Federal Prisons

On 15 March 2018, MIM(Prisons) received dozens of emails from corrlinks.com, a website used by some U.$. prison systems to provide email access to prisoners. All were from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and read in part:

“This message informs you that you have been blocked from communicating with the above-named federal prisoner because the Bureau has determined that such communication is detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the facility, or might facilitate criminal activity.”

It has long been established that it is legal for staff to open and read mail sent into prisons, and to not allow such mail that might pose a threat to safety like communicating information on plans to hurt someone or commit a crime. Quite frequently, publications and even letters from MIM(Prisons) are censored by prison staff for being a threat to security. Legally, this must be based on the content of that mail or publication containing information that poses a direct threat. In practice it often is not, and sometimes we can fight those battles and win.

What the Federal Bureau of Prisons is trying to say here is that members of MIM(Prisons) are not allowed to communicate or associate with prisoners they hold captive, regardless of the content of those communications. This is of course a violation of U.$. law and founding principles. (for more background on related laws and court rulings see our censorship guide)

Such blanket bans have been attempted in the past. Sometimes openly like this one, or like the ban in California, which ended after an out-of-court settlement with Prison Legal News because, well, the CDCR knew what they were doing was illegal. MIM(Prisons) is submitting appeals to this and will update our readers. In the meantime our comrades in federal prisons should continue to contact us via postal mail and keep us updated on censorship on their end.

Electronic Communications

There have been some recent discussions around the use of electronic communications and devices within U.$. prisons and how comrades should approach them. While CorrLinks has been around for some time, more recently prisoners in many prisons can purchase tablet computers for persynal use. Just as we warn people in general about how they use these technologies, those warnings apply even more to prisoners. While the internet provides opportunities for anonymity and free flow of information, this is not really true for the services provided by the state to prisoners. So there is little benefit, and much risk in terms of surveillance and control over a persyn’s communications from within prison when using these tools. Thanks to profiteering, we are not even aware of any email services for prisoners that don’t charge ridiculous rates.

In general, technology does offer solutions, that are at times better than what we can achieve in real life interactions in terms of both security and thinking more scientifically. To look at some principles of communication that we can apply both online and off, we will look at Briar (briarproject.org). Briar is still in Alpha, and only currently available for Android OS, but has received promising security reviews so far. Briar is an interesting example, because it addresses decentralization, cryptography and anonymity.

One of the biggest problems with the internet today is the centralization that a handful of multinational corporations have made of the traffic on the internet by locking people into certain services. When it comes to email, prisoners have little choice but to use the CorrLinks, centralized service, and face potential bans like this one. On the internet, centralization of activity on certain platforms allows the corporations on those platforms to decide what a majority of the population is seeing, who they are communicating with and when they are no longer allowed to communicate. With Briar, in contrast, one does not even need an internet connection to set up a network of communication with your associates. And even with the internet, each client serves as a node on a decentralized network, so that there is no one powerful persyn who can decide to shut it down. This same principle is applied in real world organizing, where an organization is decentralized to avoid being paralyzed if an individual is removed or repressed.

On the internet, we also have a problem of information being available everywhere to almost anyone. It is only recently, with many hacks and data breeches, that people are beginning to realize that encryption is necessary to protect even peoples’ basic information. Such information has been used to falsely imprison people, to steal identities, and to just target and harass people. In the real world, people know to talk quietly about certain things, or talk about plans for building peace when that C.O. who is always instigating fights isn’t around, etc. On the internet there is the potential for all information to be available for an indefinite period of time, to potentially anyone. So suddenly everything needs to be said in a whisper, or in encrypted form as Briar and other software does.

Related to encryption is anonymity. Whenever one goes online, one must have an IP Address that tells the other machines on the network where you are so they can send you responses. This IP address (typically) is linked to a real world location and often to a specific machine. Previously we have talked about The Onion Router(Tor), which works to hide your IP Address. When on the internet, Briar operates through Tor, when connecting to others on the network. This provides for anonymity. Anonymity does not have as strong parallels in the real world, but might be like putting up fliers in the middle of the night or marching in a protest with a mask on. This is an advantage of the internet. If done properly, we can spread information anonymously, and without fear of reprisal. In addition, anonymity on the internet allows us to share information without the biases that we come across in real world interactions. The internet can be a tool for people to think more scientifically and judge ideas for their merit and not for who is saying them.

