The United States is anything but "united" as it has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In fact, this rate is five times higher than in other developed countries. The so-called "land of the free" holds approximately 2.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, and 218 immigration detention facilities (1). There has been a 700 percent increase in the number of people incarcerated since the 1970s as a result of the war on drugs and from an effort to suppress social movements within communities of color (2).
The graph and facts above demonstrate mass incarceration in action. Simply put, mass incarceration is the practice that the US enforces to incarcerate people, specifically people of color, at an increasing rate not seen in any other country. Moreover, in the US, we have public and private prisons. Private prisons are owned by private corporations and receive money from the government based largely on the number of prisoners they incarcerate. Therefore, the government pays prisons to incarcerate people. The two main private correction companies are CoreCivic and the GEO Group. In 2015, CoreCivic made $1.67 billion in profit with the help of $911.8 million from federal money and $756.9 million from state contracts (3). In that same year, GEO Group's profit was $1.84 billion (3).
For a visual representation of the facts above, I encourage you to watch this brief video explaining mass incarceration.
How Profit and Racism Drive Mass Incarceration
Imagine you work for a fishing company. You get paid for each fish that you catch but your boss tells you that they will increase your pay if you are able to find ways to catch the most fish in the shortest time while saving money. Also, you get extra money for specific fish. You then come up with different techniques to catch as much as you can with the resources that you have. Now, mass incarceration is much more complex than that but you get the idea that the person will do anything in their power to catch more fish to acquire more and more profit. In this case, the criminal justice system created stricter laws, patterns of policing, and selective prosecution to fill up prisons faster for more money and power.
Prisons grow in order to get rid of people of color, especially young Black men, accomplishing the goal through new lawmaking, patterns of policing, and selective prosecution."- Ruth Wilson Gilmore in Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (4).
Another important term to know to better understand mass incarceration is prison industrial complex. Angela Davis defines this as the idea that the pursuit of profit and racist ideologies drive prison construction and the desire to continuously fill them up (4). Therefore, apart from profit, racism drives mass incarceration in the U.S. According to the U.S. Census, Black people are incarcerated five times more than Whites, and Hispanics are twice more likely to be incarcerated as well (5). For a predominantly white country, the fact that Black people and Hispanics overrepresent the prison population indicates that the criminal justice system is more about uplifting white supremacy and racism than it is about rehabilitating people and creating peace and safety. The table below puts that statement into numbers.
Source: Prison Policy
Also, the graph below further demonstrates that Black people are disproportionately incarcerated in California.
As you can see, the entire criminal justice system is built on institutionalized racism and enforces this through mass incarceration. But for mass incarceration to continue, the criminal justice system enacts practices like racial profiling and police brutality on Black and communities of color. In 2015, the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that Black residents are the most likely to be stopped by police officers (6). Also, the police are twice more likely to use force on Black and Hispanic residents than on white people, as seen in the graph below (6). In contrast, white people are most likely to call the cops on people and to report crimes. This all means that Black and Hispanic people are more likely to come in contact with law enforcement, which increases their likelihood of being arrested and incarcerated.
Mass Incarceration in California
California perfectly represents the US' obsession with prisons. Currently, CA has 33 prisons but it is important to note that the prison population increased by 500 percent between 1982-2000 and that 24 prisons were built between 1982-1998 (4). However, the prisons were not built with the intention to decrease crime because research shows that the crime rate peaked in 1980 and declined after (4).
Simply put, CA embarked on the largest prison construction program in the world to stimulate its economy. To fill up these new prisons, CA created a list of new crimes and criminal laws that specifically targeted impoverished communities of color. As a result, these communities became police hot spots and the source for new prisoners. Since 1988, CA began to pass as many as 200 legislation pieces each year that were harsher on drug offenses and overall on Black people (4).
Corcoran, CA exemplifies the assumption that prisons can stimulate a place's economy, when in reality the money goes to the prison and employers. Corcoran happens to be one of the most impoverished cities in CA, which is why it asked for government intervention in the form of a multi-million dollar prison. Contrary to the prediction that it would lead to a booming market, the two prisons built in Corcoran did not improve its economy nor did it create prison jobs for Corcoran residents (4).
Conclusion
The goal of prisons in the US is not to rehabilitate or protect the greater public. Prisons here exist to get rid of people of color for the benefit and safety of white people and white supremacy. This country has the highest number of incarcerated people yet does not have the highest crime rate. Research and personal narratives show over and over again that prisons prioritize racism and profit over liberation. The system is inherently flawed when it prefers to incarcerate people at an unprecedented rate than to fix the root of the issue.
1. Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (2020). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020.Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/factsheets/pie2020_allimages.pdf
2. Bernd, C., Mitra, M. N., & Loftus-Farren, Z. (2017, June 1). America's Toxic Prisons: The Environmental Injustices of Mass Incarceration. Retrieved from https://truthout.org/articles/america-s-toxic-prisons-the-environmental-injustices-of-mass-incarceration/
3. Wagner, P., & Rabuy, B. (2017, January 25). Following the Money of Mass Incarceration. Retrieved from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/money.html
4. Gilmore, R. W. (2007).Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California(Vol. 21). Univ of California Press.
5. Sakala, L. (2014, May 28). Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census. Retrieved from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html
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