Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Contact: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Pubdate: 21 Sep 1998 Page C-1 Author: Angela Davis SEEING THROUGH THE ILLUSIONS OF THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (Angela Y. Davis is History of Consciousness professor at the University of California - Santa Cruz and an organizer of the upcoming conference Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex. An earlier version of this article appeared in Colorlines magazine.) Imprisonment has become the response of first resort ot the problms facing people living in poverty. Our prisons thus appear to perform a feat of magic. But prisons do not disappear problems -- they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business. Homeslessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages. To convey the illusion of solving them, an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work must take place. This work, which used to be the primary province of government - -- caging people, feeding them, keeping them busy or depriving them of activity, transporting them in handcuffs and shackles from one facility to another -- is now also performed by private corporations. The proliferating network of prisons and jails can now be charaterized as a "prison-industrial complex." And, as with investment in weapons production, investment in the punishment industry reaps a dividend that amounts only to social destruction. Almost 2 million people - eight times as many as three decades ago -- are locked up in the immense network of U.S. prisons and jails. In California alone, the number of incarcerated women is almost twice the entire nation's 1970 female prisoner population. Colored bodies constitute the main raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the major social problems of our time. More than 70 percent of those behind bars are people of color. As prisons take up more and more space on the social landscape, other government programs that sought to respond to social needs -- such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families -- are squeezed out of existence. Even the deterioration of public education is directly related to the prison "solution." By stealing public resources, the prison-industrial complex has created a vicious cycle. For prisons not only materially and morally impoverish their inhabitants, they also devour the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to the sprialing numbers of prisoners. Because of their profit potential, prisons are becoming increasingly important to and enmeshed in the U.S. economy. Privatization is the most obvious instance. The stocks of Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhut Corrections Corp., the largest U.S. private prison companies, are doing extremely well. From 1996 to 1997, CCA's revenues rost 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million. Wackenhut's revenues grew from $138 million to $210 million. Profits, investment These companies are only the most visible component of the corporatization of punishment. Technology developed for the military by companies like Westinghouse is marketed for use in law envorcement and punishment. Prison construction bonds are a source of profitable investment for leading financiers like Merrill Lynch. MCI charges prisoners and their families outrageous prices for the precious telephone calls that are often the only contact prisoners have with the free world. Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor -- purchased at rates well beneath the federal minimum wage -- can be as profitable as Third World labor. Botd forms of exploitation rob jobs from formerly unionized workers, throwing then into the marginal classes from which prisons are filled. Companies using prison labor include IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft and Boeing. Not only high-tech companies reap the beneits. Nordstrom sells jeans marketed as Prison Blues as well as T-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes: "Made on the inside to be worn on the outside." Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars for Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the works buy graduation gowns made by South Caorlina prisoners. Despite its profitability for corporations, the penal system as a whole does not priduce wealth. It devours resources that could subsidize housing for the homeless, ameliorate public education, open free drug-rehabilitation centers, create a national health care system, combat HIV, eradicate domestic abuse -- and, in the process, create well-paying jobs for the unemployed. Universities stunted Since 1984, more than 20 new prisons have opened in California. At the same time, only one new campus was added to the California State University system and none was added to the University of California system. In 1996-97, higher education received only 8.7 percent of California's general fund. Corrections, meanwhile, swallowed 9.6 percent. Now that affirmative action has been declared illegal in California, it becomes obvious that education is increasingly reserved for certain people while prisons are reserved for others. Presently, five times as many black men are in prison as in four-year colleges and universities. This new segregation has dangerous implications for the entire country. By segregating people and labeling them criminals, the prison-industrial simultaneously fortifies and conceals the structural racism of the U.S. economy. Claims of low unemployment -- even in black communities -- make sense only if one ignores the vast numbers of people in prison and assumes they have disappeared and thus have no legitimate claim to jobs. In the United States, the numbers of black and Latino men currently incarcerated amount to 2 percent of the male labor force. Their disappearance from the labor pool is an effective, if expensive, means of enhancing the employment statistics. Conversely, says London School of Economics criminologost David Downes, "Treating incarceration as a type of hidden unemployment may raise the jobless rate for men by about one-third, to 8 percent. The effect on the black labor force is greater still, raising the (black) male unemployment rate from 11 percent to 19 percent." Though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons fail either to solve social problems or to reduce crime, state policy is rapidly shifting from social welfare to social control. Surveillance is focused on communities of color, immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, the homeless, in general, those with a diminished claim to social resources. The emergence of a U.S. prison-industrial complex within the context of cascading conservatism, marks a new historical moment whose dangers are unprecedented. But so are the opportunites. Resistance Am impressive number of grassroots projects are resisting the expansion of the punishment industry. It ought to be possible to link these efforts to create radical, nationally visible movements that can legitimize critiques of the prison industrial complex. It ought to be possible to build movements in defense of prisoners' human rights and movements that persuasively argue that what we need is not new prisons but new health care, housing, education, drug programs, jobs and education. To safeguard a democratic future, it is possible and necessary to weave together the many and increasing strands of resistance into a powerful movement for social transformation. ***************** STRATEGY SESSIONS AGAINST PRISONS A national conference and strategy session, "Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex," will be held Friday through Sunday at the University of California - Berkeley. It will include workshops, films, evening performances and speakers including Davis, feminist Gloria Steinem and 1998 MacArthur "genius" award winner Ellen Barry of the San Francisco-based Legal Services for Prisoners With Children. For more information see http://www.igc.org/justice/critical or call (51) 238-8555. - --- Checked-by: Pat Dolan