As the above example shows, we cannot trust the U.$. government to just obey its own laws and not repress people for their political beliefs. We must continue to stand up to such political repression, while building independent institutions of the oppressed that allow us to continue to organize for a better tomorrow.

I wrote this piece because I was being irked by brothers talking to one another. I made a copy and posted it inside the dormitory as I always do. I also posted “Incarcerated Minds” by a California prisoner (March 2016).

Backbiting is a disease that is tearing the fabric of our brotherly threads of unity. Let’s keep it all the way 100. When one possesses commissary, tennis shoes, cigarettes, drugs, cell phones or just a swagger that another desires and has no means to obtain it or lack a hustler’s ambition to go and get it, one will begin to spread a venom in the community. This venom begins to seep into the heart and mind of the speaker until he becomes tainted, corrupted and eventually a hater. He hates himself foremost but will try to contaminate thy neighbor as though you are the culprit in his wicked heart.

He will attempt to turn people against you! He will “shake salt” on your name. He will snitch on you, do anything within his will power to aid in the destruction of you. One must be mindful of their thoughts, because they will become your words and eventually your actions! Get up off your punk ass and be your own man! Do for yourself and just maybe that fortunate comrade will aid you in your journey to become successful. A grown man talking about another man is weak! And the one who listens to and condones this trash talk is no better for not operating on the heart of that brother and extracting this cancer out of him.

You are fake if you smile in a man’s face and then when he leaves you call him lame or a pussy or whatever terminology used to describe your emotional hatred. This is the William Lynch theory in full effect 300 years later, just as he predicted. Planting dissent within our brotherhood. Our duty is to contradict that theory by uniting amongst one another and doing the total opposite.

I know that it is an extremely arduous task because I’m a proactive man of unity in peace, but when all of us are dead or in jail from this contagious disease that will cause us to rob, kill and destroy one another.

We represent Gangsters, Bloods, Crips, Lords, Pirus, Aryans, Goodfellas, Muslim, Brown pride, even Christians, but everyone of us suffer from the same struggles: incarceration, homelessness, poverty, police brutality, poor education, addiction, etc. Before we can come against each other we need to come together and overcome these struggles of capitalistic imperialism.

Peace to the revolutionary voices of insight. We will combat this capitalist devil through peace and unity. Through camaraderie and communism. The power is vested in the people; We are the people.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This essay really highlights one of the five points of the United Front for Peace in Prisons: Unity. And the writer is not only criticizing those who backbite and gossip, but ey is also doing something about it. Posting articles is a great way to try to get people thinking about something new. It can be less confrontational than attacking these folks directly to their faces. Though sometimes calling out behavior when it happens is also very effective. We want to hear more about the things people are doing like this to build peace and unity behind bars. Follow this comrade’s example and send in your reports for the next issue of ULK.

In a recent MIM(Prisons) Re-Lease on Life newsletter there was an article on what it is like to be a communist and on probation. In September 2016 in a ULK there was an article about sex offenders and status within the prison. This article will complement both, talking about what my experience has been like over two years as a communist post-probation.

The current revolutionary communist party versus the party branch I have been loyal to and committed to during my 10 years on probation, jail, prison was reluctant of taking me back. The reason why I only was allowed as supporter/sympathizer status was a defense mechanism from the COINTELPRO and now 9/11 days, where the ruling class or reactionaries could use my case if they found out to discredit the party.

The idea of another “other” somehow possibly discrediting the party makes sense. Especially if it was front line news that a socialist party, that has already been attacked throughout its history for all sorts of untrue accusations, was now “exposed” as harboring sex deviants. This would possibly make other party members uncomfortable. And it would appear to other groups that the party was not being a radical feminist communist party.

But my situation became a non-issue, probably due to members forgetting. I joined the same branch I was part of in the past. For a year I jumped into environmental work, anti-war work, feminist work, and helping with a homeless bill of rights. I also jumped into the leadership of an ex-prisoners’ organization, as well as with Samizdat Socialist Prisoners Project. Also working on a memoir of my thoughts as a thought-criminal.

