MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Please send a copy of the Texas Pack. I’ve been in prison since 2002 and
h ave never written a grievance. The information you offer makes it a no
brainer for all prisoners the opportunity to correctly address
situations with supporting codes.
A writ writer let me borrow his copy so I could fight a disciplinary
case that was never investigated. That’s a normal practice on this unit
that needs to be corrected.
That resource is priceless and wanted to say thanks. This puts me on an
even playing field to filing grievances with confidence. Won’t let
situations slide by when I’m in the right. I’ve enclosed 3 stamps.
by a Pennsylvania prisoner February 2018 permalink
I have noticed that the New Afrikan people (NAP) have been crying out
for justice for their people against oppression for ages. As an advocate
and activist to end all oppression I stand beside them 100%. Oppression
is an ugly thing and needs to be totally eradicated. However, I have
also noticed that large numbers of NAPs and Latin@s oppress another
“minority” group, namely the LGBTQIA community on a continuous basis.
The same reasoning and ideology used by white supremacists to oppress
others, especially NAP and Latin@s, is being used by NAP and Latin@s to
oppress the LGBTQIA community. I feel that if people want to be free
from oppression, they should in turn refrain from willingly and
consciously oppressing other humyns and humyn groups. Justice and
equality should be collective, not subjective and for certain people
only. Does anyone else see this hypocrisy? I’m open to critique and
feedback.
MIM(Prisons) responds: As communists, we struggle for an end to
all forms of oppression. It’s a constant struggle to educate ourselves
and others, and consciously struggle against biases that have been
ingrained over years of living in this corrupt system. But while we live
in a society built on class, nation and gender oppression we can expect
to see forms of all of these within progressive movements.
There are a few principles we apply here. One is recognizing the
principal contradiction and focusing on pushing that forward. Another is
unity-struggle-unity. So as we unite with all anti-imperialist forces to
resolve the principal contradiction (the oppression of Third World
nations by the U.$.-led imperialist block) we will struggle over
questions such as these in an attempt to build greater unity with
revolutionary nationalists who may retain reactionary ideas around
gender.
I recall entering United States Penitentiary (USP) Leavenworth in 1993
as a very ignorant, reactionary member of a street tribe in need of
guidance. I was approached by an individual seen by others in many
lights; original gangsta! Comrade George’s comrade! Revolutionary! Major
underworld figure! All of the above and some. All I know is, the brotha
James “Doc” Holiday freely gave of himself to educate all of us tribal
adherents.
Making it mandatory that we both exercise daily (machine) and read
progressive literature, because consciousness grows in stages. As such,
he brought many a tribal cat towards a more revolutionary-oriented
ideal. Some accepted New Afrikan revolutionary nationalism. Others
gained structure, within their respective tribes (Kiwe/Damu national
identities). Whichever choices we made, the overall revolutionary
objectives were being met, in that the seeds of liberating consciousness
had been sown. We learned of: Che, Fidel, W.L. Nolen, Marx, Lenin, Mao,
Huey P., Bobby, Fred, Bunchy, Comrade George, Assata, etc. So many more
unnamed heroes/sheroes of the movement for change and liberation.
Was “Daktari” perfect? No! He had flaws and vices like most hue-mans
raised in capitalist United $tates – this putrid system which conditions
us to value money over character. However, it is my contention that, to
overlook the strengths and contributions this elder made to both Cali
state and Federal systems’ revolutionary cultures is to aid our common
oppressors in suppressing the memories of all whose stories could serve
as inspirational tools.
Utilizing materialist dialectics to analyze our forerunners’ strengths
and weaknesses as they relate to contributions to struggle is a
positive. Constructively critiquing their actions and/or strategem which
negatively impacted our progression towards building revolutionary
culture is also a positive. Personally, I do not view giving honors to
our fallen as “cult of personality.” As a New Afrikan by DNA, I know
firsthand how important it is for “us” to have concrete examples to
emulate. Sad reality is, U.$.-born New Afrikans have been conditioned
via historical miscarriages to see themselves as inferior to others. As
such, before giving them/us Marx and the like, they should be taught
examples of U.$. folk of color. Identification with/to New Afrikan
cultural identity is key to building viable revolutionary culture, prior
to more global revolutionary cadre education.
With that, I recently embraced Islam. The need of a morality code was
imperative for me (individually) in order for me to continue to be an
asset to the overall struggle. Regardless of my personal religious
belief, I shall remain committed to giving of myself – blood, sweat,
tears, my life if need be – to advance the struggle for freedom,
justice, and equality. This loyalty and devotion to the cause, come
hell, or forever in isolation, is a direct result of the seeds planted
in USP Leavenworth all those years ago by James “Doc” Holiday. I honor
him accordingly as an educator, elder, father figure, and comrade.
