Prison Industrial Complex Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- French Studies, Prison Industrial Complex, Private Prisons
- by Debra Mendoza
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- Criminal Justice, Homicide, Race and Racism, Juvenile Justice

My research examines the legal history of the 13th Amendment. The 13th Amendment - the emancipation amendment - ended legal slavery in the United States. The second portion of the Amendment has the controversial verbiage “Except As Punishment For A Crime." Thus, the amendment abolishes slavery but states that anyone convicted of a crime can be held in servitude. One core question this research considers is to what degree is this clause legally binding today. The synthesis of the 13th Amendment is important because of the growing minority prison population. My methodology consist of examining 13th Amendment Supreme Court Cases and other case law pertaining to the Amendment. This work contextualize the histories of carceral systems like the Black Codes, the Convict Lease System, the War on Drugs and the emergence and expansion of the Prison Industrial Complex. As a result, this research considers drug disparities and perceptions of powder versus crack cocaine. In addition, this work analyzes the social ramifications of being a felon. My findings suggest there are important economic outcomes associated with controlling and restricting African Americans that have been in place since slavery and continue today.

- by Stephen Hartnett
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- Poetry, Social Activism, Prison Education, Prison Industrial Complex
- by Ani Khodaverdian
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- Criminal Law, Ethics, Rehabilitation, Addiction

The phenomenon of mass incarceration has dramatically altered the economic and infrastructural landscape of the United States. These changes have numerous implications regarding the use of fossil fuels, which are the single largest contributor to climate change. The present study argues that mass incarceration creates three social patterns that result in significant increases in industrial emissions. (1) Mass incarceration incentivizes further industrial development through the construction of new prisons and the continued maintenance of existing prisons to house prisoners. (2) The needs of the millions of individuals currently incarcerated in the United States incentivize industrial expansion through the production of goods and materials used inside prisons. (3) Incarcerated individuals are being used to reduce the cost of labor, which expands economic growth. We construct several fixed-effects panel regression models with robust standard errors predicting industrial emissions for U.S. states from 1997 to 2016 to assess how increases in the number of individuals in U.S. state, federal, and private prisons is correlated with industrial emissions over time. We find that increases in incarceration within states are associated with increases in industrial emissions, and that increases in incarceration lead to a more tightly coupled association between gross domestic product per capita and
industrial emissions.

- by Julius McGee and +1
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- Environmental Sociology, Climate Change, Prison Industrial Complex, Mass Incarceration

This paper serves as a pre-assessment of the Jonesboro, Georgia Prisoner Reentry community. There are many and diverse organizations offering support and services but no central coordinating structure. There are pockets of community advocates, grassroots advocates, professionals, and Faith-based “volunteers” that all seem to work independently. There is a reason for this disunity. This paper is broken down into four areas of concentration.
• A community services overview or description
• Key contacts within the service providers community
• Skills needed to communicate with contacts and why these particular skills are needed
• Barriers to Prisoner Reentry
• A New Role for Anthropology
This paper will highlight some barriers to completing a community assessment within a community that lacks a central coordinating structure. Part of the problem of communication between stakeholders and officials stem from the constant changing demographics which has supported the labeling of Jonesboro as a “transition community”. Transition communities don’t attract investors, jobs or services.
Keywords: pre-assessments, assessments, transition communities, reentry, recidivism

- by Bernell Wesley
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- Prison Industrial Complex, Prisons, Prisoner reentry, Reducing Recidivism

In this paper, I interrogate Christian interpretations of punishment through atonement theories from the early church in the West and turn to the Eastern concept of theosis as a possible correction to retributive punitive philosophies. This larger discussion frames a narrower conversation on the continuities and discontinuities of systems of sacrifice from slavery to our modern prison industrial complex. More trenchantly, I examine the relationship between the cross and carcerality through Jesus' proximity to criminality. I argue that by entering into history through a criminalized body, Jesus' life, ministry and death demonstrates his proximity to and solidarity with those who are criminalized - including the first Christian community who had a 'criminal element,' Jesus' ministerial purpose to "set the captives free," his instructions for discipleship to visit the 'least of these' who are imprisoned, to extending reconciliation to a 'penitent thief' and being surveilled and persecuted by a State sanctioned execution. In the end, by tracing a kind of christological three-day event of criminality, I argue that Jesus died a criminal but did not wake up one. On the cross Jesus transcends criminality through the resurrection, which gives hope for liberation over and against carceral systems of sacrifice.

