MASS INCARCERATION AND THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
©Wendell
Griffen, 2015
Arkansas
political leaders, led by recently elected Governor Asa Hutchinson, have begun
openly talking about shipping prison inmates to privately owned prisons in other
states. They say doing this is better
than building a new 1,000 bed prison at a construction cost of $100 million,
and then operating that facility in future years. Before people compliment Governor-elect
Hutchinson and other politicians for what they may claim is an effort to save
tax dollars we should consider some uncomfortable truth.
In
1972 there were fewer than 350,000 people in local, state, and federal prisons
and jails. In 1974, the National
Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommended that no
new lockup facilities be built for adults and that the then existing
institutions for juveniles be closed. There
are now over 2.3 million people locked away in prisons and jails across the
United States.
The
United States leads the world in producing prisoners and Arkansas faces a
prison and jail overcrowding crisis because voters unwisely embraced arguments
by politicians that demonized people suffering from drug dependency, mental
illness, poverty, and homelessness for the past forty years. If prison rates in the U.S. dropped to early 1970s levels it is
estimated that four out of five people currently behind bars would need to be
released. More than a million people
would lose their jobs, including more than 700,000 prison and jail guards,
prison administrators, service workers, and other personnel. Prisons
would have to be closed!
Prisons
are intended to remove people that society considers dangerous from those who
are peaceful. However, non-violent
offenders make up the overwhelming majority of people in Arkansas prisons and
jails. Arkansas prisons and jails are
overcrowded, by and large, because politicians decided over the years to treat people
suffering from drug dependency, mental illness, unemployment, and homelessness
as criminals.
Building
new prisons won’t solve the problems of drug addiction, mental illness,
unemployment, and homelessness. Solving
those problems will require investing in community based health and wellness
clinics, building and staffing more public schools that educate people of all
ages so they can be better educated, encouraging employers to pay decent wages
and salaries to workers, and making affordable housing available to workers and
their families. But as my father would
often say, “doing that would be too much like right.”
There
would not be a prison overcrowding problem if the people we have criminalized
because of drug dependency, mental illness, poverty, and homelessness had been treated
as disabled rather than dangerous. These
people would not have been stripped of their civil rights, including the right
to vote. Their families would have been supported,
not marginalized. We would be a healthier,
productive, and compassionate society.
However,
mass incarceration is essential to what I call the “prison-industrial complex.” A prison is a place of custody or
confinement. There is money to be made
in building, maintaining, and operating prisons. Land must be purchased and
developed. That produces money for real
estate developers, bankers, attorneys, surveyors, and construction
companies.
Prisons
must be staffed. Guards must be hired,
trained, outfitted with uniforms and equipment including weapons (firearms,
Tasers, and restraint devices). Health
care services must be provided for prisoners and prison staff. That produces money for manufacturers of
firearms, uniforms, prison furnishings (beds, mattresses, laundry, etc.), and
for the companies that provide medical, dental, and other healthcare
services.
Governor-Elect
Hutchinson and the politicians talking about sending Arkansas prison and jail
inmates to lockup facilities in Louisiana surely realize that sending Arkansas
inmates to Louisiana means paying someone to hold and care for those
inmates. Who will be paid? How much will Arkansas pay?
This issue, like anything else
involving justice, is fundamentally a moral concern. Why should we out-source caring for Arkansans
who are not dangerous, but who suffer from drug dependency, mental illness,
poverty, and homelessness?
Why shouldn’t we love our neighbors
enough to care for them in Arkansas rather than treat them as disposable waste
to be deposited elsewhere?
What is just about a process where our disabled, mentally
ill, impoverished, and homeless neighbors are systematically stopped, arrested,
charged, convicted, sentenced, and incarcerated as part of complex series of business
ventures ultimately intended to create profits for investors?
I
have long called for a moratorium on building and expanding prisons and jails
in Arkansas. I also oppose the idea of
sending Arkansas inmates out of state. We
won’t solve the injustice of mass incarceration by shipping the victims of that
injustice elsewhere.
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