When activists and revolutionaries of all stripes found out about me having a background, or of my crime, I did not shy away from acknowledging it. I told them I did not have a victim, that it was a sting by local cops. I am doing what I think communist sex deviants should do: work towards eliminating the capitalist state that creates schizophrenic and contradictory mores and norms in the first place. I was the guy that did prisoner liberation work in my area.

After a year, someone calling themselves a feminist found out what I had done and lambasted me on Facebook. As a white, male, sex offender, atheist, and communist I had to refrain from attacking a female feminist to avoid seeming like a white sexist and chauvinist. So I left the feminist group along with other feminist groups I was a part of.

But it did not stop there. There was nothing I could say to defend my actions or defuse the situation especially on social media. Only two or three people, who were hardly activists, were attacking me, questioning why someone like me should be in a feminist group. They found a paper I wrote about being in college as a sex offender, and did not interpret it correctly as I am no longer entitled, deviant, and uber-sexualized.

Throughout a week of turmoil, many comrades and friends defended me saying that I have never hid what I have done, and no opponent of me reached out to me to defend myself. My comrades pretty much asked if a sex offender’s best place is in a feminist group attacking the chauvinism, sexism in the days of Trump, Weinstein, and Brock Turner. Currently after two months, I still have not participated in any feminist-related event.

These opponent feminists are a possible example of carceral feminism. The carceral feminists are people who believe the best punishment is a thrown-away prison key. They have allied with conservatives on this issue. If I had my chance to defend myself, I would say I am more committed than any of the carceral feminist armchair activists. I would tell them how most of my close female friends, sexual partners, and even my girlfriend have experienced rape, sexual assault, etc. and they accept me. The one to two years off of probation, jail, and prison have been very rocky and it is hard to figure out my voice and place in the revolutionary struggle. I hope many of the released do not return to a life imposed on them by the bourgeoisie, but partake in liberating a prison world.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This comrade’s experience speaks to the universal struggle of former prisoners, and more specifically to the question of how revolutionaries should work (or not work) with people convicted of sex offenses. To clarify, ey is working with some organizations that we have significant disagreements with, but that doesn’t change the relevance of what ey writes.

This is a case where someone who was convicted of a sex offense is not disputing the accusation. Instead, ey comes to the conclusion that the right thing for someone who committed gender crimes to do is to fight to end the system that creates a culture of gender oppression. This we very much agree with.

We did not see the social media debates with and against this persyn so we can’t comment directly on what people said when arguing that ey should not be allowed into feminist organizations. But there are several problems we see with this incident. First, attacking someone on social media rather than taking criticisms directly to em and eir organization does not do justice to the seriousness of this political debate. Also, pushing someone out of an organization before hearing eir side and investigating the issue thoroughly just does the work of the government by dividing the movement.

As Maoists we believe that people are capable of change, and so when we learn about errors people have made we ask for self-criticism and an analysis of why those actions were taken. Those who not only make sincere self-criticism but also demonstrate through their actions that they have changed should be given the opportunity to contribute to the revolutionary movement.

Sex offenders are generally pariahs, both on the streets and behind bars. All people with a criminal record face extra scrutiny, criticism, and ostracization when they hit the streets. It’s important that revolutionary organizations don’t play into this. We shouldn’t dismiss former captives who want to be activists. Instead we should set up structures to help them get involved and support their work. And for those who have committed crimes against the people in the past, we can help them better understand not only why these actions were wrong, but also to transform their thinking to best avoid hurting others in the future and how to build a society that doesn’t foster those crimes in the first place.

I would like to participate in the grievance petition campaign for TDCJ in the state of Texas. I am tired of their dirty tricks, underhanded attempts to frustrate the grievance procedure - and render the “vehicle for review” ineffective.