Recently my family attempted to locate Doc via FBOP locator and as his
name was not found, thus I assume he has passed on. I shall miss his wit
and grit. Revolutionary in peace!
MIM(Prisons) responds: The greatest tribute we can pay to Doc,
and all of the people who helped raise us to a higher level, is to carry
on eir legacy through our actions. We don’t mean to just “be about” the
struggle, or to shout them out in remembrance. “Each one teach one” is a
good place to start, and we can even look more deeply at what it was
about our comrades’ actions that made them such great organizers. In
analyzing their actions, we can build on that in our own organizing.
We encourage our readers to take a closer look at what it was that
turned you on to revolutionary organizing and politics. It surely wasn’t
just one action from one persyn, and it surely wasn’t just an internal
realization. Who was it that helped develop you, and how did they do it?
Especially for ULK 63, we want to look deeper at organizing
tactics and approaches within the pages of this newsletter. One thing we
can look at is our memories of what other people did to organize us.
Think about the people who helped develop your revolutionary
consciousness, and write in to ULK your observations.
What was their attitude? What methods did they use? How did they react
when someone was half-in the game? How did they behave toward people who
were totally in denial? Where did they draw the line between friends and
enemies? What are some memories you have of when the spark was lit for
you, that told you you needed to struggle to end oppression, rather than
just get what you could for yourself? Send your stories in to the
address on page 1 so ULK readers can incorporate your experiences
into their own organizing tactics.
In my last article on China I rehashed the 40-year old argument that
China abandoned the socialist road, with some updated facts and
figures.(1) The article started as a review of the book Is China an
Imperialist Country? by N.B. Turner, but left most of that question
to be answered by Turner’s book.
We did not publish that article to push some kind of struggle against
Chinese imperialism. Rather, as we explained, it was an attack on the
promotion of revisionism within the forum www.reddit.com/r/communism,
and beyond. The forum’s most-enforced rule is that only Marxists are
allowed to post and participate in discussion there. Yet almost daily,
posts building a persynality cult around Chinese President Xi Jinping,
or promoting some supposed achievement of the Chinese government, are
allowed and generally receive quick upvotes.
The title of our previous article asking is China in 2017 Socialist or
Imperialist may be misunderstood to mean that China must be one or the
other. This is not the case. Many countries are not socialist but are
also not imperialist. In the case of China, however, it is still
important (so many years after it abandoned socialism) to clarify that
it is a capitalist country. And so our positive review of a book
discussing Chinese imperialism, became a polemic against those arguing
it is socialist.
One of the major contradictions in the imperialist era is the
inter-imperialist contradiction. The United $tates is the dominant
aspect of this contradiction as the main imperialist power in the world
today. And currently Russia and China are growing imperialist powers on
the other side of this inter-imperialist contradiction. Reading this
contradiction as somehow representative of the class contradiction
between bourgeoisie and proletariat or of the principal contradiction
between oppressed nations and oppressor nations would be an error.
We have continued to uphold that
China
is a majority exploited country, and an oppressed nation.(2) But
China is a big place. Its size is very much related to its position
today as a rising imperialist power. And its size is what allows it to
have this dual character of both a rising imperialist class and a
majority proletariat and peasantry. Finally, its size is part of what
has allowed an imperialist class to rise over a period of decades while
insulating itself from conflict with the outside world – both with
exploiter and exploited nations.
A major sign that a country is an exploiting country is the rise and
subsequent dominance of a non-productive consumer class. At first, the
Chinese capitalists depended on Western consumers to grease the wheels
of their circulation of capital. While far from the majority, as in the
United $tates and Europe, China has more recently begun intentionally
developing a domestic consumer class.(3) This not only helps secure the
circulation of capital, but begins to lay the groundwork for unequal
exchange that would further favor China in its trade with other
countries. Unequal exchange is a mechanism that benefits the rich First
World nations, and marks a more advanced stage of imperialism than the
initial stages of exporting capital to relieve the limitations of the
nation-state on monopoly capitalism. As we stated in the article cited
above, China’s size here becomes a hindrance in that it cannot become a
majority exploiter country, having 20% of the world’s population,
without first displacing the existing exploiter countries from that
role. Of course, this will not stop them from trying and this will be a
contradiction that plays out in China’s interactions with the rest of
the world and internally. At the same time with an existing “middle
class” that is 12-15% of China’s population, they are well on their way
to building a consumer class that is equal in size to that of
Amerika’s.(3)
In our last article, we hint at emerging conflicts between China and
some African nations. But the conflict that is more pressing is the
fight for markets and trade dominance that it faces with the United
$tates in the Pacific region and beyond. China remains, by far, the
underdog in this contradiction, or the rising aspect. But again, its
size is part of what gives it the ability to take positions independent
of U.$. imperialism.
