Theorising the prison industrial complex (original) (raw)
Related papers
Societies Without Borders, 2007
Th is paper utilizes the concept of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) in order to examine the complex confi guration comprised of the US prison system, multinational corporations, small private businesses and the inmate population in the social and political economy of the 21st century US. Utilizing data on the PIC we pose the question: What is the purpose of prison, the rehabilitation of the inmates or the exploitation of prison labor? Specifi cally we argue, using Wright's neo-Marxist theory, that the current system of incarceration in the US mimics the exploitation characteristic of the slave plantation economy of the southern US, ripe with human rights violations, the products and profi ts of which are exported daily through the expansion of global markets. Si la edifi camos ocurrirán: las violaciones de derechos humanos y el negocio de las prisiones Esta ponencia usa el concepto de Complejo Penal Industrial (PIC) para examinar la compleja confi guración del sistema penal americano de hoy, compuesto por empresas multinacionales, empresas pequeñas y la población encarcelada. Utilizando datos sobre el PIC, planteamos la cuestión: ¿Cual es el propósito de las prisiones, la rehabilitación de los presos o su explotación laboral? Sostenemos, usando la teoría neo-marxista de Wright, que el actual sistema de encarcelamiento en los Estados Unidos reproduce la economía de la 1) Th e fi rst part of our title is actually a paraphrase from the popular fi lm Field of Dreams (1989), about a farmer who becomes convinced by a mysterious voice that he is supposed to construct a baseball diamond in his corn fi eld. Th e fi lm stars Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones. We are grateful to Judith Blau, Alberto Moncada, Bonnie Berry, and Tim McGettigan for their insightful and thorough reviews of our paper. We dedicate this paper to the late Senator Paul Wellstone (1944-2002) who dedicated his life to the fi ght for human rights.
Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 2019
Western academia has shown an increased interest in the question of incarceration throughout the late 20 th century and the early 21 st century. Michel Foucault's Surveiller et punir (1975) sparked renewed discussions of carceral institutions as key to the political architecture of western modernity and as phenomena which demand critical and theoretical attention in genealogical as well as in structural and infra -structural terms. Since the book's publication, many scholars across different areas of inquiry have engaged in historical, sociological, political and cultural analysis of the carceral. Emerging from what was the burgeoning field of cultural studies, during the seventies Stuart Hall's co -authored book, Policing the Crisis (1978), with its focus on the political manipulation of anxieties regarding small crime in Britain and its denunciation of the highly mediatized hegemonic constructs which underpinned the criminalization of working -class racialized subjects, was a pioneering work which opened new paths to those studying security and punitive systems. Gilles Deleuze's short essay on control societies (1992) 1 proved to be an important theoretical reference for anyone working on security and punitive systems: a historical successor to the disciplinary societies presented by Foucault, the logic of control drafted by Deleuze has been highly suggestive as a means of articulating a range of shifts in the organization of power, conveying the new mechanisms of control as a broader, highly diffuse and technologically supported system of security and surveillance upheld by corporate interests.
Taking critique of the penal state to its logical conclusion.pdf
TOA-MAGAZIN, 2018
This is the English and German translation of the article published in the German Restorative Justice Journal TOA-MAGAZIN on 3rd December 2018. The paper provides a friendly but critical account of Geoffroy De Lagasnerie (2018) Judge and Punish: The Penal State on Trial from an abolitionist perspective.
Prisons in the Neoliberal Era: Class and Symbolic Dimensions (MA Thesis)
2010
The aim of this paper is to explore prison’s class and symbolic dimensions in the Neoliberal Era. Neoliberalism was approached as the empowerment of the market which leads to the dismantlement of the social welfare state and to the strengthening of the penal state for the marginalised populations. Also, it was analysed as the ‘conduct of conduct’ in the Foucauldian sense, as it was argued that prison is a tool of government, functioning for the management of the marginalised populations. An effort was undertaken to discuss the differences of the US, the ‘carceral example’, with the European Union countries. The class and symbolic dimensions of punishment were first approached from a historical and a theoretical perspective respectively, before attempting to discuss neoliberalism, aiming to show the maintenance of prison’s main characteristics through time under capitalism. It was argued that the dismantlement of the welfare state brought to the fore the destabilisation of the labour market and the concurrent strategies of responsibilisation which led to the increased use of imprisonment. The result is the phenomenon of mass imprisonment, mainly affecting poor and marginalised populations and communities, leading to their further exclusion and social control. Furthermore, the relation of the industry with the penal policies was discussed, as part of the passage from welfare to ‘workfare’ and ‘prisonfare’. Concerning the symbolic dimensions of prisons, it was argued that the dominant representations of the criminals should be explored under the scope of the demonisation strategies, which aim to legitimise the harsher penal policies and to naturalise the discourse on ‘criminal classes’. Therefore, emotional attitudes are emphasised, as leading to the uncritical acceptance of mass imprisonment. On the other hand, the risk management strategies were discussed, which despite having rationalistic and apolitical objectives, disguise the responsibilisation strategies of the neoliberal era and the narrative of institutionalised insecurity. The analysis of the actuarial practises showed that the targeting of the population as a whole marks the transition from the disciplinary society to the control society. The objective of this analysis was to establish an account of neoliberalism and the phenomenon of mass imprisonment, contributing to the radical analyses on prison aiming to provide argumentation for the promotion of radical social action towards prison abolition.
The irrationality of the prison-industrial complex
Dialectical Anthropology, 2010
In order to approach the topic of reentry pragmatically, it is necessary to reject ideological arguments regarding not only crime and punishment but also employment; in particular, the argument that viable employment, hard work in exchange for a living wage, is a gift that not everyone is entitled to receive. None of the ex-inmates writing in this volume speak with any sense of entitlement, nor is there a combative or plaintive tone in any of these essays. The authors are stating in various ways that what is expected of them does not make sense, that there is a slim chance of successful reentry without ex-inmates being able to support themselves through legitimate work. This problem requires attention ahead of all others related to reentry. The prison system in the United States has its origins in a mixture of enlightenment thinking and religious fervor. In the eighteenth century, public punishments such as the pillory were replaced with incarceration. The Quakers developed the penitentiary as a place where the criminal could be reformed through isolation and forced labor and obligatory religious instruction-all of which were supposed to cleanse his soul and make him possibly worthy of reentrance into the community. The idea that the community was involved in the punishment and bore some responsibility for the 'treatment' of the prisoner was kept alive until the 1950s. Growing crime rates in the 1960s, coupled with political reaction to urban 'disorder', made this argument appear suddenly impractical and irrelevant. At the same time, social movements specifically tied to criminal justice issues were reenergized in the 1960s. The movement toward deinstitutionalization was most pronounced and had its furthest reaching effects-particularly in juvenile reformatories and insane asylums. The argument was that labels had predictable and inadvertent consequences, including with regard to reentry that needed to be balanced against the need to treat mental illness and punish wrongdoing. Nowadays, the argument that labels and prevents people from living productive lives, thus L. Kontos (&)