The Prison Industrial Complex

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The Prison Industrial Complex
The nature of Prison Industrial Complex
The term Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is used to describe the system that serves the government interests that overlap with the industry that makes use of policing, surveillance, and imprisonment as a way out to social, economic, and political glitches (Diaz, 35). This kind of system does not only involve prisons; it is a conjointly reinforcing network of relationships among a variety of key players that exploits inmates. The structure of this exploitative system is centered on the belief that there are lives more valuable than others. The targets in PIC criminalization are minority groups from particular neighborhoods, especially the less affluent ones, young people, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. Immigrants are criminalized by PIC; it picks on the socially vulnerable species and makes them live their lives only trying to survive.
The number of black people and women serving jail sentences is higher today than it has ever been in the history of the United States (Sudbury, 37). The custody facilities (probation, parole, prison, jail) in the United States have over seven million people; a number higher than the combined population of several states in the US. Inmates do not receive a decent training or education as they are supposed to when in prison and when they are released to the outside world and can hardly secure jobs, they are called failures.

It is like modern day slavery where dissent is criminalized and the reason why one African American out of ten is stripped of the right to vote (Davis, Angela and David, 55). As many would like to imagine that imprisonment is about rehabilitation, the nature of PIC states the contrary as it is all about control. The system is inhumane; it denies mentally unstable individuals proper health care and disproportionately detains people unfairly for nonviolent crimes.
Privatization: making a profit from caged people.
In Europe, the UK as a country has a prison system that is most privatized compared to others. Privatization of prisons implies that multinational corporations make huge profits from the prisons in every way possible from the administration of the prisons to electronic tagging. Reducing harm becomes a lesser priority over profit when individual companies begin to get paid by how full their penitentiaries are. Instead of serving their intended purposes companies are investing in rehabilitation as a business strategy. In such privatized prisons, inmates are hired to produce goods for the enterprises in the private sector mostly through menial labor with very minimal returns. Immigration is a magnificent player in the prison privatization system. There has been a notably high rise in the population of female custodians from foreign countries in female prisons.
Incarceration of people for profit has been legitimized and normalized, and it forms part of the system of criminal justice in many states. Members of the PIC and companies that own private prisons are neither solely accountable for crafting the kind of industry that makes profits out of imprisonment nor do they operate in a vacuum. They undoubtedly contribute to the existing state of affairs. The companies that own private prisons make campaign influences and contribute to lawmaking through lobbyists.
CCA is America’s biggest private prison. In 2009 and 2010 the firm spent close to one million dollars on expenses of direct politicization at the federal level. The committee that deals with political action and the company in 2010 further donated more than 722,000 dollars towards state politics. CCA is just a single examples of businesses that are actively engaging in PIC. They spend a lot of money to make sure that they gain politicians’ support and influence them to merge their interests with their own (Brewer, Rose, and Nancy, 637). With that, they invest more in the prison business expanding the industry in the system of criminal justice.
Another technique through which such companies manipulate their way into influence is by employing former officials who worked for the government. They may hire from correctional agencies and law enforcers who make use of the connections they had initially to get the PIC system running. The industry that privatizes prisons has gone further to recruit research partners who are supposedly impartial to come up with studies that applaud privatization benefits. For instance, Charles Thomas, a former professor at the University of Florida came up with a research whose concepts favored privatization of prisons. He was discredited on a moral basis since CCA had paid him three million dollars to produce that research.
It is disturbing how the companies have received accusations about promoting harsh laws of sentencing criminals behind the scenes to cause more people to receive longer sentences at the industry’s advantage. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an organization that creates model laws introduced by members of the legislature in their states. ALEC is believed to have endorsed the legislation that profits PIC and the company owned prisons.
PIC has established its validity and made sure that the benefits outdo public policies where the priorities of the nation on criminal justice are concerned. They do that by currying favor from influential politicians through contributing to campaigns and lobbying. They hire former officials of the government, fund research programs in their favor and influence the process of policy-making by directly participating in the process through ALEC.
Augmented Recidivism and Violence
In addition to making a profit from privatized prisons, increased recidivism and ferocity is another deleterious feature of the PIC. Inmates who are exposed to violence in prison on release are more likely to recidivate and not be rehabilitated. To realize why there are higher violence levels in private prisons requires one to comprehend the model of the business assumed by PIC and how profit is generated. At a fundamental level, private and public prisons are similar regarding structure and operation. A greater percentage of the expenses incurred in prisons are concern staffing. In that sense, privatized prisons reduce the cost of staffing to produce a profit. The prisons hire fewer workers compared to public prisons and pay their employees less with fewer benefits and less training.
The result of employees being given lower wages, inadequate training, and fewer benefits is the high rates of turnover by staff compared to public colleagues. The high levels of turnover, in turn, imply that most of the employees are inadequately skilled and they lack experience and knowledge about the institutions where they work resulting in instability. Understaffing is also a result of higher turnover because vacant positions are not filled immediately when workers resign or when they are terminated.
