Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners
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About this ebook
Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners is a graphic narrative project that attempts to distill the fundamental components of what scholars, activists, and artists have identified as the Mass Incarceration movement in the United States.
Since the early 1990s, activist critics of the US prison system have marked its emergence as a “complex” in a manner comparable to how President Eisenhower described the Military Industrial Complex. Like its institutional “cousin,” the Prison Industrial Complex features a critical combination of political ideology, far-reaching federal policy, and the neo-liberal directive to privatize institutions traditionally within the purview of the government. The result is that corporations have capital incentives to capture and contain human bodies.
The Prison Industrial Complex relies on the “law and order” ideology fomented by President Nixon and developed at least partially in response to the unrest generated through the Civil Rights Movement. It is (and has been) enhanced and emboldened via the US “war on drugs,” a slate of policies that by any account have failed to do anything except normalize the warehousing of nonviolent substance abusers in jails and prisons that serve more as criminal training centers then as redemptive spaces for citizens who might re-enter society successfully.
Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners is a primer for how these issues emerged and how our awareness of the systems at work in mass incarceration might be the very first step in reforming an institution responsible for some of our most egregious contemporary civil rights violations.
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Reviews for Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book looks at how, and why, America leads the world in the number of its citizens per capita that are incarcerated. The term "prison industrial complex" may be a new term, but it is a very old concept.Of course, it all started in the days of slavery, when millions of Africans were brought to the Western Hemisphere. In 1829, in Philadelphia, the Quakers and other reformers opened the Eastern State Penitentiary. Solitary confinement was thought to provide a prisoner the space and time to reflect and consider God's judgment. The cells required the prisoner to bow when entering or leaving the cell. The only small window was in the ceiling; it was sometimes called "the eye of God." The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, the one that abolished slavery, contained a big loophole (anyone convicted of a crime was subject to involuntary servitude/slavery) which whites were quick to exploit. New laws were created, including Jim Crow laws, to keep blacks oppressed as much as possible.More recently, there are many parts to the Prison Industrial Complex. Many inner city schools are closing, and those that are still open are starved for money. This reduces the chances of the average young person doing anything except joining the "underground economy" and ending up in jail. There is little, or no, attempt at rehabilitation in prison. Private prison corporations will cut costs wherever possible (to boost profits) including on things like food for the prisoners. Many well-known corporations use prison labor. The "war on drugs" has been a total failure. All that it has done is jail thousands of non-violent drug offenders. Recidivism rates in American prisons are high. A sure political vote-getter are the words "tough on crime" even though actual crime rates have dropped by a lot. Did I forget to mention "stop and frisk" and Black Lives Matter? This book includes a syllabus for a college course called Black Prison Narratives.This book deserves more than five stars. It is easy to read, and incredibly timely. The Prison Industrial Complex did not just suddenly appear; it is the result of very specific political, racial and economic policies designed to benefit the few over the many. It is extremely highly recommended.