As we stated in our most recent article, this contradiction offers both
danger and opportunity. We expect it to lead to more support for
anti-imperialist forces as the imperialists try to undercut each other
by backing their enemies. Then, as anti-imperialism strengthens, the
imperialists will face more global public opinion problems in pursuing
their goals of exploitation and domination. In other words, a rising
imperialist China bodes well for the international proletariat. Not
because China is a proletarian state, but because the era of U.$.
hegemony must end for a new era of socialism to rise. We should be clear
with people about the definitions of imperialism and socialism to make
this point.
China’s potential to play a progressive role in the world in coming
years does not change the fact that the counter-revolution led by Deng
Xiaoping dismantled the greatest achievement towards reaching communism
so far in history. If we do not learn from that very painful setback,
then we are not applying the scientific method and we will not even know
what it is that we are fighting for. How and when socialism ended in
China is a question that is fundamental to Maoism.
The United $tates locks up New Afrikans at a rate more than 5 times
Euro-Amerikans. The rate for Chican@s is at least 1.4 times higher than
whites, and the way the prisons collect information on “Hispanics” makes
this number likely an underestimate.(1) This dramatic over-incarceration
of oppressed nations in U.$. prisons isn’t new. But the huge numbers of
people locked up is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the 1960s the
disparity between incarceration rates was actually about the same as it
is today. But the prison population was much smaller, so it impacted a
lot fewer people.
1960-2010 incarceration rates by “race”
In 1960, the white male incarceration rate was 262 per 100,000 white
U.S. residents, and the New Afrikan male rate was 1,313; that’s 5x the
rate for whites. By 2010 this disparity had risen to 6x. This means New
Afrikan men were six times more likely to be locked up than white men.
This discrepancy had a much bigger impact in 2010 because incarceration
rates skyrocketed starting in the 1970s, so that by 2010 the New Afrikan
male incarceration rate was 4,347 per 100,000.(2)
In 2000 the discrepancy in incarceration rates between New Afrikans and
whites actually started dropping, and by 2015 it was back down to the
1960 levels. Between 2000 and 2015 the imprisonment rate of New Afrikan
men dropped 24%, while at the same time the incarceration rate of white
men rose slightly. Among wimmin we see the same trend but with a 50%
drop for New Afrikan wimmin and a 50% increase for white wimmin.(3)
We need to put these changes in context. The incarceration rate of New
Afrikans is still ridiculously higher than for whites! National
oppression in prisons has not been eliminated, not even close. At the
current rate of change, it would take until around the year 2100 to hit
imprisonment equality by nation.
But we can’t ignore changes like these, especially when they are
consistent over a 15 year period.
Prisons are used primarily as a tool of social control by the United
$tates government. Oppressed nations have always been a threat because
of the dialectical relationship between oppressed and oppressor. And so
oppressed nations face the highest incarceration rates. And the biggest
targets are those who are organizing for revolutionary change, as we saw
with the massive COINTELPRO operations against the Black Panther Party
and the Young Lords Party in the 1970s.
So why would the criminal injustice system shift to lowering the rate of
incarceration of New Afrikans but not doing the same for whites? One
possible explanation is that changes to the criminal injustice system
have been proceeding at different rates in cities and in non-urban
areas. The drop in incarcerations rates has been largely driven by lower
rates in cities while incarceration in rural areas has remained
unchanged.(3) We may see these changes even out over time.
Post-emancipation proclamation, we have seen changes in national
oppression in Amerikan society at various times in history. These
changes generally happen in response to social movements. Reforms ranged
from ending legal segregation to curtailing overt discrimination in
arenas like housing, employment, and loans. But these reforms didn’t
actually put an end to these practices; the reality of segregation and
discrimination continued, just shifted to more subtle or hidden forms.
Nonetheless, we can say that in some regards conditions for oppressed
nations within U.$. borders have improved. This is not surprising as the
U.$. government can’t really afford to have active unrest within its
borders while it’s fighting so many overt and proxy wars around the
world. Imperialism is more stable when it can keep its home country
population pacified.
In a wealthy imperialist country, the capitalists have the money to
partly integrate the internal semi-colonies, buying them off with the
benefits of imperialist plunder. But the national oppression is so
entrenched in modern imperialist society that we don’t anticipate full
integration of these internal semi-colonies. And so we think it’s likely
the gap between white and oppressed nation imprisonment rates won’t come
close to closing. But the current trends in imprisonment rates are
something to keep watching.
It has been brought to my attention that the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation(CDCR) is trying to propose changes to
family visiting regulations. By using Proposition 57 as leverage to
divide the masses, this policy is discriminatory towards our comrades
who get family visits. This policy does not reduce violence, and/or
decrease contraband and/or promote positive behavior and/or prepare you
for a successful release or rehabilitation as claimed in the CDCR
proposal.
