Prison-industrial complex

The massive prison numbers pose one of the state of Texas biggest problems. I see this problem as one that is not being addressed which causes my question to arise; “With a problem so massive, what is being done to help the ones affected? Where along the line of correction can Texas make a change in favor to reform prisons or the policies that so many citizens are subject to? Is the issue of the Texas department of corrections one that is purposely being left unanswered?” On one end of the scale…

There is deep rooted racism in today’s policing system. This system is set in order to control people of color and other minorities. In addition to controlling minorities, prisons are able to make a profit in insuring all jail cells are filled and all the people incarcerated are working for almost nothing. Not to mention, people of color are routinely stopped and searched by police officers for no real reason other than the color of their skin. In addition, they are also subjected to constant…

consciousness at the University of California who shows, in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, how alarming the US prison system situation isn’t as old as one average individual may think. Just about 30 years ago the entire prison population stood nearly at 200,000 people in the US; that is a tenfold hurdle in just one generation. Davis started off by explaining the drastic change in the number of prisons built in California; 3 prisons were built between 1852 and 1952; from 1984 to the present,…

A prison industrial complex is used to regard to the expeditious development of the US inmate population to the political impact of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. In other words, it is basically a system used to reel as much prisoners possible, mainly nonviolent offenders, in confinement for labor whose wages amount to an enormous benefit to the prison or other companies and jobs for depressed regions. Since 1991 the rate of…

public housing, and federal educational assistance.” (Alexander 143) Most people think if a person gets out of prison their lives will automatically be better and their time in prison is the just the right punishment for their crime but it is entirely the opposite. In her subchapter “No place like home” Alexander mentions the cruel reality convicted felons face after coming out of prisons, the denial of public…

The suppose function of the prison is to Deter, Incapacitate and Reform individuals. The dea of deterrence is that individuals would be reluctant to commit crime due to fear of imprisonment as a form of punishment. Incapacitation has to do with restricting the movement of offenders where they are unable to commit further crimes. Reform is the idea that crime can be reduce by using punishment to change the behaviour and character of offenders for the better. The prison has not been very…

According to the ACLU (May 2013) the School to Prison Pipeline refers to the policies and practices that funnel our nation’s students out of classrooms and into the juvenile and justice system. The pipeline is a reflection of the the priority of incarceration over education, and starts with inadequate resources in public schools. High stakes testing, over policing, and poor zero tolerance and suspension practices all perpetuate the pipeline. Al Jazeera America (2014) writes of the…

to thoroughly explain the prison industrial complex in a beautiful and tactful way through the use of various voices. The film illustrates the outcomes…

In April of 1972, three African American inmates from Angola prison were put into solitary confinement after being falsely convicted of killing a correctional officer. The extralegal marginalization of these three men, Robert Hillary King, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox, occurred when it was uncovered that, during the murder investigation and subsequent trial, prison officials conveniently lost DNA evidence that may have been exculpatory for the three men. Moreover…

America’s “fear of crime” has led to today’s warehouse prisons, entrusted to enclose underclass minority groups, systematically caught in a symbiosis of the ghetto and prison; both, institutions of forced confinement designed to neutralize the threat outcasts pose to society (Wacquant, 2010). This, then, has developed a state, whereas the symbiotic relationship between the ghetto and the criminal justice system are the instruments by which the elite control the poor. Largely, due to…