Please send me several copies of the petition so that I can get on board. I have been locked up 10 yrs and I never had a major case. I was written 2 major cases 1 week apart (both are false) and sent to cell block for 6 months, good time taken & 2 lines taken. I want to raise attention to these tactics. I personally quoted policy to warden Kazmierczak, Major Holmes, and Captain Whitney Bruton on 3 different occasions to let them know this was wrong. All that happened was they got more angry and even our health care provider told them my medication was all legitimate. Thank you for your attention and help with this issue. Please send me up to date info that might help.

On the 9th of Feb a peaceful protest (sit in) was staged to protest early “rack up” because TDCJ was short staffed. The unit has been short staffed for awhile. So some prisoners protested, and TDCJ officers responded by “tear gasing” the whole pod. Thoses who were in their cells were gassed as well as the “sit in” group. They put the peaceful, non-violent protest group away in their cells.

The next few weeks some people received riot cases and some didn’t. My cell mate was in the cell with me. He received a riot case. We thought that once they checked the cameras he would be shown not guilty. Well that was wrong. He got a case for rioting and we all got a case for rioting, because… well I don’t know why. Just a report from Telford Unit.

So I’m at California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility. Here, as Africans, we are constantly on race-based lock-downs. We just came up over the last weekend for one day and went back on on Monday 3/5/18 for weapon stock allegedly missing from another building, which has prompted another massive cell search on top of the one we just had on 10 February 2018. All 8 buildings were hit hard as a punitive measure to oppress people of African colors yet again.

There was a race-based lockdown motion filed in 2014 when CDCR was forced to stop race-based lockdowns for something that another person from another race had did.

I’m also having a lot of problems with Inmate 602 Appeals/Grievances being arbitrarily screened out, rejected and or canceled by an Hispanic Appeals Coordinator SSA Ramos. Even when the 602 filed by Africans have valid merits she screens them out or refuses to process them in a timely manner. Please find enclosed 4 forever U.S. postal stamps to enable you to send me a grievance petition/letter.

I come to you today with news of an epidemic here at my home prison and prisons across the United $nakes of Amerika. I find myself amongst those who are seriously mentally ill. I’m in a step down program called the Residential Treatment Unit (RTU), where I will be housed for at least 90 days. I’m stepping down from a control unit called the Secure Residential Treatment Unit (SRTU). I’m finally in general population after four consecutive years in a control unit, AKA solitary confinement.

I look around me with disgust ,not at the people but the warehousing of the severely mentally ill. I wonder, why are most of these people even in jail. These people belong in a mental hospital, receiving treatment, not punishment. Oh, yeah, that’s right, the Obama administration closed most of the state psychiatric facilities and deemed it appropriate to warehouse these poor people in prison, under the guise of mental health treatment units.

Prison is prison, regardless of what you choose to label it. And the pigs treat these people with hate and contempt, abusing them verbally and sometimes physically. It sickens me. Anyone who defends capitalism, imperialism and the prison industrial complex are sadistic fools. Clearly this system is not working. Clearly, now more than ever, do we need an armed revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat. I will continue to struggle against oppression. I will die with these words on my lips: resist, resist, resist. I will have no peace until the liberation bells sound loud and clear, music to my ears.

Well, once again I’m writing to you so that it becomes known that Texas is at it again. The prison system is shifting its inmates around once more. Recently I wrote letting you know that 300 plus inmates had gotten shipped off to Pack 1 unit from Connally because they needed to fill it up due to inmates battling the conditions of heat related deaths who got shipped off that unit to try and stall or and disrupt the unified civil act that was filed. So in saying these units from Texas; Connally, Smith, Gibb Lewis, Eastham, Stevenson etc. sent inmates to fill in the bunks at Pack 1 Unit in Navaosta, TX.

Now we’ve been shipped back to our original units due to this civil act being won in the courts and those inmates having to be sent back to their original unit as well! The crazy thing is that the prison system tries its hardest to escape the responsibilities it has towards its subjects. This is a known practice! The bus ride to and from was no easy trip. Cramed like sardines and cuffed to each other and then having to endure the shifting and bouncing on the bus ride for for plus hours is not only annoying but dehumanizing as well!