In a recent announcement of proposed policy changes to the telephone
system and family visiting eligibility, the CDCR issued the statement:
“All inmates are encouraged to continue with positive programming and to
not participate in any mass strike/disturbance. These types of
disturbances impact the many programming opportunities for
rehabilitation and reduction in sentence afforded by Proposition 57.”
This new policy is trying to discourage the masses from using their
constitutional right to peaceful protest, by pitting those working for
sentence reductions under Prop. 57 against those organizing for justice
and change. CDCR is back with their reactionary divide and conquer
ideals. CDCR is a functional enemy of using the word rehabilitation.
CDCR will never produce justice or correctness toward their captives. So
I ask this question to the masses: Does Prop. 57 support us or does it
help CDCR maintain and expand a repressive system against captives?
CDCR is abusing Prop. 57 and using it as leverage and against all
organizing activity. This direct or indirect association of Prop. 57 to
family visiting and discipline of prisoners promotes confusion and
non-justice. The people who voted for Prop. 57 did so with the intent of
trying to do justice to correct a broken system. They intended to return
humyn beings to their families.
Without justice, there is no life in people. Without justice, people do
not “live”, they only exist and that’s good for CDCR. (Wake up
comrades!) I have one message for CDCR, “Where there is justice, there
is peace.”
[Proposition 57 was passed by California voters in November 2016. Its
main purpose is to make it easier for prisoners with non-violent
convictions to get a parole hearing, and allow prisoners who are not
lifers or on death row to earn good time and earlier release through
programming.]
More than 2 million people are locked up in prisons and jails in the
United $tates. This represents an imprisonment rate of just under 1% of
the population. Almost 7 million people were under the supervision of
the adult correctional system (including parole and probation) at the
end of 2015.(1) And in 2012, latest data available from the U.$. Bureau
of Justice, the total money spent on the criminal injustice system
across federal, state and local governments was $265,160,340,000. Of
this prisons accounted for $80,791,046,000.(2)
Prisons are incredibly expensive for the state and prisons cost far more
than they produce.(3) The question is, why does the government, at all
levels, continue to spend so much money to keep so many people locked
up? And why does the United $tates have the highest imprisonment rate of
any country in the world?
The Myth of the Prison Industrial Complex
The
Prison-Industrial
Complex (PIC) meme has become effectively popularized in the United
$tates. Behind the concept of the PIC is the belief that there are big
corporate interests behind the unprecedented mass incraceration in the
United $tates. It represents an Amerikan politic that is outwardly
“anti-corporate,” while denying the class structure of the country that
is made up of almost completely exploiter classes.
While there are certainly some corporations that are making money off of
prisons, overall prisons are a money-losing operation for the
government. Basically the government is subsidizing the profits and
income of a few corporations and a lot of individual so-called
“workers.”(see Cost of Incarceration article) If we examine prison
statistics, economic trends, private prisons, and the “diversity” of the
prisoner population, then it becomes clear that prisons are
fundamentally about social control over oppressed nations within the
United $nakkkes. This leads us to some important conclusions on how the
prison system functions and how we should struggle against it.
Falling Rates of Imprisonment
Overall, the prison and jail population in the United $tates has been
dropping in recent years, along with the rate of imprisonment. The total
number of people in prison and jail started dropping in 2009 after
decades of steady increases. In reality the increases in 2008 didn’t
keep up with the increase in population in the United $tates as the peak
imprisonment rate was in 2007 with 1 in every 31 people being somewhere
under correctional supervision (including jails, prisons, parole and
probation). The prison/jail population peaked in 2006-2008 with 1% of
the adult population locked up behind bars. That dropped to .87% at the
end of 2015.(4)
This drop in imprisonment rate starting in 2008 lines up with the peak
of the recent financial crisis. It seems that the U.$. government does
have some limits to their willingness to spend money on the criminal
injustice system. If imprisoning people was a way to increase profits,
then the numbers of prisoners would increase when there was a financial
crisis, not decrease.
Private Prisons
Private prisons are a dangerous development in the Amerikan criminal
injustice system. They are owned and operated by corporations for a
profit. And these prisons take prisoners from any state that will pay
them for the service. In states with overcrowding problems, shipping
people to for-profit prisons is seen as a good option.
But these corporations also try to sell their services as cheaper and
more efficient, basically reducing the already dangerously low level
services to prisoners in order to save on costs, because, as we have
seen, prisons are extremely costly to run.
At the end of 2015, 18 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons met or
exceeded their prison facilities’ maximum capacity.(5) So we might
expect a lot of outsourcing to private prisons. But the actual
percentage of prisoners in private prisons is relatively low. In 2015,
only 8% of total state and federal prisoners were in private facilities.
And this number dropped 4% from 2014.(6) This is a greater drop than the
2.2% decrease in prisoners between 2014 and 2015.
