The Prison Industrial Complex

The Prison Industrial Complex
America’s slave plantations

The Shield
Vol. 1, No. 12 July 2007

Most of this article will focus
on the private sector
associated with the penal
system, but I would also like to
briefly touch on some
environmental factors that act as a
lubricant for the Prison Industrial
Complex. Because of its political
sensitivity I will skim over the
Welfare System and high divorce
rate. Myself, like many others
know successful people who grew
up under these circumstances.
Quoting from an article in the
American Friends Service Committee,
“ The politics of systems —
— the welfare system, the public
school system, the health and the
criminal justice system play a
profound role in the lives of the poor
in this country.
In the Fall of 2000 , Opra
Winfrey aired a show about,
“juvenile crime.” The discussion
was centered around a juvenile
nicknamed “Gummie” who
committed several crimes in the
West Englewood community in
Chicago. On the panel was Patrick
Murphy, who was an official, at that
time with the Cook County Juvenile
Corrections, was quoted as saying,
“Hundreds of Gummies come
through the system everyday, but I
can count on one hand the ones
who come through whose father
plays an active role in their development.
”(Unquote) Without
the knowledge being passed on
from the head of the household who
is in the trenches and being the
shock absorber for whatever the
society has to throw at him, the
family unit becomes more
vulnerable to a system which seeks
to exploit its members. The Welfare
System and high divorce rate have
created a serious absentee father
problem.
We now find impressionable
youth involved in the gangster
antics of the prohibition era such as
drive-bys. The theme is echoed in
gangster rap where many youth
view a conviction rap sheet as a
right of passage. The societies
temper - tantrum creates judges
whose appointments hinge on a
high conviction rate and the social
safety net for the youth begins to
be replaced with a dragnet. These
kind of environmental factors
provide oil for one of America’s
largest growth industry, the Prison
Industrial Complex.
When the Prison Industrial
Complex is brought up, usually the
first issue is privatization . As we will
see later, there is not a big leap to
privatization from the extent the
private sector is already involved in
the penal system.
According to a Fall, 1993 article
in Covert Action Quarterly entitled
Prisons for Profit, private prisons are
not new in U.S history. In the mid -
1800’s legislatures awarded contracts
to private corporations to operate
Louisiana’s first state prison, New
York’s Auburn and Sing Sing
penitentiaries and others. As the
system spread , labor and business
complained of unfair competition. By
the turn of the century, the first era of
private prisons came to an end.
The concern for privatization
resurfaced under former President
Reagan’s Get Tough on Crime
Policy.” Prison populations soared
in the 1980’s into the 1990’s, making
the Land of the Free (U.S.) the
world leader in locking up its
citizenry. According to the FBI
Uniform Crime Reports, by 1990,
421 Americans out of 100,000 were
behind bars, easily outdistancing
our closest competitors, South
Africa and the then USSR with its
KGB tactics. On any given day the
prison population topped 1.2
million, compared to the fewer than
400,000 at the start of the Reagan
era. Currently the prison population
is 2 million plus.
The Prison Industrial Complex
has become such a well oiled
machine, there are currently 7
million in U.S. jails, on probation
or parole. In Illinois 2/3rds of those
released from prison return to the
inmate population within three
years.
The cost of the state and local
federal corrections budgets ran to
more than 20 million a year in the
early 1990’s.The cost of constructing
cells to keep up with the constant
increase in prisoners is estimated at
$6 million a year. The public sector
imprisonment industry employs
more than 50,000 guards as well as
additional tens of thousands of
administrators,and health, education
and food service providers.
Especially in rural communities
where employment is scarce,
corrections institutions provide
stable jobs. Private enterprises from
architectural firms and construction
companies, to drug treatment and
food service contractors, to prison
industries –to the whole gamut of
equipment and hardware suppliers
of steel doors, razor wire,
communications systems and
uniforms. Post programs like
electronic monitoring and boot
camps all get a piece of the action.
Quoting from a January 29,
1996 article in The Nation entitled
Making Prisons Pay, Bob Tessler,
owner of DPAS, a company that
opened a date processing operation
in San Quentin State Prison. “ We
have a captive labor force, a group
of men who want to work. That
makes the whole business
profitable. We don’t have to pay
health and welfare on top of wages
. We don’t have to pay vacation or
sick pay.” (Unquote) DAS also gets
a 10% per cent tax cut on the first
$2,000 of each inmates wages.
In California’s Joint Venture
Program inmates receive a
minimum wage minus 80% that is
withheld to cover “institutional
costs”. Quoting “ Brad Haga,
former spokesman for Oregon
Prison Industries , “We’ve got guys
paying $6,000 a year to rent a cell.”
(unquote) According to Haga,
Unigroups aggressive marketing
tactics sold over $4.5 million worth
of “Prison Blues ”, a convict made
line of blue jeans. The California
Department of Corrections even
made inroads into the Japanese jean
market with a line of “Gangsta
Blues”. Ironically the gangster
culture was being glamorized and
sold back to the public by the very
criminal justice system that claims
to be at war with these threats to
society.
These industries are finding
prison joint ventures more
lucrative than cheap foreign labor
because there’s no language
problem, better control of the
workforce and because it is local
there is a quicker turn around time.
There also are no strikes or
union organizing. In fact , they
have been used to break strikes.
Prior to proposition 139 in
California , TWA’s ticket reservation
operation in Ventura Youth Facility
was allowed to open because
juvenile prisons were exempt from
many of the state laws. The
company was forced to close its Los
Angeles reservation office because
of a flight attendants strike. Over a
2-day period, 61 youthful offenders
worked 718 hours processing calls
from travelers who would have
otherwise been lost to TWA’s
competitors. TWA’s extra help
allowed them to transfer ticket
agents to flight attendant positions,
effectively breaking the strike .
According to August , 1999
report AFSCME Corrections
United, three independent studies
have shown that private prisons
haven’t saved the taxpayers any real
money or improved service. These
companies make their profits by
cutting corners and hiring workers
at lower pay.
As we have seen, the
tentacles of the Prison Industrial
Complex are many. Environmental
factors related to the
family unit and corporate greed
fuel a machine that views an
offender as a cash crop. Until a
system is in place where the
overall health of the society takes
precedent over corporate greed
this condition will only magnify.