Most of us who got shipped to Pack 1 have been on Connally unit over a decade and never experienced such circumstances and so it was confusing to go thru this situation. Now, the thing is that there is a rumor that some of us will go back as well once TDC puts in the AC units that those inmates won thru the courts. Sometime in April. But this only serves to encourage other inmates on other units to file suits as well and get this party going with the whole system statewide to put AC units in every prison.

Here at California Correctional Institution (CCI) I’ve been housed on C yard in building 1 over 9 months. In all that time, and I was told for at least 2 additional years, this building has refused to hire any Black prisoners as porters. Correctional Officers have interfered with elections held to pick Black MAC/IAC (Men’s/Inmate Advisory Council) representatives. Picking who they want over who the Black prisoners living in the building vote for, usually of the uncle Tom more effective variety.

I have brought this inequality issue up verbally and in the CDCR 22 form: request for interview. Verbally i’ve been told that i’m on the short list for over 90 days while all other races have been hired for that position in that time. I’ve been told that the fact that they’ve hired every other race continuously doesn’t mean that they are personally racist, to which I responded by pointing out the obvious hiring practices having either racial bias or a selective preference. I’ve shown and proved that in the rules and regulations of the Title 15, Section 3041.1.(7) which states: “Ethnic balance, ethnic balance is achieved by having the facilities white, Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and other identified ethnicities in the inmate population proportionately represented in the number of paid assignments at the facility.” Even when written on the CDCR 22 form which never got a response from Clearborn nor Trye but carbon copies were sent to the Ombudsman Ms. Sara Smith who I met with on three separate times addressing issues consistent with these aforementioned issues, yet there is not change on the lines of inequality when it comes to Black prisoners.

Seriously when we look at the practices of racism in prisons in the era of civil rights we see the exact same mentalities at work, the “slow change” and “just wait” mantras for black opportunities, equal treatment and even now blacks are double that of whites in unemployment in this country and sadly this is also true for black prisoners in building 1 on C yard at CCI.

Locked In: the true causes of mass incarceration - and how to achieve real reform
by John F. Pfaff
2017 Basic Books

With over 2 million people behind bars, Amerikkka locks up more people per capita than any other nation in the world. But within this system of mass imprisonment there is an even more striking story of national oppression: New Afrikans locked up at 5 times the rate of whites, and Chican@s and First Nations also locked up at disproportionately high rates. We might hope that a book about the true causes of mass incarceration (and how to achieve real reform!) would address this discrepancy. But Pfaff, like all good bourgeois scholars, is focused on how to make capitalism work better. And so ey sweeps this whole issue under the rug in a book that offers some really good science and statistics on imprisonment. Here we will pull out the useful facts and frame them in a revolutionary context.

Overall Locked In does a good job of exposing some important facts and statistics often ignored by prison researchers. Pfaff attacks what ey calls the “Standard Story.” This is the name ey gives to the common arguments anti-prison activists make, which ey believes are counter-productive to their (and eir own) goals of prison reform. Ey claims these arguments either over simplify, or are straight up wrong, about why we have so many prisoners in the United $tates, and as a result target the wrong solutions.

The big picture

Pfaff sometimes gets lost in the details and fails to look at the big picture. For instance, ey argues that “we are a nation of either 50 or 3,144 distinct criminal justice systems” talking about the big differences in how each state and even each county deals with prosecution, sentencing and prisons.(p. 16) While it is true there are significant differences, this thinking evades the importance of looking at the big picture that it’s no coincidence that so many distinct counties/states have such high rates of imprisonment in this country. It’s a good idea to examine state and county level differences, and learn lessons from this. But using this information in the interests of the oppressed requires an understanding of the underlying role of the Amerikkkan criminal injustice system in social control and national oppression, the topic Pfaff studiously avoids.

In one of eir rare references to the role that nation plays in the criminal injustice system in the United $tates, Pfaff bemoans that “Obviously, effecting ‘cultural change’ is a very difficult task.”(p. 228) Ey entirely misses the fundamental national oppression going on in this country. To him it’s just about attitudes and cultural change.

