(Second Edition, Second edition)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781604860436 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | PM Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2009 |
| Series: | PM Pamphlet |
| Edition description: | Second Edition, Second edition |
| Pages: | 24 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.10(d) |
About the Author
Eve Goldberg is a writer, filmmaker, and prisoners’ rights activist.
Read an Excerpt
The Prison-Industrial Complex & The Global Economy
By Eve Goldberg, Linda Evans
PM Press
Copyright © 2009 Eve Goldberg and Linda EvansAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-043-6
CHAPTER 1
STATISTICS
The following updated prison information and statistics taken from a 12/07 justice department report were provided by BO (r.d. brown).
The u.s. prison population's explosion is an ever growing cancer: 7 MILLION people — one in every 32 adults — are behind bars. Of those, 2.2 million are in jail; more than 4.1 million are on probation; and almost 1 million are on parole.
The rate of imprisonment for women continues to grow at a faster pace than for males; though the women are still less than 3% of the total. Misguided (or perhaps purposeful) policies that create harsher sentences for non-violent drug crimes are responsible for this ridiculous rise. From 1995–2003 prisoner population in federal prisons increased by 49%. Racial disparity (phrase of the new language for racism) also continues. In the 25–29 age group, close to 9% or 1 in 13 Black men are prisoners; compared with 2.6% Latino/Hispanic men and 1.1% for white men. Black women are twice as likely as Latinas and three times as likely as white women to be in prison. Therefore, the information in these few pages should be required reading for everyone. The importance of understanding the P.I.C. is learning how not to run a country, and we must know this in order to create a different world for the planet and for ourselves. History does not have to repeat itself. We must begin today to think differently and to certainly act differently or we will continue to destroy our tomorrow.
CHAPTER 2 GOING INTO THE PRISON
by Chrystos
the guard growls, What's this?!
Poetry, I answer, just Poetry
He waves me through
with a yawn
that delights me
So I smuggle my words in
to the women
who bite them chewing starving
I'm honored to serve them
bring color music feelings
into that soul death
Smiling as I weep
for Poetry who has such a bad reputation
She's boring, unnecessary, incomprehensible
obscure, effete
The perfect weapon
for this sneaky old war horse
to make a rich repast of revolution
for Linda Evans
THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX & THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Over 1.8 million people are currently behind bars in the United States. This represents the highest per capita incarceration rate in the history of the world. In 1995 alone, 150 new U.S. prisons were built and filled.
This monumental commitment to lock up a sizeable percentage of the population is an integral part of the globalization of capital. Several strands converged at the end of the Cold War, changing relations between labor and capital on an international scale: domestic economic decline, racism, the U.S. role as policeman of the world, and growth of the international drug economy in creating a booming prison/industrial complex. And the prison-industrial complex is rapidly becoming an essential component of the U.S. economy.
CHAPTER 4PRISONS ARE BIG BUSINESS
Like the military/industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex is an interweaving of private business and government interests. Its twofold purpose is profit and social control. Its public rationale is the fight against crime.
Not so long ago, communism was "the enemy" and communists were demonized as a way of justifying gargantuan military expenditures. Now, fear of crime and the demonization of criminals serve a similar ideological purpose: to justify the use of tax dollars for the repression and incarceration of a growing percentage of our population. The omnipresent media blitz about serial killers, missing children, and "random violence" feeds our fear. In reality, however, most of the "criminals" we lock up are poor people who commit nonviolent crimes out of economic need. Violence occurs in less than 14% of all reported crime, and injuries occur in just 3%. In California, the top three charges for those entering prison are: possession of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance for sale, and robbery. Violent crimes like murder, rape, manslaughter and kidnapping don't even make the top ten.
Like fear of communism during the Cold War, fear of crime is a great selling tool for a dubious product.
As with the building and maintenance of weapons and armies, the building and maintenance of prisons are big business. Investment houses, construction companies, architects, and support services such as food, medical, transportation and furniture, all stand to profit by prison expansion. A burgeoning "specialty item" industry sells fencing, handcuffs, drug detectors, protective vests, and other security devices to prisons.
As the Cold War winds down and the Crime War heats up, defense industry giants like Westinghouse are re-tooling and lobbying Washington for their share of the domestic law enforcement market. "Night Enforcer" goggles used in the Gulf War, electronic "Hot Wire" fencing ("so hot NATO chose it for high-risk installations"), and other equipment once used by the military, are now being marketed to the criminal justice system.
Communication companies like AT&T, Sprint, and MCI are getting into the act as well, gouging prisoners with exorbitant phone calling rates, often six times the normal long distance charge. Smaller firms like Correctional Communications Corp., dedicated solely to the prison phone business, provide computerized prison phone systems, fully equipped for systematic surveillance. They win government contracts by offering to "kick back" some of the profits to the government agency awarding the contract. These companies are reaping huge profits at the expense of prisoners and their families; prisoners are often effectively cut off from communication due to the excessive cost of phone calls.
