Prison Industrial Complex Summary

Angela Y. Davis explores the prison industrial complex in depth concerning the treatment of men and women and how their treatment extends to their gender and race. The article opens up with a story told from an inmate, on just how cruel, demeaning, and sickening the prison and system is by comparing the medical care to death. The story is the premise for this article which looks into different forms of punishments which haunts the inmates. The prison system is rapidly growing with more and more inmates, specifically women inmates. Why is this? She argues that prisons enforce gender discrimination, particularly towards women. While Davis’s project is that the recent increase in imprisonments relates proportionately to the economics of the prison …show more content…
This is where gender and race truly play a prominent role in. White women are often placed in psychiatric institutions, whereas men and women of color might often be placed in prisons and jails. “That is, deviant men have been constructed as criminal, while deviant women have been constructed as insane.”(Davis 66). This a perfect example of how the prison industrial complex and prisons enforce gender discriminations. Women and men could commit the same crime or make similar actions, yet the women could be called emotionally and mentally unstable, whereas a man could be called dangerous and a menace. Men when put into jails, and after they have committed crimes, are placed in for a certain amount of time before they reach “salvation”. “…women convicts were irrevocably fallen women…”(Davis, 70), women on the other hand tend to spend more time than men in psychiatric institutions and face views in which they have lost their womanhood. Unfortunately as a result, women are not given the correct treatment they deserve. Doctors and staff do not provide support or help, they simply feed in drugs into the women whenever issues are brought up showing the transparent theme of how money hungry the system truly …show more content…
With more work being done to establish a sense of equality in the prison and correctional system, the practice of chain gang was brought up. Previously only men had been put to chain gangs, but recently women have been brought to that as well. However this does not seem as a promising movement toward gender and racial equality, because it has a very negative dark connotation to it, “…the historical resonances of slavery, colonization, and genocide should not be missed in theses images of women in chains and shackles.”( Davis 77). The vision that is men and women, typically of color, being shackled together is simply an extremely poor practice. In terms of a negative impact, this goes much further than impacting those in the shackles, but effects races and people from all over. Leading only to more inequality and social injustice. Aside from that, women have begun taking part in courses which they practice cooking, cleaning, and sewing in this institutions. This is an ideal to integrate “traditional” women practices that a nuclear family housewife might have. By instilling such practices as communal work for these women, it is almost degrading and extremely sexist to them and all