Where are Prison Reformers?

By JASON SIBERT

In September, our country experienced prison strikes. The nationwide strike was over working conditions and wages. The strikes impacted 29 prisons in 12 different states and more than 24,000 prisoners missed work. The strikes occurred exactly 45 years to the day (Sept. 9) as the Attica prison uprising.

The national media reported on the details of the strike, but the media didn’t talk about the economic implications of this strike. Companies use prisoners as a source of cheap labor by contracting out work to prisons. The companies that do so are household names – McDonalds, Walmart, and – yes — Whole Foods Market. Some inmates are also involved in manufacturing goods for the state, federal, and municipal governments.

Of course, the prisoners make less than a minimum wage worker would makes on the outside, just cents on the hour. When we allow prison labor to be used by companies or government entities, free labor on the outside is being forced into competition with semi-slave labor. Of course, this does nothing for the suffering American worker.

The plot thickens. Journalist Eric Schlosser wrote an often-cited story in 1998 titled “The Prison-Industrial Complex” that revealed the connection between our prison system and those who profit from it. He stated: “the prison-industrial complex is not just a set of interest groups and institutions; it is also a state of mind. The lure of big money is corrupting the nation’s criminal-justice system, replacing notions of safety and public service with a drive for higher profits. The eagerness of elected officials to pass tough-on-crime legislation – combined with their unwillingness to disclose the external and social costs of these laws – has encouraged all sorts of financial improprieties.” Schlosser also defined the prison-industrial complex as: “a set of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need.”

Schlosser provided some wonderful analysis. He talks about the tendency to imprison non-violent offenders to create profits for those who operate private prisons and the tendency for politicians to support the prison-industrial complex if it creates jobs for their communities. The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. One out of every 400 Americans was incarcerated in 1970 and one out of 100 is today. In addition, our country also has 50% of the world’s lawyers. Are we preventing crime? One study by two professors at Rutgers University and Purdue University said that if we were to incarcerate another 10% of the population, crime would drop by 0.5%! Look at the state of Florida. Over the past 13 years, the number of people incarcerated for non-violent offenses increased by 189%, but the number of inmates who committed violent crimes dropped by 28%.

What we see is a system at work that creates profits for those in the prison industry, jobs for communities that are dependent on the prison-industrial complex, and a workforce for corporations that don’t want to pay the full price for labor. In a democratic republic, our criminal justice system should belong to the citizens, right? It should be used to correct those who can’t live in our society. Instead, we have a system that enriches profit seekers of various types. Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb said that fixing our criminal justice system is a challenge for reformers for years to come. Will those reformers please step forward?

Jason Sibert worked for the Suburban Journals in the St. Louis area for over a decade and is currently executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis, Mo. Email jasonsibert@hotmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2018

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