One of the fastest growing sectors of the prison-industrial complex is private corrections companies. Investment firm Smith Barney is a part owner of a prison in Florida. American Express and General Electric have invested in private prison construction in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Correctional Corporation Of America, one of the largest private prison owners, already operates internationally, with more than 48 facilities in 11 states, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Under contract by government to run jails and prisons, and paid a fixed sum per prisoner, the profit motive mandates that these firms operate as cheaply and efficiently as possible. This means lower wages for staff, no unions, and fewer services for prisoners. Private contracts also mean less public scrutiny. Prison owners are raking in billions by cutting corners which harm prisoners. Substandard diets, extreme overcrowding, and abuses by poorly trained personnel have all been documented and can be expected in these institutions which are unabashedly about making money.
Prisons are also a leading rural growth industry. With traditional agriculture being pushed aside by agribusiness, many rural American communities are facing hard times. Economically depressed areas are falling over each other to secure a prison facility of their own. Prisons are seen as a source of jobs — in construction, local vendors and prison staff — as well as a source of tax revenues. An average prison has a staff of several hundred employees and an annual payroll of several million dollars.
Like any industry, the prison economy needs raw materials. In this case the raw materials are prisoners. The prison-industrial complex can grow only if more and more people are incarcerated — even if crime rates drop. "Three Strikes" and mandatory minimums (harsh, fixed sentences without parole) are two examples of the legal superstructure quickly being put in place to guarantee that the prison population will grow and grow and grow.
CHAPTER 5LABOR & THE FLIGHT OF CAPITAL
The growth of the prison-industrial complex is inextricably tied to the fortunes of labor. Ever since the onset of the Reagan-Bush years in 1980, workers in the United States have been under siege. Aggressive union busting, corporate deregulation, and especially the flight of capital in search of cheaper labor markets, have been crucial factors in the downward plight of American workers.
One wave of capital flight occurred in the 1970s. Manufacturing such as textiles in the Northeast moved south — to South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama — non-union states where wages were low. During the 1980s, many more industries (steel, auto, etc.) closed up shop, moving on to the "more competitive atmospheres" of Mexico, Brazil, or Taiwan where wages were a mere fraction of those in the U.S., and environmental, health and safety standards were much lower. Most seriously hurt by these plant closures and layoffs were African-Americans and other semi-skilled workers in urban centers who lost their decent paying industrial jobs.
Into the gaping economic hole left by the exodus of jobs from U.S. cities has rushed another economy: the drug economy.
CHAPTER 6THE WAR ON DRUGS
The "War on Drugs," launched by President Reagan in the mid-eighties, has been fought on interlocking international and domestic fronts.
At the international level, the war on drugs has been both a cynical cover-up of U.S. government involvement in the drug trade, as well as justification for U.S. military intervention and control in the Third World.
Over the last 50 years, the primary goal of U.S. foreign policy (and the military industrial complex) has been to fight communism and protect corporate interests. To this end, the U.S. government has, with regularity, formed strategic alliances with drug dealers throughout the world. At the conclusion of World War II, the OSS (precursor to the CIA) allied itself with heroin traders on the docks of Marseille in an effort to wrest power away from communist dock workers. During the Vietnam war, the CIA aided the heroin producing Hmong tribesmen in the Golden Triangle area. In return for cooperation with the U.S. government's war against the Vietcong and other national liberation forces, the CIA flew local heroin out of Southeast Asia and into America. It's no accident that heroin addiction in the U.S. rose exponentially in the 1960s.
Nor is it an accident that cocaine began to proliferate in the United States during the 1980s. Central America is the strategic halfway point for air travel between Colombia and the United States. The Contra War against Sandinista Nicaragua, as well as the war against the national liberation forces in El Salvador, was largely about control of this critical area. When Congress cut off support for the Contras, Oliver North and friends found other ways to fund the Contra re-supply operations, in part through drug dealing. Planes loaded with arms for the Contras took off from the southern United States, offloaded their weapons on private landing strips in Honduras, then loaded up with cocaine for the return trip.
A 1996 exposé by the San Jose Mercury News documented CIA involvement in a Nicaraguan drug ring which poured thousands of kilos of cocaine into Los Angeles' African-American neighborhoods in the 1980s. Drug boss, Danilo Blandon, now an informant for the DEA, acknowledged under oath the drugs-for-weapons deals with the CIA sponsored Contras.