If private prisons were so successful, then we ought to see their
numbers increase, not decrease. And if they were so influential with the
politicians, then they would have a larger market share. Private prisons
clearly are not the backbone of some “Prison Industrial Complex.”
Corporations have, thus far, not figured out how to successfully
generate profits from prisons, beyond the subsidy handout they get from
the government and commissary stock. On top of this, the federal and
state governments are losing money by paying for prisons.
There is a lot of activism opposed to private prisons. This comes from
people who generally understand that privatization of an institution
usually does not have a good outcome for the oppressed. Activism can
influence the government. It’s possible that the voices against private
prisons helped push the Obama administration to implement its policy of
phasing out private prisons for Federal prisoners. The Trump
administration has since repealed that policy.
But we don’t believe this is a question of partisan politics anyway. The
U.$. government has shown that it will stop at nothing to implement
policies that push forward profitable capitalist industries. The violent
attacks on activists protesting the destructive Dakota Access Pipe Line
are a good case in point. This is not a fight over profitable capitalist
corporations, it is a debate over which group of people get a subsidy
from the government: private prison corporations, or public prison
employees. Shifting away from private prisons is painless for the
government, because it doesn’t require a decrease in prisons, just a
shift in where money goes.
National Oppression
So, if not for profit, then why does the U.$. lock up so many people?
The answer to this question is obvious when we look at prisoners and the
history of imprisonment in this country. It is impossible to talk about
prisons without talking about the tremendous disparity in the way the
criminal injustice system treats Chican@s, First Nations, and New
Afrikans within U.$. borders. The ridiculously high rate of imprisonment
of people, particularly men, from these nations, is the most obvious
disparity.
Approximately 12-13% of the population of the United $tates is New
Afrikan, but New Afrikans make up around 35% of prisoners.(7) The
imprisonment rate of First Nations is also disproportionately high. In
South Dakota, for example, Indigenous people are 8% of the state’s
population, but are 22% of the state’s male prison population and 35% of
female prison population.(8) Meanwhile, Chican@s are imprisoned at a
rate higher than Euro-Amerikkkans as well.(9)
Any study of the injustice system reveals the same evidence: the
majority of prisoners are from oppressed nations. This is in spite of
the fact that there are more Euro-Amerikkkans in the United $tates than
all the oppressed nations combined.
This disparity starts on the streets with police occupation of oppressed
communities, and continues into the courts with disproportionate
sentencing, inadequate legal representation, and the conscious and
unconscious bias of juries. By the time we get to prisons, we can
clearly see the results of systematic national oppression in the rates
of imprisonment.
The aggressive use of prisons as a tool of social control started in the
United $tates in response to the revolutionary nationalist organizations
that gained tremendous popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s. As the
government scrambled for an effective response to tamp down this
potentially revolutionary mass movement, they turned to the police and
prisons.
Between 1961 and 1968, the prison population dropped to its lowest point
since the 1920s. From 1968 to 1972, the imprisonment rate rose slowly.
However, starting in 1974, just following the peak of revolutionary
organizing in this country, there was an unbelievable increase in the
imprisonment rates. COINTELPRO was oriented against revolutionary
organizations like the Black Panther Party and the United $tates began
to systematically lock up or assassinate those people who were trying to
fight against oppression. Almost 150,000 people were imprisoned in eight
years – demonstrating the government’s fear of revolutionaries.(10)
At the same time, there was a growing anti-prison movement and the
government was sure to stamp out any and all dissent there as well.
George Jackson’s book, Soledad Brother, came out in 1970 and was
a huge indictment of the oppression against the internal semi-colonies.
The following year, he was murdered.
This disproportionate arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of oppressed
nations didn’t stop in the 1970s. It continues today. Internal
semi-colonies are positioned in a way to maintain their subjugated
status. And it is when the oppressed nations band together and organize
that the Amerikkkan government strikes against them like a rabid dog.
Lessons for our Work
Understanding the injustice system is of central importance to
developing a method and structure to resist the prison network. This is
why it is so necessary to understand that prisons are a money-losing
operation for the government, and to locate the politics of mass
incarceration in the attempt at social control of oppressed nations.
If we focus on the role of prisons as social control, targeting the
lumpen, we can then target the real reason for the existence of the vast
Amerikan criminal injustice system. Exposing this role helps people
understand just how desperate the U.$. government was in the 1970s when
faced with a huge revolutionary nationalist movement. And the government
is still afraid to take any significant steps away from this
imprisonment solution.
That tells us they are still afraid of the oppressed nations, so much so
that they don’t care if a bunch of white people get swept up in the
imprisonment craze.
