The Complexity of the Prison Industrial Complex
A quintessentially American tale of racism and capitalism
The United States of America was built upon the backs of slaves, a reality that haunts our history and shapes our culture and politics today. Among other structures, this has culminated into a prison system that undermines the rights of Black people. This system began with the loophole in the 13th amendment that outlawed slavery “except as punishment for a crime,” which was then upheld time and time again by the Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton administrations through the criminalization of drugs and “tough on crime” policy. The modern-day culmination of these events is the Prison Industrial Complex, in which the punishment industry is becoming increasingly privatized to the benefit of large corporations and to the detriment of minority communities. Essentially, American capitalism combined with deeply ingrained racism has created a new means of oppression; the Prison Industrial Complex is the result of the intersection of racist and capitalist ideology. In order to better our society and right the wrongs the punishment system has caused, there must be large scale reform.
The story begins in 1865 with the passing of the 13th Amendment having abolished slavery. The amendment had a crucial loophole; “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Former slave owners with power and influence in the South exploited this loophole by criminalizing Black men into permissible servitude, effectively retaining the racial power structure of the region in the process.
While that was 155 years ago, both conscious and unconscious bias have kept Black men in prisons since through policies that disproportionately affect minority communities. For example, Nixon enacted policies in the 60’s that criminalized drugs as an intentioned blow to antiwar hippies and Black communities, who were his harshest critics at the time. Drug laws such as these continued to be a Republican talking point under Ronald Reagan to appear “tough on crime.” These laws drew a lot of public support, resulting in Democrat Bill Clinton to adopt a similar stance in order to not appear weak to the American people. In fact, Clinton even went so far as to establish the 1033 Program that militarized police forces to aid in their fight in the War on Drugs with surplus military equipment. These are the same military surpluses that were used to brutalize citizens and kill innocent Black people.
Aside from policy, media portrayals of Black men also have a driving force over how the public views them. Violent crime is often overreported by news networks in comparison to how often it occurs. Because of this cognitive dissonance, the public is led to believe that Black men are committing violent crimes by the dozen, which warps their perception and causes them to view Black men as criminals. The fear tactics create a subconscious bias that falsely leads people to believe in the inherent guilt of Black men even before conviction — effectively, they have become guilty until proven innocent. This phenomenon is especially evident considering the infamous Central Park Five case; only a very small percentage of papers and news networks used the word “alleged” when referring to the boys who had not yet even stood trial. Essentially, the criminalization of the Black body has led to widespread belief that Black people (and specifically Black men) are inherently criminal. This racist belief propagated a whole system that subverts the rights of an entire race of people.
Despite the aforementioned methods being ever present in our modern-day system, the current form of discrimination in punishment is less overt in nature and therefore more overlooked. Another pillar our country was built upon aside from racism is capitalism and the ideals of the free market. However, the application of capitalist ideals to the punishment industry has proven to be disastrous for the individuals who make up the prison system because it favors large corporations. It is important to think of modern-day prisons as an industry; there must be a supply and demand. Prisons have become increasingly privatized, and the companies who build the prisons do so at an offer to the government provided that all the beds are filled. Even if the crime rate goes down, the beds in those prisons must be filled, so police use certain tactics to ensure that people end up in prison. Essentially, more arrests are made because there is financial gain to private corporations in incarcerating more people. The corporations who build and maintain these prisons have a strong vested financial interest, and therefore are influential lobbyists in government to protect those interests. In particular, a lobbyist by the name of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) goes so far as to write laws for Congressmen that work in their favor. As a result, the coffers of these companies’ CEOs are treated with more respect than the rights and dignity of Black men in this country. Despite the privatization of prisons having a direct negative impact on minority communities, those corporations have a strong foothold in government and would not want to lose money.
How do you keep prisons full? By targeting the poor who cannot afford bail. How do you target the poor? By stripping away social programs to alleviate their financial situation. These poor communities are always minorities, another consequence of our country’s racist history. Freed slaves had no wealth to pass down to their children. This continues for generations, so Black people today are still affected by the slavery of their ancestors. In our nation today, while more poor people in the United States are white, a larger percentage of the African American race is poor compared to Caucasians.
Another contributing factor to this whole system is the distrust between the Black community and police officers. Their distrust is well-founded because police brutality is one of the driving forces that has kept the system working for so long. It also keeps prisons full because Black men can be arrested on petty or bogus charges and subsequently take plea deals to avoid going to court for minimum sentencing. However, perhaps one of the most appalling modern-day manifestations of this Prison Industrial Complex is the School-to-Prison Pipeline. This tactic has proven to be a foolproof way to ensure prisons stay full by starting out young. The pipeline starts with low-resource schools that underperform in standardized testing. The Department of Education does not allocate enough resources, so these schools struggle to educate their children because of a lack of basic materials such as textbooks. Also, due to laws like the No Child Left Behind Act, schools are pressured to achieve good standardized testing scores. Laws such as these provide an incentive to expel students who are bringing down the score average.
School hallways are policed more often now, with basic disciplinary matters being delegated to school police officers rather than discipline being issued by the school itself. Policing in schools paired with new zero-tolerance policies has caused rates of suspension and expulsion to skyrocket. These kids most likely end up in prison because they resort to illegal activities since they are not in school anymore, which causes them to not be able to secure a job as an adult since they have a record. Therefore, they must resort to illegal activity to survive, which lands them back in prison time and time again. It is a ruthless and ongoing cycle that endlessly repeats.
The question we must pose is, how do we apply justice to our current system? There are many ways to go about this, but we must begin by going to the root of the issue. For a full-scale reform to happen, we need to fundamentally change the way we view criminality. Maybe criminals do not need to be locked away in prison but pay back a debt to society in a way that is constructive and can reintroduce them as a functioning member upon that debt being paid. Additionally, we need to be proactive in preventing the causes of crime in the first place. This would include better mental health resources, decriminalization of drugs, less policing in schools, and demilitarizing the police. In terms of the financial aspect of the Prison Industrial Complex, a complete reordering of the relationship between the government and large corporations in the private sector must occur. Although nothing can repay those who have been treated unjustly by the criminal justice system, we can do better for future generations.
The prison industrial complex is just a piece in the larger puzzle — just one more way in which the Black community has been historically marginalized in this country. The complex is the new slavery, the new Jim Crow, the new segregation, the new redlining. We must end the trend here before the next iteration of discrimination rears it head. Since racism is so deeply ingrained in all of our social and political systems, we need an entire reworking of our social fabric and political establishments in order to start healing the racial wounds of this country.