Pfaff does raise some good big picture questions that scientific capitalists and communists alike need to consider. Discussing the importance of balancing the cost of crime against the costs of enforcement Pfaff asks “what the optimal level of crime should be.” “Why is crime control inherently more important than education or medical research or public health?” “What if a reduction in prison populations would allow 100,000 children with at least one parent in prison to now have both parents at home, but at a cost of a 5 percent rise in aggravated assaults (or even some number of additional murders) – is this a fair tradeoff, even assuming no other criminal justice benefits (like lower future offending rates among these children)?” But Pfaff notes that politicians in the United $tates are not able to talk about these things. Even Bernie Sanders’s discussion of investing more in schools and less in prisons was in the context of reducing crime more efficiently. It’s just not okay to say education should be prioritized over crime control.(p. 119) And so Pfaff concludes that we must work on reforms that can be implemented within this severely restricted political system. We see this as evidence that the system will never allow significant change.

Crime rates and imprisonment rates

Pfaff is a professor of law at Fordham University, and like people working within the capitalist system ey accepts the capitalist definitions of crime. This means ey ignores the biggest criminals: those conducting wars of aggression and plunder against other nations in the interests of profit. For the purposes of this review we will use the term crime as Pfaff does in eir book, to refer to bourgeois-defined crime.

Crime rates in the U.$. grew in the 1970s and early 1980s. Pfaff believes that “rising incarceration helped stem the rise in crime.”(p. 10) Disappointingly ey doesn’t put much work in to proving this thesis. But at least ey concedes that locking up more people may not have been the best response to rising crime.(p. 10) And ey goes on to note that crime rates continued to fall while prison populations also fell in later years: “Between 2010 and 2014, state prison populations dropped by 4 percent while crime rates declined by 10 percent – with crime falling in almost every state that scaled back incarceration.”(p. 12) So even if locking up people in the 70s and 80s did curtail some crime, clearly there isn’t a direct correlation between imprisonment rates and crime rates.

There was a drop in the number of prisoners in the United $tates between 2010 and 2014 (4%), but this was driven by California which made up 62% of the national decline. Outside of California, total prison populations fell by 1.9% during this same period. But at the same time total admissions rose by 1.1%. Pfaff cites this statistic in particular to point out a failure of prison reform efforts using the metric of total prison population. If the goal is to reduce the prison population overall, looking at the drop in people locked up will miss the fact that the total number of prisoners is actually rising!(p. 69) This is an important point as we know that prison has lasting effects on all who are locked up, as well as on their community, even if they are only serving short sentences.

War on Drugs is not driving prison growth

Disagreeing with the common argument that locking up low-level drug offenders is driving up the prison population, Pfaff points out that “only about 16 percent of state prisoners are serving time on drug charges – and very few of them, perhaps only around 5 or 6 percent of that group, are both low level and nonviolent. At the same time, more than half of all people in state prisons have been convicted of a violent crime.”(p. 5) So ey argues that targeting non-violent drug offenders is focusing on too small a population to make a significant impact.

Pfaff offers extensive data analysis to demonstrate that the number of people serving time for drug convictions just aren’t enough to be a major driver of state prison growth. Ey does concede that “the single biggest driver of the decline in prison populations since 2010 has been the decrease in the number of people in prison for drug crimes. But focusing on drugs will only work in the short run. That it is working now is certainly something to celebrate. But even setting every drug offender free would cut our prison population by only 16 percent.”(p. 35)

From this analysis Pfaff concludes that it is essential that prison reformers not avoid talking about violent crime. “From 1990 to 2009… about 60 percent of all additional inmates had been convicted of a violent offense.”(p. 187) “[T]here are almost as many people in prison today just for murder and manslaughter as the total state prison population in 1974: about 188,000 for murder or manslaughter today, versus a total of 196,000 prisoners overall in 1974.”(p. 185) And due to length of sentence, “Violent offenders take up a majority of all prison beds, even if they do not represent a majority of all admissions.”(p. 188) So those serious about cutting back prisons will need to cut back on locking people up for violent crimes.