The outcome of understaffing is an increased level of violence. Many studies reveal that prisons that are operated by the private sector have more violent prisoners because of the model of the industry business. CCA for instance, in 2004, within a period of four months had four main demonstrations at the prisons in Oklahoma, Colorado, Kentucky, and Mississippi plus a Florida jail hostage-taking. Prisoner rehabilitation is another issue of concern for prisons that are privately operated. GEO and CCA are companies whose sole purpose lies in making profit rather than guaranteeing public safety, aiding in inmate rehabilitation, or ease recidivism. Instead of aiming to reduce the high victimization and crime rates in our communities, they stuff people behind bars for their good.
The impacts of Prison Industrial Complex
Violence as a vice highly perpetuated in prisons, and it has serious effects on the inmates and their families. The physical harassment in prisons, psycho-emotional damage, rape and sexual assault, neglect, and denial of fundamental rights are ways through which violence is manifested (Taylor, Phil, and Christine, 13). These can lead to high chances of emotional and mental instability and prisoners end up harming themselves or committing suicide after interacting with the system of criminal justice that does not give much regard to their safety.
The system tears apart families and destroys capable individuals whom, when given a second chance, would become better people. Taking people away from their communities for crimes they did not commit and unjustly sentencing them to jail terms has emotional repercussions on them and their families. Such people can lose their possessions, jobs and even their place in the society and social ties.
The system in operation today does not fulfill the needs of individuals who have been harmed. The more prisons are set up, and the growth of the prison industrial complex causes feelings of unsafety among communities. The legal structure is intimidating, exclusive and ineffective when it comes to meeting the needs of the people and providing support for their confidence in the fact that harm will be diminished. The current court function seeks to answer the question; “who was the perpetrator of the delinquency and how can he be reprimanded?” instead of finding out who was injured in the process, how healing could be made possible and how to avoid any reoccurrences in the future.
How prison labor impacts the economy.
In most prisons, inmates are subjected to labor with very minimal returns in the name of rehabilitation. Currently, there are 18 state prisons whose business involves furniture making, and none are paying for the labor the same way a typical factory worker would be paid on the outside. Prisoners have become a readily available source of cheap labor. Likewise, there are 22 federal prisons involved in the textile business for the simple reason that the prisoners hired to work cannot demand an hourly pay of 10.95 dollars that textile laborers earn outside the prison walls. The fact that prisoners make wages that range between 0.12 dollars to 1.15 dollars every hour makes it unreasonable for astute people in business and state agencies to visualize manufacturing or buying goods from the free-world producers.
Prison labor has indeed made jobs unavailable for free individuals in the manufacturing sector, day labor or even farm work (Evans, Linda, and Eve, 123). Looking at Shaw Industries, for instance, when it hired prisoners to make the high-priced flooring brand, the company profits went high. However, that affected the families of the original makers of the flooring and the prisoners’ families who were newly hired grew poor. The money made by the prisoners was not enough to sustain their families back at home by ensuring that they had a roof on top of their heads and enough food to eat. The prison Industrial complex has brought prison labor back to the economy, and it has resulted in actual losses of jobs and exploitation of those workers who are out of prison.
Conclusion
The society apparently recognizes the harm caused by criminals on other people. For instance, nothing can compensate for the pain of rape, and the violation one experiences with robbery or the life-long reminiscence of an assault. On the other hand, it can openly make out the harm inflicted upon it by the state or federation. The manifestation of vandalism through imprisonment of people, or endorsing policies that result in the perpetuation of war, poverty, harsh sentencing among other aspects of subjugation. The harm caused by the state and interpersonal harm are interconnected.
There is no evidence of imprisonment and policing reducing harm as there is in police industrial complex damaging people and the society in general. Taking people prisoners does not offer a solution to the cultural erosion in the society hence the need to abolish the PIC industries. The most dangerous fact is that the business of imprisoning people for profit has been accepted socially and politically and enacted as a law (Hallett, 356). Such practices impart the idea that justice can be sold and in fact, crime acts as payment. It is many people’s desire that in future, looking back would make them wonder how such a concept that is socially disparaging could be allowed to exist. The harsh realities however remain; as a society, we have to deal with the prisons-for-profit system including its multiple flaws and disastrous impacts on inmates, the society, and the justice system.
Works Cited
Brewer, Rose M., and Nancy A. Heitzeg. “The racialization of crime and punishment criminal justice, color-blind racism, and the political economy of the prison industrial complex.” American Behavioral Scientist 51.5 (2008): 625-644.
Davis, Angela Y, and David Barsamian. The Prison Industrial Complex. San Francisco, CA: AK Press Audio, 2009. Sound recording.
Díaz, Jesse. “Immigration Policy, Criminalization and the Growth of the Immigration Industrial Complex: Restriction, Expulsion, and Eradication of the Undocumented in the US 1.” Western criminology review 12.2 (2011): 35.
Evans, Linda, and Eve Goldberg. The Prison-industrial Complex & the Global Economy. PM Press, 2009.
Hallett, Michael A. “Race, crime, and for profit imprisonment Social disorganization as market opportunity.” Punishment & Society 4.3 (2012): 369-393.
Sudbury, Julia. Global lockdown: Race, gender, and the prison-industrial complex. Routledge, 2014.
Taylor, Phil, and Christine Cooper. “‘It was absolute hell’: Inside the private prison.” Capital & Class 32.3 (2008): 3-30.