Prison Industrial Complex

The term "Prison Industrial Complex" is used to describe the rapid expansion of the United States inmate population and the political push on private prisons for profit. Though the term has only been mentioned a few times during our actual class meetings, the term goes hand in hand with race and gender as we've studied in class because the judicial system more often than not targets low-income, black communities and more specifically, young black men. In another class I've taken this semester, we read "Race to Incarcerate" by Marc Mauer which is a graphic novel that describes the United State's problems with mass incarceration.

 

The foreword of “Race to Incarcerate” reads, “The more fundamental problem is that we have come to rely on the criminal justice system as our primary approach to social problems, particularly low-income communities of color. This is the most obvious in the war on drugs, whereby drug law enforcement target such neighborhoods while drug users and sellers in middle-income communities largely escape the clutches of the justice system” (xi). A more recent and perfect example of this is the “case” of Sarah Furay, a white 19-year-old college student who is now known to the world as, “the Most Adorable Drug Kingpin”. Furay received this title when she was arrested in her apartment with “31.5 grams of packaged cocaine, 126 grams of high grade marijuana, 29 ecstasy tablets, methamphetamine and 60 doses of a drug similar to LSD” (Rolling Out). With the amount of drugs on her person and the amount of dealing she’s said to have been doing, Furay faces felony charges that could lead to a sentence of up to 215 years in jail but was released on bond by her father, a top DEA agent. After reading articles on the “adorable drug dealer”, almost every piece of writing praised her father and her spot on the Dean’s list at her university while young men of color are being gunned down in the streets for much less. While black men are being dehumanized in the media for crimes much less than these, we now see the words “adorable” stamped next to the smiling mugshot of drug-dealer Sarah Furay.

Before the 1970’s, the amount of prisoners in the United States was less than 500,000. Today, that number reaches over 2.5 million incarcerated with the U.S rate of incarceration the highest in the world. With each of these statistics stemming from “Race to Incarcerate”, it also reads that 1 in 3 black males will grow up to do time. Jailing individuals will not be the end of crime as crime is a direct response to social conditions. Individuals from low-income, urban communities are targeted more often than any other communities and it’s a never ending cycle that will not be broken with jail time. Starting with Nixon in 1968, it was decided that “rehabilitation was not possible and that the function of corrections was to isolate and punish” (23). In lieu of the presidential election that is taking place next November, only a few candidates have spoken publically about the issue (Bernie Sanders for example) and the reason for this is because private prisons are run for profit. I truly believe that mass incarceration will not stop the socio-economic problems of our country for it is a never-ending cycle.