Length of sentence

Pfaff concludes that longer sentences are not the cause of rising imprisonment rates. This is the opposite of the common anti-prison activist position: “despite the nearly automatic assumption by so many that prison growth is due to ever-longer sentences, the main driver of growth, at least recently, has been steadily rising admissions for fairly short terms.”(p. 74) “[M]ost people serve short stints in prison, on the order of one to three years, and there’s not a lot of evidence that the amount of time spent in prison has changed that much – not just over the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, but quite possibly over almost the entire prison boom.”(p. 6)

Pfaff does concede that official sentences, per statutes, have gotten longer, but ey claims time served has changed much less. At most average time served in state prisons increased by 36% between 1990 and 2009, which ey calls a small increase that can’t explain most of the prison growth over that time. (p. 58) Ey argues that tough sentencing laws are all about politics and legislator image, trying to look tough on crime. But they count on prosecutors not actually imposing the maximum punishments.

Private prisons vs public employees

We agree with Pfaff that private prisons don’t play a very large role in the current Amerikan criminal injustice system. “Private spending and private lobbying … are not the real financial and political engines behind prison growth. Public revenue and public-sector union lobbying are far more important.”(p. 7) And ey correctly identifies “the real political powers behind prison growth are the public officials who benefit from large prisons: the politicians in districts with prisons, along with the prison guards who staff them and the public-sector unions who represent the guards.”(p. 7)

Pfaff makes a compelling point: public prisons will act the same way private prisons act when facing the same contractual incentives. Ey goes on to argue that it might actually be better to expand private prisons but give them incentives for better performance, such as rewarding lack of recidivism.

It is public prison employees who are the strongest opponents of private prisons. This was seen in Florida where an attempt to privatize 27 prisons was killed after the public employees’ union got a bunch of congresspeople to vote against the bill.(p. 87)

This strength of public prisons lobbying is also behind the fact that closing public prisons doesn’t necessarily result in much savings because the unions will aggressively oppose any lost jobs. In Pennsylvania, the state closed two prisons in 2013 and laid off only three guards. In New York the prison population dropped by 25% since 1999 but they have not closed any prisons.(p. 88)

Pfaff concludes: “In other words, reformers should not really be concerned with the privateness of the PIC. They should worry that as prisons grow, the supporting bureaucracies – private and public alike – will grow as well, and they will fight against anything that jeopardizes their power and pay.”(p. 91)

Pfaff is correct that private prisons are not driving incarceration rates. Actually, public employee wages are playing a much larger role. However, there are valid reasons to oppose privatization for reformers, or anyone who subscribes to a sense of humynism. In our bourgeois democracy, the law does provide for greater accountability of public institutions. Therefore, public prisons will generally allow less unnecessary suffering than private ones. Of course, neither privatization, nor the public sector can eliminate the oppression of the capitalist state that is meted out by the police and prisons. Yet, privatization of the state-sanctioned use of force only creates more problems for those working for progressive change.

Recidivism

Pfaff disagrees with the argument that a big driver behind the prison population is recidivism, specifically that lots of people are being sent back to prison for technical violations or small issues. Ey does find that in most states the number of parole conditions has gone up, from an average of 11 in 1982 to an average of 18 in 2008.(p. 62) But digging into recidivism more deeply, Pfaff cites a study that found that only about a third of people admitted to prison end up returning. And ey correctly notes that if the commonly cited Bureau of Justice Statistics claim of a 50% recidivism rate is wrong, this just means that even more people are ending up in prisons at some time in their lives. This is perhaps an even scarier story than the high recidivism rate because it means that even more lives are being ruined by prison.

States vs counties

Pfaff points out that the $50 billion that states spend on prisons is only about 3% of state spending. And as has been seen in examples above, the savings from decarceration are not that great if states can’t actually close prisons or lay off guards. Also, releasing individual prisoners doesn’t result in much savings because prisons work on an economy of scale. While we can calculate the average cost of incarceration per persyn, we can’t translate that directly into savings when one persyn is released, because the entire infrastructure is still in place.(p. 99)

New York City actually did cut its prison population recently, along with a few other urban counties in New York. However, rural counties sent more people to prison so the overall impact was growth, not decreasing numbers of prisoners in New York.(p. 76) Similarly, higher crime rate areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco in California send relatively fewer people to prison compared to more rural counties which tend to be more conservative.(p. 77)

We touched on this urban vs. rural discrepancy in imprisonment rates in a recent article on national oppression in prison, suggesting that this could be the primary driver behind the (temporary?) drop in the discrepancy between incarceration rates of oppressed nations and whites. Since more whites are in the rural counties, statistically that’s who is getting locked up if those counties are locking people up at a higher rate. Pfaff’s data backs up our theory.