- by craig gilmore
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- Prison Industrial Complex, Critical Prison Studies, Prison activism

The incarcerated in America are an estimated 2.4 million people at any moment in “1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military... more

- by henry laycock
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- Criminal Justice, Human Rights, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory

A proposta é analisar a relação entre o Massacre ocorrido na prisão de Alcaçuz e Ro-gério Coutinho Madruga/RN em janeiro de 2017 e o fortalecimento das disputas entre duas facções rivais (Primeiro Comando da SUMÁRIO 1 INTRODUÇÃO. 2 O MASSACRE E A COMPOSIÇÃO DO "FRONTE". 3 ORGANIZAÇÃO POLÍTICA. 4 "PEGA A VISÃO..." SINDICATO DO RN: UM PANORAMA SOBRE SUA FUNDAÇÃO E HISTÓRIA. 5 RIVALIDADE E DISPUTA POR TERRITÓRIOS. 6 CONSEQUÊNCIAS DAS DISPUTAS. 7 PARA NÃO CONCLUIR. REFERÊNCIAS Palavras-Chave Facção. Sistema prisional. Disputas. Massacre de Alcaçuz. Capital-PCC-e Sindicato do Crime do RN-SDC) e do SDC, especificamente. Pre-tendemos entender em que sentido esse episódio trágico, no qual pelo menos 27 pessoas foram brutalmente assassinadas, contribuiu (e contribui) para o aumento da violência urbana em Natal, as violações de direitos humanos no sistema prisional local e a ampliação da guerra entre coletivos criminosos locais. O presente artigo é fruto tanto de um amplo trabalho de etnografias com familiares, ex-detentos e integrantes do SDC, quanto da atuação como ativistas pela dignidade das pessoas em situação de cárcere no Rio Grande do Norte. Conside-rando a ausência de estudos sobre as fac-ções locais que atuam no Nordeste, o artigo tem como proposta contribuir para o levan-tamento de questões que perpassam os debates sobre os coletivos do crime e seus atravessamentos nas ruas e presídios dessa região e traz elementos importantes para refletir sobre o tema nacionalmente. Ressal-tamos, por fim, que fomos afetadas emocio-nalmente pelo Massacre e suas implicações. Nesse sentido, propositalmente, a narrativa tem, também, um tom pessoal e, ao mesmo tempo, denunciativo.

- by Natália F Amarante and +1
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- Violence, Sociology of Crime and Deviance, Organized Crime, Prison Industrial Complex

An ethnographic work about high-security prisons told in vignettes. The 30-page paper is based on the author's participant observation as a correctional officer and case worker in the Nevada Department of Corrections from 2004 to 2007. Using thousands of notes, the document details a US total institution from a perspective rarely chronicled. This collection includes stories about prison work, prison gangs, mental health, sex offenders, prison administration, the criminal (in)justice system, and the business of corrections.

- by Dahn Shaulis
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- Sociology, Prison Industrial Complex, Critical Prison Studies, History of prisons

On February 8, 1971, Michel Foucault announced the formation of Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons (the Prisons Information Group [GIP]), a group of activist intellectuals who worked to amplify the voices of those with firsthand knowledge of the prison—reflected in their motto, “Speech to the detainees!” In highlighting and circulating subjugated knowledges from within prisons, the GIP not only pursued political and material interventions, but also called for epistemological and methodological shift within intellectual labor about prisons. This essay turns to the work of the GIP, and philosophical reflection on that work, as a resource for contemporary theological methodology. Counter to the optimistic and positive trend in theological turn to practices, this essay draws on Foucault’s work with and reflection on the GIP to argue for a negative theology of practice, which centers on practice (those concrete narratives found in any lived theological context) while, at the same ti...

- by Brandy Daniels
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- Religion, Sociology, Philosophy, Theology

To speak the ‘language of state violence’ is for penal abolitionists to insist that irrespective of the conditions, architecture, or general resources available, the prison will always be a place that systematically generates suffering, harm and death. Understanding prisons as a modus operandi of state violence may help abolitionists gain political momentum, for it leads to focus on both ‘institutional’ and ‘structural’ violence. Ultimately Speaking the language of state violence provides a name for penal abolitionists to mobilise around and makes connections between the prison and social inequities.

- by Meg Linton
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- Contemporary Art, Painting, Prison Industrial Complex, 19th C. Landscape Painting

This brief working paper looks at the pros and cons associated with the private prison industry in the United States.

