Week 8: Derek Garcia - Prison as Ghetto; Ghetto as Prison - Both as a Money Maker

http://www.ralphmag.org/GA/prison-poverty.html

In my search for further information regarding the linkages between the ghetto and the prison industrial complex, as explained in depth by Loic Wacquant in Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh, I found the above web page that highlights some statistics and observations that Wacquant highlights in another one of his works, Prisons of Poverty.

The following is a list of these, per the website:

·         Putting people in jail in the United States has become the nation's "largest program for the poor." Federal, state and local corrections administrations employ almost three-quarters of a million people. This makes it America's "fourth largest employer, behind Wal-Mart ... and just ahead of General Motors."

·         Republican calls for "small government" do not apply to prisons --- and the annual payroll for corrections institutions now exceeds $10,000,000,000.

·         One of the great provokers of the "war on crime" is low-cost television shows, also known as "drive-by journalism." There are America's Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries, and Cops which feed the public's ever-mounting fear of crime, despite the facts; which are:

o    According to FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, crime rates in the United States have actually continued to drop, during the same time period that ABC, NBC, and CBS have quadrupled the number of crime stories on their evening news programs: "typically five stories per evening ... 200% more than even ten years ago."

o    The antidrug policy of government acts as "spear and screen" for a war "against persons perceived as the least useful and potentially most dangerous parts of the population: the jobless, the homeless, the paperless immigrants, beggars, vagrants and other social rejects."

·         African-Americans represent 13 percent of consumers of drugs, about the same figure --- proportionally --- as for whites. But "in ten states, black men are twenty-five times more likely than white men to be sent to prison on a narcotics charge." In Illinois, minorities make up "70 percent of the drug arrestees and 86 percent of those admitted to state prison.

I use the term ‘prison industrial complex’ in this context because the book’s summary describes Wacquant’s assertion that these bullet points exist as such, not because of increasing crime rates, but more so because of the profitability targets of the privatized companies that operate many prisons.Wacquant points out that one of these companies, Corrections Corporation of Americas (CCA), had a stock appreciation of 746% in “a recent 3-year period”.  By any industry standard, this is a phenomenal increase in profitability and stockholders must’ve been ecstatic with their return on investment.  It’s a fair assumption that executive bonuses were very healthy as well.

It’s interesting to me that, although different in form, poor folks of color, especially blacks, are still commoditized; however, instead of being slave or low-wage workers, as in the past, they are now literally worth more money when they (we) are locked up.

With so many people (still) getting rich off of the backs of the oppressed, how will we ever change the vicious cycle of the prison-ghetto phenomenon?  Will we be able to get legislation past politicians who only serve one master – the rich corporate money-making machines who finance their campaigns?