Apr-May 97

The Prison Industrial Complex and Fascism

The aim of the prison-industrial-complex is to generate profits for corporations while warehous-ing those who have been pushed out of the global economy. When economies deteriorate and legal jobs disappear, people in desperation create new underground economies, such as the drug economy and the sexual services economy-and the criminal justice economy automatically follows.

There is a direct relationship between the deindustrialization of the U.S economy, the ability of corporations to move wherever they wish without respecting any national borders in search of the cheapest labor, and the loss of jobs in this country, particularly for certain kinds of people, particularly for young people of color .
-Angela Davis at the Women's World Conference in Beijing

The new prison economy has been called the most profitable business in the U.S., second only to the arms business conducted by the so-called Defense Department, which creates and peddles new fancy killing machines to the world at large. Both the prison industry and the armament industry are subsidized with our tax money while making fine fat profits for the corporations they serve. As for the prison-industrial-complex, it profits from concessions that own sole rights to products bought by prisoners and often to those bought as gifts to prisoners as well.

The prison-industrial-complex also has the benefit of prison slave laborers, paid no wages in some states, only pennies an hour in others. Even in states where a minimum wage is paid, prisoners must pay most of their wages for room and board and even toothpaste and medical care. It's "Maquiladora USA," a bonanza for the corporations, a bonanza for the stock market. And it explains why so many are locked away for so long on charges once considered mere misdemeanors. Prison slave labor also will fit nicely into the removal of welfare, and the alternative underground economy, leading to still more imprisonment, ad infinitum.

Angela Davis, the beautiful black woman whose erudition and effective speaking made her notorious in the '60s, prods us not to accept this new economic prison ploy. We should learn about it and object vociferously.

The rise in prisons is not due to the rise in crime but to the rise in financial opportunism now that a weakened federal government no longer puts a stop to it. Those who complained that government was too big and yelled "get the government off our backs" might notice that less federal government means more corporate governance! Two corporations-the Prisons Corporation of America and Wackenhut-are on the stock market, making billions from prison products and the prison labor they control. It's the new growth industry in the U.S. "Tough on crime" translates into easy money to fuel the GDP, the gross domestic product statistic. A lot of good people are being wasted, stuck away in their cages, working for pennies, denied education. And when they are paroled, will they emerge better, more useful citizens for having been housed with violent criminals and having experienced bureaucratic abuse under the prison system? No. They will find jobs difficult to get, and as felons they will be unable to vote. Without a doubt, imprisonment spawns crime. Joblessness spawns crime. Tax money that is removed from education and welfare also spawns crime, for it now goes to prison construction and the prison-industrial-complex. And every time a judge sentences someone to imprisonment, it comes out of taxpayers' pockets. A life sentence costs taxpayers two million dollars.

Bad as this may sound, prisoners for profit is not the real issue. What combination of events is needed to create a fascist controlled society? First of all, fascism is a military industrial society in which the corporation is the State, the State the corporation, as defined by Mussolini. For this you need a government run by corporations and corporate funding controlling legislators and the media. If we don't have fascism right now, we are very close to it. Corporations contribute lavishly to political campaigns, and television is owned by four transnational corporations that furnish most of our news and point of view. A true fascist state also requires the ability to intimidate its citizens and prevent excessive activism. That purpose can be accomplished if it can imprison large numbers of its people at will while its mainstream media creates broad citizen acquiesence.

This new virtual mass incarceration, based upon new "tough on crime" laws, opens up the final step to the creation of real fascism for the United States. This is no small matter. Steven Donziger's book The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission, edited by Steven R. Donziger, contains the first comprehensive, detailed analysis of America's criminal justice system in almost 30 years. I suggest you read it if you want to know where we are going in the future. No, he doesn't deal with fascism. You can access that yourself or better yet read the history of how it began and was formed in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. You will find the similarities shocking.

Are we U.S. citizens alert enough to prevent fascism in our own country, or is it correct to say, as one expert did, "If fascism comes to the United States it will be because the citizens voted it in"?

So far we seem to be doing a pretty good job of doing just that. Encouraged by corporate media, many cheered the idea of a breakup of the government by repeating the old corporate cry, "Get the government off our backs." Then, frightened by the media "crime wave," voted for "get tough on crime" and backed the Anti Terrorist bill that could in fact dub innocent activism as "terrorism." Citizens acquiesced to the Welfare Reform Bill that removes needy citizens, including mothers and underage children, from government help. For fifteen years, American citizens have accepted the extraordinary reality of millions of homeless citizens, forced to live on the streets like stray cats, labeled as dopers and crazies when in fact most had been employed taxpayers. Now they are scorned, and homelessness is institutionalized as a normal part of the American society. The numbers of these once-employed citizens is predicted to grow even larger as impoverishment of the American people grows apace.

Citizens also accept the fact that a marijuana "roach," or even a seed in one case, can be grounds to remove all personal possessions, house, car and even a private yacht from that citizen and lead to imprisonment for a nice long term.

Access to free abortions is removed from teens and impoverished families, creating difficulties both for the mothers of unwanted children and for the future of these children themselves. Opponents of abortions show more concern for the unborn than for the lives of the born.

As for the "Three Strikes" law that can legally lock up a person for life (at a cost to the taxpayer of two million dollars), a felony (one strike) can be anything the court chooses to name a "felony." Any misdemeanor can, according to circumstances and court preference, be deemed a felony! This makes life imprisonment extraordinarily easy for a judge to decree. Yet citizens responded to the three strikes law with accolades.
Given all this, it is easy to agree that U.S. citizens are voting in fascism little by little. Americans have slumbered. We did not have to accept any of this. As Angela Davis said, it is time we objected vociferously. It is time we all remember that ours is supposed to be a democracy, not an autocracy. The time grows short in which we are able to make that claim. If we do not, we will richly deserve the fascist state that we are certain to get.

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