- by Tom McNamara
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- Prison Industrial Complex, Critical Prison Studies, Punishment and Prisons, Prisons
- by Annie Spencer, PhD
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- Economic Geography, Prison Industrial Complex, Prison Abolition

Private prisons are here to stay irrespective of empirical findings for or against their existence in the corrections industry. It is necessary, therefore, to step back and consider them on a broader level to assess how they can benefit current penological practice. It will be argued that prison privatization creates an opportunity to reassess the dominant correctional philosophy in America. In particular, the contractual structure of private prisons allows for “what works” in corrections to be built into performance evaluations. The implications of this assertion for private prisons as well as the current status of the rehabilitative ideal will be discussed.

Solitary confinement is the practice of socially and physically isolating a person in conditions of confinement for 22-24 hours per day. Although there is no official punishment or unit called ‘solitary confinement’ in New Zealand prisons, its use is widespread in the practices of isolation, segregation and separation. This report interrogates what is a commonplace practice in the prison system. It examines the conditions of solitary confinement in New Zealand prisons, as well as the number of people exposed to it. It then outlines the numerous and severe harms caused by solitary confinement, as well as the failure of the use of such practices to achieve the intended purposes of prison order, prisoner safety and suicide prevention. Recognising the effects of solitary on those who most experience it, it is argued that, according to international human rights standards, solitary confinement is inherently dehumanising and sometimes amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as torture. From these findings, the report recommends the abolition of solitary confinement in New Zealand prisons.

- by Ti Lamusse
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- Criminology, Human Rights, Critical Criminology, Prison Industrial Complex

The argument can be made that identity is one of the most important concepts for human beings. If a people live without being conscious of their identity, they will live not knowing who they really are; they will question their beliefs and values because of this uncertainty. Unfortunately, many persons are uncertain of their identities, and instead accept those that their pressed upon them by the dominant sectors of society around them; this is particularly true for blacks in America, and around the world. On March 16th, 2015, Kendrick Lamar released his critically acclaimed third studio album To Pimp a Butterfly; a social commentary on politics, the Hip-Hop industry, and most importantly, black identity in the twenty-first century. Lamar uses his album to satirize various African-American ideologies while criticizing the continued marginalization of blacks by the government via the American socioeconomic system.

- by Stanton Charlton
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- Prison Industrial Complex, Black Identity, Hip hop, Gangsta Rap

Published as an editorial, this document captures Beto Gutierrez's, a social studies teacher, experience navigating the tensions between rehabilitation and the traditional punitive practices at California State youth prison. The teacher... more

- by Chris Garces
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- Latin American Studies, Criminal Justice, Anthropology, Human Rights Law

The building of a new ‘super prison’ in Wrexham, North Wales has begun amidst a wider expansion of the penal industrial complex. Campaigns are mobilising nationally and locally against the project. This article examines the concerns surrounding what will become the United Kingdom’s largest prison and argues that its construction is a symptom of a wider ideological attack on marginalised groups while also examining the case against prison expansion.

Reformation and Rehabilitation of inmates is a major activity pursued by governments to make inmates value contributing citizens of the society. Rehabilitation programs come in many hues. Some jails pursue skill development or entrepreneurial training, while others resort to production of appropriate products and services. Our analysis of rehabilitation projects pursued across several jails in India indicate these are limited in scope and mostly non scalable. We propose a state level Jail industry Board to manage and grow sustainable rehabilitation intervention program. We also present the legal and administrative options that may be pursued for creating the same

- by browne mohan
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- Prison Industrial Complex, Public Administration Reforms

This essay introduces a special issue of ACME focused on the "carceral-police continuum." We use this phrase to highlight three important concepts in policing and carceral geographies scholarship. The first is the imminence of coercive state power, and its uneven distribution. The second is the tangled and expansive web of relationships through which carceral logics and practices operate. The third are the ways attention to these conditions can contribute a conceptual framework to abolitionist praxis. After first offering some additional commentary on each of the problem areas identified above, we then describe how each of the papers collected here advances our understanding of these issues. We conclude by identifying several directions for continuing development, including a need for ongoing conceptual and methodological innovation that supports efforts toward collective forms of organizing, mitigation and redress directed at various forms of state violence, carceral power and their repercussions.

- by Geoff Boyce
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- Political Economy, Gentrification, Critical Geography, Prison Industrial Complex

In recent decades, the criminalization of immigration and the use of private prisons have increased in popularity. The criminalization of immigration and the privatization of prisons work hand in hand in shaping the American criminal justice response to immigration. Privatization creates a powerful opportunity for the social construction of the undocumented immigrant into a powerful potential source of revenue for for-profit corporations. Private prison corporations, such as Corrections Corporation of American and The GEO Group, stand to profit significantly from the private immigration detention center. Several investigative reports have focused on how these companies stand to profit, but little attention has been given to the psychosocial consequences that impact immigrant detainees and their families.