Since social control is driving the Amerikkkan prison system, we should
focus our organizing work on exactly what the government fears:
organizing those being controlled. We should pick our battles to target
the parts of the system that we know are vulnerable: they fear
revolutionary education (censorship, bans on study groups), they fear
organization (rules against groups), and they fear peaceful unity most
of all (provocations of fights, pitting groups against one another). We
can build this unity by spreading our analysis of the root goal of the
criminal injustice system. All those targeted for social control should
be inspired to get together against this system.
In Alabama the law offers economic incentives to starve prisoners.
Sheriffs get $1.75 per prisoner per day to feed people in jail, and they
get to pocket any of that money not spent on food. According to the
Southern Center for Human Rights, the sheriff in Etowah County “earned”
$250,000 in 2016 by starving prisoners in that county.
At least forty-nine Sheriffs are refusing to report how much food money
they are pocketing. Civil rights groups are suing these Sheriffs in an
attempt to require them to release this information. But that still
leaves the broader problem of the law that many are interpreting to
allow Sheriffs to profit by starving prisoners.
As we discussed in the article
MIM(Prisons)
on U.$. Prison Economy - 2018 Update, criminal injustice system
employees in the United $tates are the primary financial beneficiaries
of the largest prison system in the world. Good pay and job security are
appealing enough to draw many to this profession that exists off the
oppression and suffering of others. With a system structured in this
way, we shouldn’t be surprised that Sheriffs in Alabama feel entitled to
pocket money intended to feed people in their jails.
Men form groups for wealth and power Waging wars to feed
their greed Countless masses they devour Causing world-wide
misery Turning free men into slaves Starving children meet their
graves Yet the world is not amazed Not many seek to make a
change The ruling class enslaves the masses Dark-complexion
people suffer Socio-economic madness All the world chaotic,
tragic
Worn the shackles much too long Too much time locked in the
cage All has turned to hate and rage No longer will I be a
slave Spent my hours lost in pages Of the books that educate
Any mind that seeks the answers And the mind to liberate The
people of the planet suffer All is in the name of greed But it’s
time to make a difference No more shall I be deceived
The ruling class are merely men Like you and I they cry and
bleed They’re also prone to make mistakes And they can fail like
they succeed The rulers are all small in number We are their
real source of power Let us liberate ourselves Unite so all
alive are free Snatch the kingdom from the kings Throw the
tyrants off their thrones For liberty and equality
The United $tates government, and society in general, spend an enormous
amount of money on the criminal injustice system. The primary reason
behind this expenditure, from the perspective of the government, is
social control of oppressed nations within the United $tates.(see
Politics
of Mass Incarceration) But there are other beneficiaries, and
losers, in this expensive criminal injustice system. In this article we
will look at where the money comes from; who is benefiting and who is
paying; and how these economic interests play into our strategy to
organize against the criminal injustice system.
This is a follow-up to
“MIM(Prisons)
on U.S. Prison Economy” written in 2009. By periodically looking at
these economic facts and trends we can gain insights into how the
imperialist system operates and what strategies and tactics will be most
effective in our struggle against imperialism.
Direct costs of prisons
Total spending on prisons and jails more than quadrupled over the thirty
years between 1980 and 2010, from approximately $17 billion in 1980 to
more than $80 billion in 2010. When including expenditures for police,
judicial and legal services, the direct costs reached $261 billion.(1)
For comparison, in 2015 the United $tates “defense” budget was $637
billion, up from $379 billion in 1980, a 68% increase.(2,3) In that same
period, total government spending on K-12 education more than doubled,
going from $271 billion to over $621 billion.(3) So we can see the
growth in criminal injustice system spending was dramatically faster
than the growth in other government spending.
Hidden costs of prisons
Direct expenditures on prisons are just the tip of the iceberg in terms
of the economic impact of prisons. One study, conducted in 2016,
estimated the total aggregate burden of imprisonment at $1 trillion,
with an additional $10 in social costs for every $1 spent on
corrections. This means that most of that $1 trillion is being borne by
families, community members, and prisoners themselves.(4)
Being locked up in prison comes with a lot of negative consequences
beyond the obvious loss of years of one’s life spent behind bars.
Economically these costs include lost wages, reduced earnings once on
the streets, injuries sustained behind bars (from guards and other
prisoners), and for some the ultimate price of death from fatal injuries
while in prison, or a shorter life expectancy for prisoners. This totals
up to annual costs of just under $400 billion dollars per year.
Estimated Costs borne by prisoners:(4)
Lost wages while imprisoned ($70.5 billion)
Reduced lifetime earnings ($230.0 billion)
Nonfatal injuries sustained in prison ($28.0 billion)
Higher mortality rates of former prisoners ($62.6 billion)
Fatal injuries to prisoners ($1.7 billion)
Beyond the direct costs to prisoners, family members and society in
general carry an even larger financial burden. This includes direct
costs like traveling for visitation of loved ones and moving costs when
families can no longer afford their homes. But also less obvious costs
like the impact prison has on family members which has been demonstrated
to worsen the health and educational achievement of prisoners’ children,
leaving some homeless, lead to higher rates of divorce and also reduce
the marriage rate in the community. Further there are costs to society
from homelessness of released prisoners, and reentry programs and others
serving prisoners.