Prosecutors driving imprisonment

Pfaff argues compellingly that the primary driver behind the boom in prisoners in the past few decades is prosecutorial toughness: prosecutors are charging more people with more serious crimes. Prosecutors have a tremendous amount of latitude. They can determine the charges brought against people, which in turn drives the level of seriousness of the crime and potential sentences. They can also decide when to take a plea and what to offer in the plea.

To prove the impact of prosecutors, Pfaff cites data between 1991 and 2014 when crime rates were falling. During this period the arrest rates by police matched crime rates, which means that as violent and property crimes fell so did arrests for those offenses. In states Pfaff examined, arrests fell 10% between 1994 and 2008. But at the same time the number of felony cases rose steeply. Fewer people were entering the criminal injustice system but more were facing felony charges. Pfaff calculated a 40% increase in felony cases. Ey found this was the only thing that changed; felony charges resulted in imprisonment at the same rate as before. So Pfaff concludes: “In short, between 1994 and 2008, the number of people admitted to prison rose by about 40 percent, from 360,000 to 505,000, and almost all of that increase was due to prosecutors bringing more and more felony cases against a diminishing pool of arrestees.”(p. 72) The probability that a prosecutor would file felony charges against an arrestee basically doubled during this time period.

Pfaff attributes this prosecutorial aggression to a few things. First, the number of prosecutors trying cases has increased significantly over the past forty years, unrelated to crime rates. Prosecutor discretion is not new, but they seem to be using it more and more aggressively in recent years. And it is the prosecutors who have complete control over which cases get filed and which get dismissed. Prosecutors also have a huge advantage over public defenders, whose budget is significantly less than prosecutors and who don’t benefit from free investigative services from law enforcement.(p. 137)

Overall Pfaff finds very little data available on prosecutors and so finds it impossible to come to firm conclusions about why they are so aggressively increasing prosecution rates. Ey spends a lot of the book talking about potential prosecutoral reforms but also concludes that mandatory data collection around prosecution is essential to get a better handle on what’s going on.

While this data on the role of prosecutors in driving imprisonment rates in recent years is interesting, revolutionaries have to ask how important this is to our understanding of the system. Whether it’s more cops on the streets driving more arrests, or more aggressive prosecutors driving more sentences, the net result is the same. If we’re looking to reform the system, Pfaff’s data is critical to effectively targeting the most important part of the system. But for revolutionaries this information is most useful in exposing the injustice behind the curtain of the system. We want to know how it works but ultimately we know we need to dismantle the whole system to effect real and lasting change.

Solutions

Even within eir general belief that prisons are necessary to stop crime, Pfaff makes some good points: “To argue that prison growth contributed to 25 percent of the drop in crime does not mean that it was an efficient use of resources: perhaps we could have achieved an equally large decline in a way that was less fiscally and socially costly.”(p. 116) And ey goes on to note that studies suggest rehabilitation programs outside of prison do a much better job reducing crime.

Some of Pfaff’s solutions are things we can get behind, like adequately funding public defenders. And most of them, if effective, would result in fewer prisoners and better programs to help prisoners both while locked up and once on the streets. But still these solutions are about relatively small reforms: giving prosecutors more guidance, expanding political oversight, expanding parole and providing more scientific structure to parole decisions, appointing prosecutors rather than electing them, setting up better contracts with private prisons paying based on how prisoners performed upon release.

All of these reforms make sense if you believe the Amerikan prison system has a primary goal of keeping society safe and reforming criminals. This is where we deviate from Pfaff because we can see that prisons are just a tool of a fundamentally corrupt system. And so reforms will only be implemented with sufficient belief from those in charge that the fundamental system won’t be threatened. And certainly the Amerikan imperialists aren’t looking to “improve” or reform the system; they will only react to significant social pressure, and only as much as they need to to take pressure off.