- by Rich Furman
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- Critical Theory, Religion, Sociology, Criminology
- by Bernell Wesley
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- Slavery, Prison Industrial Complex, Private Prisons, African American

The prison is a repressive apparatus that underpins settler-colonial capitalism in Aotearoa, a site for the collection and containment of bodies abjected from the social formation. When a person dies in prison, their death can expose some of the worst excesses of the current mode of production and immiseration. This thesis grapples with what it means to grieve the death of the prisoner. Interrogating 108 coroners’ findings into deaths in New Zealand prisons, it outlines the material conditions of confinement leading to people’s deaths, as well as the state’s attempt to come to terms with these deaths. Framed within the work of Judith Butler, the Department of Corrections enacts routine practices upon the bodies of the deceased that constitute dehumanising norms. Alongside the vilification and abjection of the prisoner, these norms establish that the prisoner is not recognisable as fully human. As a result of a security context that exacerbates the vulnerability of prisoners for the benefit of those worthy of protection, prisoners are placed in positions of extreme precarity. The material practices that reinforce the inhumanity of prisoners and increase their level of precarity establish, before the prisoner’s death, that the prisoner’s life is not a life worthy of living. Grieving the death of the prisoner requires the recognition of prisoners as fully human, which is not possible within a normative context that necessitates their dehumanisation. Thus, to grieve the death of the prisoner, there must be a material transformation of these dehumanising practices, and the normative social conditions in which they are necessitated. As those normative practices, and the prison itself, are so entrenched in settler-colonial capitalism, mourning the death of the prisoner requires much more than the coroners can conceive.

- by Ti Lamusse
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- Critical Theory, Criminology, Critical Criminology, Judith Butler

In this article we explore the intersections between white liberal feminisms and the carceral state, particularly within nonprofit agencies. We find a strong collusion between ‘dominating feminisms’ and the carceral state, through funding structures and the belief that the legal system can provide protection to victimized women. We use
evidence from our own research on rape crisis centers and gender-responsive programming for criminalized women, respectively, to investigate how some nonprofit agencies further threaten the safety, stability, and self-determination of women of color, queer women, transgender clients, economically disadvantaged women, and disabled women. As a result, when white liberal feminists seek to intervene in the criminal legal system, we often see reform efforts that directly strengthen institutions that perpetuate economic exploitation, colonialist notions of progress, and white supremacy. We conclude our article with an exploration of some guiding principles within noncarceral antiviolence organizations that espouse a liberatory feminist framework.

This article examines the experiences of black, gender-oppressed women, and transgender activists in the anti-prison movement in the U.S. and Canada. By foregrounding the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming activists, the author makes visible the reality of gender complexity and multiplicity within women's prisons and the anti-prison movement. The article explores the activists' motivations for involvement, and barriers to participation, and explores spirituality as a source of resilience and guidance. It examines the participants' political analysis and abolitionist visions and explores the possibility of "non-reformist reforms" that take up the challenge of a radical, antiracist, gender justice perspective. The article posits the existence of a unique abolitionist vision and praxis, centered on the participants' direct experience of gender oppression and racialized surveillance and punishment. This perspective works toward dismantling penal structures while simultaneously seeking the abolition of racialized gender policing and an end to violence against gender non-conforming prisoners. This article is dedicated to the memory of Boitumelo "Tumi" McCallum. Her spirit is a continued inspiration in the struggle against intimate and state violence.

- by Tabitha Orr
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- Racism, Prison Industrial Complex, The New Jim Crow

The U.S. immigration detention center is both a transnational space and a foreign policy microcosm. Its detainees reside physically within the nation yet legally outside, while its walls, fences, and doors clearly demarcate those bodies that do not belong to the nation from those that do. The detention center is not merely a domestic place where foreign policy is executed. It is a place both locally and globally defined, where social interactions and cultural narratives transcend concrete walls and nation-state boundaries. Bodies are controlled, marked, and contested in this liminal space. This essay explores the detention and processing of Mariel Cubans at Fort Chaffee in 1980-1 as exercises of biopolitical management in the era of President Ronald Reagan’s revitalized nationalism. Through a process of inclusion and exclusion, a previously welcomed “anticommunist” exile group suddenly became cast by the media and politicians as “undesirable.” While some Cuban refugees were rendered acceptable additions to the national body through “American” cultural training, sponsorship, and resettlement, nonnational “excludables” were simultaneously rendered invisible through the act of detention.

- by Kristina Shull
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- Latin American Studies, Transnationalism, Refugee Studies, Cultural Cold War