crimes deserve the chance to redeem themselves and rejoin society without an enormous struggle. The prison-industrial complex has no place in civilization, and under a just, socialist society, it would simply fade away to nonexistence.

Notes and Sources

1. Introduction is from the Critical Resistance website, http://www.criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=what_is_pic

2. Figures are from US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, current as of July 2005.

3. From the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, c.2002.

4. Figures are from the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice

5. Information from the Death Penalty Information Center, February 1, 2007, and Amnesty International, January 31, 2006

6. Information from the Washington State Jail Industries Board 2004 Offender Work Report