Estimates of Costs Borne by Families, Children, and Communities:(4)
Visitation costs ($0.8 billion)
Adverse health effects ($10.2 billion)
Infant mortality ($1.2 billion)
Children’s education level and subsequent wages as an adult ($30.0
billion)
Children rendered homeless by parental imprisonment ($0.9 billion)
Homelessness of former prisoners ($2.2 billion)
Decreased property values ($11.0 billion)
Divorce ($17.7 billion)
Reduced marriage ($9.0 billion)
Child welfare ($5.3 billion)
These expenses disproportionately impact oppressed nation communities as
the primary target of the criminal injustice system. A majority of
prisoners are New Afrikan and Chican@, and this is a form of economic
oppression against those nations. Unlike government expenditures which
create jobs and fund industries, most of these expenses do not directly
financially benefit anyone. This is just economic punishment piled on
top of the punishment. The massive United $tates prison system is not
just a tool of repression, it is actively worsening the economic
conditions of oppressed nations, keeping significant sectors of these
nations trapped in precarious conditions.
Prisons Create Jobs
While prisons have a devastating impact on oppressed nation communities
in the United $tates, they play a different role for the
disproportionately white employees of the criminal injustice system and
the mostly rural communities in which these prisons operate.
Of the direct expenditures on prisons and jails, a lot of money goes to
jobs for guards and other correctional employees. In 2016 there were
431,600 guards in prisons and jails, earning on average $46,750 per year
or $22.48 per hour.(5)
We can see striking examples in states like New York and California
where prisons are clustered in rural white communities (upstate New York
and in the central valley of California), but they are imprisoning
mostly oppressed nation people from urban communities.
In 2012 (the latest data available from the U.$. Bureau of Justice) the
total number of criminal injustice system employees across federal,
state and local governments was 2,425,011 of which 749,418 were prison
staff.(6) About half of the total corrections budget goes to pay
salaries for prison staff, which is two orders of magnitude more than
the $400 million in profits of private prison companies.(17)
There are other jobs generated more indirectly by prison spending:
construction jobs building and maintaining prisons, and jobs in all of
the industries that supply the prisons with food, bedding, clothing, and
other basics required to support the prison population. While some of
these costs are recovered through prisoner labor (we will address this
topic in more detail in ULK 62), the vast majority is still paid
for by the government. Vendors also make a lot of money through
commissary, phone bills, and other costs to prisoners. There are clearly
a lot of individuals and corporations with an economic interest in the
criminal injustice system.
Most prisons are in rural areas, often in poorer parts of states. Some
prison towns are entirely centered around employment at the prison, or
support services like hotels for visiting families. Others may have a
more diversified economy but the prisons still provide a significant
number of jobs for residents. These jobs give workers, and the community
their jobs are supporting, a strong interest in seeing prisons stay full
or grow bigger.
In reality, many jobs in newly-built prisons go to people from outside
of the community where it was built. People with experience are brought
in to fill these jobs. Many of these workers commute to the prison
rather than relocate to a rural town. And there is some evidence that in
the long run prisons are bad for the economy of rural communities. But
this is definitely not a popular opinion as many communities lobby
aggressively for prison construction. Once a prison is in place in a
community, even if it’s not working out so well, it’s not easy to
reverse course and change the economy. As a result some towns end up
lobbying for building more prisons to help bolster their economy once
they have one in place.(7)
Given the size of the criminal injustice system, and the many people
employed in and around it, this is a big incentive to maintain Amerika’s
crazy high imprisonment rates. It’s like a huge public works program
where the government gives money to create jobs and subsidize
corporations working in and around prisons.
State vs. Federal Funding
Most prison spending is at the state level. In 2010 state governments
paid 57% of the direct cash costs, while 10% came from the federal
government and 33% from local governments.(1) It’s all government money,
but this fact is interesting because it means state economic interest is
likely more important than federal economic interest in determining
criminal injustice system spending.
Looking closer at state spending on prisons we find that imprisonment
rates vary dramatically by state (8). Top states by imprisonment rate
per 100,000 adults:
Louisiana 1370
Oklahoma 1340
Mississippi 1230
Alabama 1140
Georgia 1140
Texas 1050
Arizona 1050
Arkansas 1050
All other states have rates under 1000 with a few states down in the
300s.
Prison populations are still growing in a few states, but in the top
imprisonment rate states listed above only Arizona’s population grew
between 2014 and 2015 (1.6%). Most of the states with an increase in
imprisonment rate between 2014 and 2015 were very small states with
smaller prison populations overall.(9)
There is a skewing towards high imprisonment rates in southern states.
