Under Lock & Key

Based on my perspective as a current captive in Texas State Prison, the purpose behind the renewed urge for expansion is different than when prison populations were in a high degree of political discontent.

It appears at this moment in time that the government apparatus’s principal reason for wanting to expand is to accommodate the influx of illegal immigrants. The premise of this political theory denotes that when waves of new lumpen enter a highly automated economy, crime rates drastically spike resulting in demands for prison beds.

An antithesis to this may argue that department of corrections across America are “alarmingly” short of prison staff and thus don’t have aims to build new prisons and/or re-open those that had been partially or completely shut down due to staff shortages. Moreover, the proponents argue against the likelihood of expansion because state prison systems have already been outsourcing their prisoners that are overflowing in county jails to other states for housing.

However, there are a number of factors indicating prison expansion is feasible. One is that fewer and fewer prison staff are needed to operate these concentration camps. For instance, prisoncrats have honed their use of humanism, programmatics, and diversification to make prisoners more content.

Specifically, The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has been steadily implementing a caste system among the prison general population. Wherein there are a variety of unique prisoner groups (religious field ministers, life coaches, self help prevention squad, peer health educators, etc) some of which have been provided their own private office space and computers whose software is designed to exclusively handle program curricula. This is in addition to narcotics sedating large segments of captives, thus requiring minimal staff supervision and leading to prisons being more easily manageable.

The final point illustrating that prison expansion is on the horizon is Texas has begun a vigorous campaign advertising employment to high school students. Additionally, Texas deployed a strategy luring a surplus of employment to their prisons located around inner cities. These correctional officers are then transported to work in prison units in rural areas that have staff shortages.

TDCJ staff predominately consists of Africans who literally sleep constantly on the job and more than likely during the approximately four hour road trip. Therefore, Texas appears to be on the cutting edge, serving as an example to other states, on the feasibility of expanding and effectively operating prisons.

Humanization

Coinciding with prison expansion is honing the use of humanizing prisoners, as Tip of The Spear has pointed out. One example of contemporary forms of humanizing is the state of Florida designating entire prison units to be so-called incentivized living conditions. Texas has begun to follow this example but has only yet limited incentivized living to sections within prison units. At this stage Texas has exclusively accommodated captives that have been sentenced to life without parole and others sentenced to a long time. [Editor: California also rolled out its new “California Model” focused on rehabilitation in 2023.] Overall, the humanization of prisoners through incentivized living conditions works hand-in-hand with the goal of expanding prison systems as it makes prison populations far more compliant with their conditions.

Diversification

Compared to California and mid-western state prisons, Texas has traditionally maintained a more diversified prison population. This degree of diversification has helped TDCJ to operate more smoothly because its prisoners don’t get killed if housed in general population for certain crimes such as rape. Due in part to federal implementation of the Safe Prison Act, its parallel states’ anti-extortion department, and more compliant prisons, the protective custody class has gradually merged into the general prison population.

Accordingly, I surmised that the purpose for diversification in Texas is to economize prison space, rather than to undermine potential political disunity and unrest amongst the broader prisoner class.

In regards to implementing state sanctioned programs such as Bridges-To-Life, Cognitive Intervention, Life Skills, etc, not surprisingly their curriculum consists of bland content. The general theme focuses exclusively on the criminal actions of captives rather than the role general society played in creating conditions of criminality. These programs are made attractive because TDCJ requires prisoners to “voluntarily” acquire certificates allegedly to increase parole chances, in a blatantly obvious arbitrary parole system.

Solutions

One solution to counter prisoners being lulled with humanization as a pretense for prison expansion is to teach fellow captives the sinister aims of the government apparatus. During this effort the counter replies I have gotten from captives were “Texas budget will not allow for prison expansion.”

At present time of this document, NPR is scheduled to cover discussions on the pros and cons of reintroducing private prisons to address county jail and prison overcrowding. In the current de-incarceration era, I am not aware of any prisoner advocates that don’t want a drastic reduction in prison populations. Therefore, another solution to counter prisoner expansion is I suggest that the foregoing political theory be widely publicized, including on social media.

MIM(Prisons) adds: The idea that the United $tates is a “highly automated economy” certainly has some merit, but we do not want to cover up the fact that the real reason people here work so little is because the whole country lives on the exploitation of the Third World where most of the things we consume are produced. In addition, migrant labor here in U.$. borders is harvesting and processing our food. It is interesting to watch what Texas has been doing by utilizing migrant labor to run its prisons. In many states, the prison system is part of the greater criminal injustice system that pays Amerikans nice wages to play the role of oppressor. While hiring mercenaries to do its dirty work abroad has many benefits to the U.$. imperialists, it does eliminate the role of nationalism in building loyalty among their soldiers. One benefit is hiring locals who know the terrain to do the work. In the TDCJ, hiring Africans to run their prisons seems likely to only create more contradictions.

In recent years we saw a leveling and then a dip in the prison population in the United $tates. This has been partially motivated by a decrease in pro cop and pro law and order public opinion among Amerikans.(1) Which direction things will go next is hard to say. A Virginia comrade recently wrote in on their tactics for reducing prisons by utilizing building and fire codes. As we’ve stated repeatedly though, getting the state to police itself leads to temporary reforms at best. If we are not engaging in actual power struggle by building an anti-imperialist prison movement that is independent of the state, then we have no real say in what the future of mass incarceration looks like.

^{Note: 1. see The Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons, The Political Economy of U.$. Mass Incarceration, p. 44-45.}