| |
|
It was Donny the Punk. Didn't someone here know him?
Anyway, cheerleaders for the 'prison keeps people from society to protect others' might want to note that in the US, a huge porportion of people are in jail for nonviolent drug offences. And black. And - fuck, I don't know where to start -
Prisons are a tool of social control. They are there to perpetuate unequal distribution of resources, by locking up anyone who challenges the social heirarchy. Check out this quote from Christian Parenti's book on US prisons:
Beginning in the late 1960s, U.S. Capitalism has a dual social and economic crisis, and it was in response to this crisis that the criminal justice build-up of today began. After a surge of expansion in the late 60s, the growth of criminal justice plateaued in the late 70s, only to resume in earnest during the early and mid-80s, with Reagan's war on drugs. Since then, we've been on a steady path toward ever more state repression and surveillance.
Initially, this build-up was in response to racial upheaval and political rebellion. The second part was/is more a response to the vicious economic restructuring of the Reagan era. This restructuring was itself a right-wing strategy for addressing the economic crisis which first appeared in the mid and late 60s. To restore sagging business profits, the welfare of working people had to be sacrificed. Thus, the second phase of the criminal justice crackdown has become, intentionally or otherwise, a way to manage rising inequality and surplus populations.…”(
(The link is to a useful review of Parenti's book.)
My point is that talking about the point of prison without talking about, for example, the widening gap between rich and poor, institutional racism, gentrification and rising rents and costs of living, the massive growth of the private prison industry, the war on (some) drugs, border control, etc., etc., brings us down to this ridiculously psychologised level of argument where someone can seriously ask what's wrong with medicalising criminality.
Since 1980, the violent crime rate in the US has fallen 18%; the incarceration rate has risen 400%; 700 new prisons have been built; the number of women in prison has increased sevenfold. More than 60% of US prisoners are there for nonviolent offenders, i.e., 1.2 million people. According to a Senate survey of prison wardens - not famous for their liberal views - wardens believe that 'on average half the offenders under the supervision could be released without endangering public safety.' (Information taken from No More Prisons by William Upski Sinclair, published in 99.) That's without addressing the insane racialisation of US prisoners or the use of immigration detention centres as pseudo-administrative prisons around the world. |
|
|