These are typically poorer states with fewer economic resources. It’s
possible these states feel a stronger drive to build prisons as an
economic growth tool, in spite of the evidence mentioned above now
suggesting this isn’t necessarily the best path for towns to take. It’s
an interesting “investment” decision by these poorer southern states
that suggests there is more than just economics in play since it is a
money-losing operation for already financially strapped states.
Just as the decrease in country-wide imprisonment rates coincided with
the peak of the recession in 2008, it’s inevitable that economic
interests by the states, and by the many employees of the criminal
injustice system, are also influencing prison growth and prison
shrinkage. In some cases it is a battle between the interests of the
prison workers, who want prisons to grow, and the states that want to
stop bleeding so much money into the prisons. In each state different
conditions will determine who wins.
Economic Crisis and State Responses
In 2009, MIM(Prisons) looked at the potential of the economic crisis to
motivate a reduction in prison populations to address state budget
shortages. We cited a few examples painting that as an unlikely
scenario. The statistics do show that the total imprisoned population
has dipped since then. Here we revisit some of the big prison states to
see how things have shaken out since 2008.
If anything, overcrowding continues to be a bigger issue in many states
than funding issues. Though overcrowding may reflect a reluctance to
build new facilities, which is related to budgets. Ohio just celebrated
a modest decrease in their prison population at the end of 2017.(10) At
49,420, the population was a few thousands smaller than projected four
years earlier when things weren’t looking so good.(11) But overall the
numbers have just hovered around 50,000 since before the 2008 economic
crisis.
Ohio was looking to the court-ordered prison population reduction in
California as an example of what might happen there if they didn’t get
their numbers under control. The California reduction (or “realignment”)
was to address overcrowding in response to a lawsuit about conditions,
and not budget problems. It was significant, with a reduction of almost
30,000 prisoners in the year following the “realignment.” Numbers are
even lower today. However, county populations have increased as a
result, with an estimated increase of 1 county prisoner for every 3
reduced in the state system. In other words, the county population was
up over 10,000 people following the realignment.(12) Still California
accounted for a majority of the decrease in prisoners in the United
$tates since 2010.
Former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn canceled plans to close Pontiac
Correctional Center back in 2009. But current Governor Bruce Rauner has
a plan to reduce the population by 25% over the next decade, already
having reduced it by thousands over a couple years.(13) The Illinois
state system also remains over capacity at this time. However, Governor
Rauner primarily cites fiscal concerns as eir motivation for the
reforms.(14) Texas also recently reduced its population by 5,000,
closing one prison. Both Texas and Illinois did this by putting more
money into treatment programs and release resources.(14)
Pennsylvania has also implemented reforms in sentencing and preventing
recidivism.(15) After the passing of the 2012 Justice Reinvestment Act,
population numbers began to level off and even decrease by hundreds each
year. Like Ohio, Pennsylvania’s population has been hovering around
50,000, and like many other states these numbers remain over capacity
for the state (which is closer to 43,000).(16)
Overall we’re still talking about fairly marginal numbers here, and not
a systematic transformation. We peaked at 2.3 million prisoners in the
United $tates, and now we’re closer to 2.1 million. Still by far the
highest imprisonment rate in the world. Ultimately, the economic crisis
of 2008 did not have a huge impact on Amerikans because of the ability
of imperialism to push crisis off on the periphery. But we can conclude
from this experience that a serious economic crises is not enough to
significantly change the course of the massive Amerikkkan injustice
system.
Conclusions
Prisoners, their family and the community pay a heavy price for
imprisonment, and this includes a significant financial cost. The impact
on oppressed nation communities plays into the ongoing national
oppression that is part of imperialism. So we shouldn’t be surprised by
an imperialist society tolerating and even perpetuating these costs.
But prisons also cost the government a lot of money. And clearly these
costs have not deterred the United $tates government from maintaining
the highest imprisonment rate in the world. It’s a very expensive public
works program, if all this money is being spent just to supply jobs to
the many workers in and around the criminal injustice system. Although
these jobs do provide significant political incentive to sustain prisons
at their current level, Amerikan capitalist history provides us with
plenty of examples of cheaper and more socially productive programs that
create jobs for groups currently employed by the criminal injustice
system. It’s clearly a political choice to continue with this
expenditure and pour money into a costly system of social control.
Some anti-prison activists try to use the high costs of prison to their
advantage, organizing around slogans that emphasize that this money
could be better spent elsewhere, like on education. The 10-year
aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis demonstrates the weakness of this
approach. The social forces of change are not coming from state
bureaucracy budget offices. The social force for change are the
oppressed nations that are still being targeted by the out-of-control
injustice system, and the lumpen organizations that come up as a means
of self-defense from this oppression.
