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Recent
Stories
June
20, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
June
19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
Daniel Smith
Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
Intelligence
Chris
Fagen
Ignoring the World's Bloodiest War
Rick
Fantasia and Kim Voss
Bush's Low Intensity War on Labor
Sam
Hamod
Theater of Deception: Bush, Sharon,
Abbas
M.
Shahid Alam
Illuminating Tom Friedman
Jon
Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/18
June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
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Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
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Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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June
21, 2003
Throwing Away the Key
US
Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
By RON JACOBS
As we settle into the twenty-first century, the
United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Although the fear of "terrorism" has significantly
weighted US laws in the police's favor, the primary reasons for
the high incarceration rate remain the war on drug users and
a change in penological philosophy from one of rehabilitation
(or even punishment) to one of banishment. It is this philosophy
that lies behind the so-called "three-strikes and you're
out" laws and initiatives like Oregon's Measure 11 that
established mandatory minimums for certain crimes. There is no
attempt involved in these endeavors to seek justice, only a desire
for revenge and a pretense that these prisoners are less than
human and therefore deserve only a life behind bars or, in some
cases, death by the state.
Underlying the current philosophy of
imprisonment is the control of demographic groups considered
surplus by the corporate world order. This means, among other
things, a move away from interest in the individual offender
and a shift of focus to what many penologists call "control
of aggregates". These aggregates, or groups, are primarily
composed of young men of color, although the number of women
from these same groups continues to grow. In the wake of industrial
job flight from their neighborhoods, these groups' presence outside
of prison has become increasingly threatening to the ruling structures.
As members of these groups turn toward other endeavors to make
a living--endeavors often illegal such as drug dealing--the punishment
for their actions has become increasingly harsher. In addition,
new laws enacted to either enhance current legislation or to
make even more actions illegal encourage police to concentrate
their enforcement efforts on these groups. This trend is not
worldwide, however. In fact, with the exception of the US and
the United Kingdom, most other western countries have softened
their penalties (or decriminalized them completely) for drug
possession and other victimless crimes. In addition, these countries
are attempting to find other means of dealing with persons convicted
of crime that do not involve incarceration.
In the United States however, the population
and practices of prisons reflect the new concerns of those who
imprison. It is the belief of the justice system and the legislators
who write the laws regulating crime that the only way to stop
crime is to lock up as many perpetrators as possible. If these
concerns could be portrayed with one image, that image would
be the well-armed drug dealer. Furthermore, that drug dealer
would be either an African-American, a Latino immigrant, young
and usually male, although in recent years, the incarceration
rate of women has increased dramatically. The fact that this
image has come to represent imprisonment and criminality to the
population proves the effectiveness of the prevalent approach
to penology as the 20th century ends.
Within the prisons themselves, alarming
changes have been made as a result of the aforementioned philosophical
change in penology. Perhaps foremost among these changes are
longer prison sentences which are often the result of mandatory
sentencing and, in many locales, a "three strikes"
policy which mandates life imprisonment for a third conviction
on a felony. This has led to vast overcrowding in the United
States despite an unprecedented surge in prison construction,
and the highest incarceration rate in the world. The tangential
effects of this practice are seen in the reduction in public
funding for education and social welfare programs as policing
and imprisonment take a higher and higher percentage of said
funds. For example, in California, where the prison population
is six times larger than it was in the late 1970s, recent state
budgets have called for more spending on prisons and punishment
than on higher education. This trend is replicated across the
country. In fact, between 1968 and 2000 the percentage increase
in state spending on prisons was 6 times the percentage increase
of spending on higher education. The total change in spending
on higher education by states was 24%, compared with 166% for
corrections.
Architecturally, this mission of control
has meant the creation of what American prison administrators
and prisoners commonly refer to as "super-max" prisoners.
Super-max means super-maximum-security and such institutions
can now be found in several states and in the federal prison
system. Although not completely new to the U.S. system--Alcatraz
was a super-max prison in its time--the current version utilizes
the most advanced security technology, constant psychological
intimidation, and some of the most brutal guards. Prisoners'
movements are severely restricted and the time they spend outside
of their individual cells is minimal if at all. Once in, it is
very difficult for a prisoner to leave such a unit until his/her
sentence is up.
Part of the reason for the upsurge in
prison populations is simple: somebody is making money from incarceration.
In addition to the drug war dynamic, which perpetuates not only
the need for a higher number of drug arrests but also the need
for the continued violation of the drug laws in order to justify
its existence, prisons themselves are a growing business. Whether
it is a company that manufactures or provides equipment used
in corrections, a company whose business is building prisons,
or the growing industry of staffing privatized prisons, there
is money to be made. In addition, the growing contracting of
inmates in manufacturing and services by outside industry has
created a need for this new element of the labor force. Like
death row prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal wrote in one of his many commentaries,
"Under a regime where more bodies equal more profits, prisons
take one big step closer to their historical ancestor, the slave
pen." Another aspect to the privatization of prisons (and
the use of prisoners as labor) is the question of whether the
role of these institutions is rehabilitation, punishment or merely
the assurance that taxpayer subsidized labor will continue to
be provided. Corporations who do contract prison labor range
from Starbucks Coffee to the Boeing Corporation. The work is
presented to prisoners, legislators and the public as work experience
and job opportunities for the inmates when in reality they are
nothing but cheap labor opportunities for the participating corporations.
With the government assuming costs for all living expenses and
a workforce unwilling to challenge labor abuse and other questionable
practices for fear of retaliation by prison officials, it is
a near perfect environment for the corporation.
As corporate globalism continues to precipitate
a shift of more and more capital to the financial capitals of
the north, immigration from the poorer countries follows. This
has created a problem of controlling these population flows for
the receiving countries. The preferred solution seems to be imprisonment
in detention centers and/or the cordoning off of neighborhoods
where most of the residents are immigrants (usually of Latino
or Asian origin). This separation of the immigrant population,
while nominally temporary, has in reality created a whole new
policing apparatus within the U.S., which has fewer limitations
on its enforcement capabilities than the rest of the prison system.
This lack of protections is due to the uncertain legal status
of some of its subjects. There are enough tales of immigrants
who have landed in an Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) detention center only to get lost in a Kafkaesque legal
maze for years to safely state that these incidents are not accidents
of the system but part of its process. Add to this scenario the
ongoing abridgement of rights for citizen and non-citizen alike
in the wake of 911, and the tribulations of Kafka's character
"K" in his novel The Trial, seem inconsequential.
In the United States, one of the primary
reasons (before the PATRIOT ACT and the creation of Homeland
Security) for such tales of distress is the 1996 Illegal Immigration
Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. A major aspect of this
law is the denial of asylum to immigrants convicted of a crime,
no matter how small, and no matter how long ago in their past
the violation occurred. Previously, many of these immigrants
were eligible for parole. Now they are assigned to a prison,
oftentimes after being discovered during a workplace raid by
INS officials. Like prisons for citizens, monetary reasons motivate
the rise in imprisonment of immigrants, as well. Many county
and city budgets receive large sums of money from the INS, as
do private prisons. This dynamic, just as in the rest of the
prison world, does not encourage administrators to seek out alternatives
to imprisonment. Add to this the desire to control behavior which
threatens the middle-class quality of life and the subsequent
desire to exile those who exhibit said behavior, and one has
another part of the equation that drives the current imprisonment
philosophy.
Ron Jacobs
is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Today's Features
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
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