U.S. military presence in Central and Latin America has not stopped drug traffic. But it has influenced aspects of the drug trade, and is a powerful force of social control in the region. U.S. military intervention — whether in propping up dictators or squashing peasant uprisings — now operates under cover of the righteous war against drugs and "narco-terrorism."
In Mexico, for example, U.S. military aid supposedly earmarked for the drug war is being used to arm Mexican troops in the southern part of the country. The drug trade, however (production, transfer, and distribution points) is all in the north. The "drug war money" is being used primarily to fight against the Zapatista rebels in the southern state of Chiapas who are demanding land reform and economic policy changes which are diametrically opposed to the transnational corporate agenda.
In the Colombian jungles of Cartagena de Chaira, coca has become the only viable commercial crop. In 1996, 30,000 farmers blocked roads and airstrips to prevent crop spraying from aircraft. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) one of the oldest guerrilla organizations in Latin America, held 60 government soldiers hostage for nine months, demanding that the military leave the jungle, that social services be increased, and that alternative crops be made available to farmers. And given the notorious involvement of Colombia's highest officials with the powerful drug cartels, it is not surprising that most U.S. "drug war" military aid actually goes to fighting the guerrillas.
One result of the international war on drugs has been the internationalization of the U.S. prison population. For the most part, it is the low level "mules" carrying drugs into this country who are captured and incarcerated in ever-increasing numbers. At least 25% of inmates in the federal prison system today will be subject to deportation when their sentences are completed.
Here at home, the war on drugs has been a war on poor people. Particularly poor, urban, African-American men and women. It's well documented that police enforcement of the new, harsh drug laws have been focused on low-level dealers in communities of color. Arrests of African-Americans have been about five times higher than arrests of whites, although whites and African-Americans use drugs at about the same rate. And, African-Americans have been imprisoned in numbers even more disproportionate than their relative arrest rates. It is estimated that in 1994, on any given day, one out of every 128 U.S. adults was incarcerated, while one out of every 17 African-American adult males was incarcerated.
The differential in sentencing for powder and crack cocaine is one glaring example of institutionalized racism. About 90% of crack arrests are of African-Americans, while 75% of powder cocaine arrests are of whites. Under federal law, it takes only five grams of crack cocaine to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. But it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine — 100 times as much — to trigger this same sentence. This flagrant injustice was highlighted by a 1996 nationwide federal prison rebellion when Congress refused to enact changes in sentencing laws that would equalize penalties.
Statistics show that police repression and mass incarceration are not curbing the drug trade. Dealers are forced to move, turf is reshuffled, already vulnerable families are broken up. But the demand for drugs still exists, as do huge profits for high-level dealers in this fifty billion dollar international industry.
From one point of view, the war on drugs can actually be seen as a preemptive strike. The state's repressive apparatus working overtime. Put poor people away before they get angry. Incarcerate those at the bottom, the helpless, the hopeless, before they demand change. What drugs don't damage (in terms of intact communities, the ability to take action, to organize) the war on drugs and mass imprisonment will surely destroy.
The crackdown on drugs has not stopped drug use. But it has taken thousands of unemployed (and potentially angry and rebellious) young men and women off the streets. And it has created a mushrooming prison population.
CHAPTER 7PRISON LABOR
An American worker who once upon a time made $8/hour, loses his job when the company relocates to Thailand where workers are paid only $2/day. Unemployed, and alienated from a society indifferent to his needs, he becomes involved in the drug economy or some other outlawed means of survival. He is arrested, put in prison, and put to work. His new salary: 22 cents/hour.
From worker, to unemployed, to criminal, to convict laborer, the cycle has come full circle. And the only victor is big business.
For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No unemployment insurance or workers' compensation to pay. No language problem, as in a foreign country. New leviathan prisons are being built with thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, water-beds, and lingerie for Victoria's Secret. All at a fraction of the cost of "free labor."
Prisoners can be forced to work for pennies because they have no rights. Even the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery, excludes prisoners from its protections.
And, more and more, prisons are charging inmates for basic necessities — from medical care, to toilet paper, to use of the law library. Many states are now charging "room and board." Berks County jail in Pennsylvania is charging inmates $10 per day to be there. California has similar legislation pending. So, while government cannot (yet) actually require inmates to work at private industry jobs for less than minimum wage, they are forced to by necessity.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Prison-Industrial Complex & The Global Economy by Eve Goldberg, Linda Evans. Copyright © 2009 Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans. Excerpted by permission of PM Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
PRISON STATISTICS,POEM: GOING INTO THE PRISON,
THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY,
PRISONS ARE BIG BUSINESS,
LABOR AND THE FLIGHT OF CAPITAL,
THE WAR ON DRUGS,
PRISON LABOR,
WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER,
WHAT IS TO BE DONE,
REFERENCES,
RESOURCES,
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES,