Speaking for Himself: Professor Loic Wacquant Corrects My Characterization of His Critique of the Concept of the Prison Industrial Complex

Last June, I sent a memo to participants in a PIC Communiversity Course that my organization sponsored. In it, I made this argument regarding discussions about the term “prison industrial complex.”

We spent the first two sessions trying to understand the history of prisons and how the PIC operates. One area of debate that we did not broach is whether the term “Prison Industrial Complex” is a good construct to explain the expansion and encroachment of surveillance and incarceration over the past 30 years. There is a pitched battle of ideas in the academic community about whether the PIC is a useful way to describe mass incarceration. Sociologists like Loic Wacquant contend that the PIC is a misguided frame as an explanatory construct for mass incarceration. For information about Wacquant’s critique, you should read his book “Prisons of Poverty.” This is the shorter, more reader-friendly version of his book “Punishing the Poor.” Chris Parenti is another person who is a critic of the term “Prison Industrial Complex.” He contends that prison spending is much less than that of the “military-industrial-complex.” As such, he takes issue with the term. He has other criticisms that he has offered as well.

Finally, in the past couple of years, some have begun to use the term “Corrections-Industrial Complex” instead of PIC. These people contend that since the fastest growing segment of carceral supervision today in the U.S. is probation, it makes more sense to think of this phenomenon as the CIC instead. Former inmates are often still under some form of supervision once they leave the walls of prisons (GPS tracking, intensive parole, etc…). Others who come into contact with the criminal legal system are not incarcerated but are given probation and come under the surveillance of the state too.

We have not discussed these debates in this course because of the limited amount of time that was available to us. I did however want to bring this to your attention in case you are interested in reading more from some of the academics that I mentioned earlier.

Personally, I continue to find the term “Prison Industrial Complex” to be a good frame for discussing the issues that we have over the past five months. This is why I continue to use it. In particular, I rely on Critical Resistance’s definition:

“Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, economic, social, and political ‘problems’.”

I received an e-mail today from Professor Loic Wacquant.  As a sociologist myself, I greatly value engaged dialogue about ideas.  I reached out to Dr. Wacquant and asked if I could post his response here. He graciously agreed.

Read the full post at US Prison Culture

Panel on Mental Health and the PIC

Adler's Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice invites you to a Symposium: What happens to people with mental illness when they encounter the criminal justice system?  Innovations in Illinois.  The event information is on the flier below.  Please feel free to pass on to other interested parties!  If you have any questions please let me know.  You can RSVP to this FREE event at ipssj@adler.edu.

Resource on the PIC and Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People

Our friends at the Transformative Justice Law Project shared these amazing resources detailing how the PIC and access to resources creates pipelines for trans and gender non-conforming folks into prison.  I'll have full audio of the presentation up shortly.

Readings for Final Session

This reading from the Defending Justice Toolkit offers insight around issues of prison abolition and reform including some organizing advice.

http://www.defendingjustice.org/pdfs/chapters/organizing.pdf

Please also check out these following websites from local Chicago groups that are addressing PIC-related issues:

TAMMS Year 10 -- http://www.yearten.org/

Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers -- http://www.claim-il.org/

Illinois Campaign for Telephone Justice -- http://www.illinoistelephonejustice.com/

John Howard Association of Illinois -- http://www.thejha.org/

Midwest Books to Prisoners -- http://www.midwestbookstoprisoners.org/

Chicago Books to Women in Prison -- http://chicagobwp.org/

An Essay on the ICE Raid at Postville

We haven't spent a lot of time focusing on the experience of immigrant groups with the PIC.  This essay discusses the massive raid of a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa by Immigrations and Custom Enforcement in 2008.

Unfinished Business

As we approach the final session of the 2010 Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) Communiversity course, I wanted to take a moment to underscore some of the areas that we haven’t really been able to cover in our time together.  We are in our fifth session today and will end in June with a focus on specific organizing efforts aimed at dismantling the PIC. 

This course was intended to provide a basic overview of some of the key issues around the prison industrial complex.  It was not meant to be exhaustive.  This topic is so broad and complex that it would take a lifetime to unpack all of its nuances.

In the meantime, here are a few areas that we did not consider in depth over the past five sessions but are critical to gaining a comprehensive view about the PIC and how it operates:

1. Immigration, Detention, and the PIC -- On any given day there are 30,000 immigrants in detention in the U.S. (women and children included). 
2. The “war on terror” and the U.S.’s global prison network (Bagram/Guantanamo) – extending the reach of the PIC outside the U.S.
3. Mental illness and the PIC – two wonderful documentaries highlight how prisons have become warehouses for people with mental illness.  Check out “The New Asylums” and “The Released” if you are interested in this topic. Both are hour-long documentaries produced by PBS’s Frontline.
4. Political Prisoners – We did not address the issue of the imprisonment of dissidents and critics of the state in any depth.
5. The role of the media in promoting and supporting the PIC – We did not discuss in any depth how the media works to criminalize marginalized groups through its coverage of “crime.”

We spent the first two sessions trying to understand the history of prisons and how the PIC operates.  One area of debate that we did not broach is whether the term “Prison Industrial Complex” is a good construct to explain the expansion and encroachment of surveillance and incarceration over the past 30 years.  There is a pitched battle of ideas in the academic community about whether the PIC is a useful way to describe mass incarceration.  Sociologists like Loic Wacquant contend that the PIC is a misguided frame as an explanatory construct for mass incarceration. For information about Wacquant’s critique, you should read his book “Prisons of Poverty.” This is the shorter, more reader-friendly version of his book “Punishing the Poor.”  Chris Parenti is another person who is a critic of the term “Prison Industrial Complex.” He contends that prison spending is much less than that of the “military-industrial-complex.” As such, he takes issue with the term.  He has other criticisms that he has offered as well.

Finally, in the past couple of years, some have begun to use the term “Corrections-Industrial Complex” instead of PIC.  These people contend that since the fastest growing segment of carceral supervision today in the U.S. is probation, it makes more sense to think of this phenomenon as the CIC instead.  Former inmates are often still under some form of supervision once they leave the walls of prisons (GPS tracking, intensive parole, etc…).  Others who come into contact with the criminal legal system are not incarcerated but are given probation and come under the surveillance of the state too.

We have not discussed these debates in this course because of the limited amount of time that was available to us.  I did however want to bring this to your attention in case you are interested in reading more from some of the academics that I mentioned earlier.

Personally, I continue to find the term “Prison Industrial Complex” to be a good frame for discussing the issues that we have over the past five months.  This is why I continue to use it.  In particular, I rely on Critical Resistance’s definition:

“Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, economic, social, and political ‘problems’.”

Hopefully after the past few months, everyone who has consistently attended these sessions can answer the following questions in his or her own way:

1. What are the historical, social, political, and economic forces that have contributed to the vast expansion of incarceration in the U.S.?
2. How do you define the PIC?
3. Who gets put in prison and who doesn’t?
4. What are the effects of the PIC on individuals, communities, and society?

There are many, many more issues that we could have covered as they relate to the PIC.  I hope that some of you who are interested in continuing your learning around these issues will apply to join the PIC Teaching Collective (July 9^th is the deadline).  For the others, I hope that you will independently continue to expand your understanding of the issues around the PIC in the future. 

Written by Mariame Kaba

Resources for the next session

The top six resources are the recommended ones for May 22nd.

1. Article from San Francisco Guardian about trans women in prison
2. Six minute video clip from the video "Cruel and Unusual" about incarceration of trans women
3. Executive summary of this big report on LGBT youth in the juvenile courts, 7 pages long
4. This is a copy of the Comic Book "Hard Life" which was distributed at our last session.
5. Fact Sheet: How the Criminal Justice System is Anti-Queer.
6. Fact Sheet: How the Criminal Justice System is Anti-Women.

Other resources if you are particularly interested in this topic:

Summary of the Amnesty International report "Stonewalled" about US police abuses of the LGBT community. Can be read or listened to on the website. It has short case information and recommendations and covers a broad range of issues.

This is a video about the issue of shackling pregnant women in prison.

This is a series of pieces written by formerly incarcerated women.

This is a recent piece about incarcerated mothers that is worth reading.

This is an article about the big increase of women in prison.

Corrupting Justice: A Primer for LGBT Communities on Racism, Violence, Human Degradation & the Prison Industrial Complex, [PDF] American Friends Service Committee. 2005.

This is a brand new report from ICJIA titled "Victimization and Help-Seeking Behaviors among Female Prisoners in Illinois."

Presentation on School-to-Jail pipeline

From the Advancement Project, "Zero Tolerance, High-Stakes Testing, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline."  Below, please find  the link to the PowerPoint presentation used in the webinar.  The recording of the webinar will soon be posted to the websites www.fairtest.org and www.stopschoolstojails.org.  

http://www.advancementproject.org/sites/default/files/Webinar.pdf

Notes on how the PIC impacts youth

Thanks Naomi!

How does the “War on Drugs” impact young people’s daily lives?

• Young people are entered into cycle
• Takes from them—mom, dad, hope
• Street sweeps
• Mandatory minimums
• No financial aid for college with a drug conviction
• “street culture” is more appealing than school (i.e. school to prison piplining system
• racial profiling—police state—no hope, apathy
• no real information about effects of drugs/harm reduction
• way on drugs—the system’s legal ways to prison
• border cartels killing whole families
• what counts as (bad) drugs?
• $$ spent on enforcing drug laws, lack of funding for education
• labels young people as bad, dangerous
• takes away opportunities and resources
• find other ways to survive under the radar
• zero tolerance policy

Interesting article

Here is an article about the "toy jail" in the playground in NYC that was mentioned as part of Saturday's conversation.

Readings for April 24

Here's  the readings for the fourth meeting of our group.

http://archive.prisonactivist.org/youth/groups.pdf

http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/index.php/Prison_Moratorium_Project

please pay particular attention to alternatives to incarceration on this page

http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/3696_TOOLKIT-FINAL.pdf

please review the fact sheets on the war on drugs, policing sex work and cops in schools

Here is an article about how zero tolerance policies in school discipline are criminalizing young people across the country

A fact sheet from the Defending Justice Toolkit called "How the Criminal Justice System is Anti-Youth"

An "arresting" PSA about called Prison Playground.

This is for those of you who have a particular interest in the school to prison pipeline and have the inclination to read a longer report about the phenomenon which was put together by the Advancement Project.

And this one from Gary:

This is a link is to an issue brief by the American Constitution Society on life without parole sentences for juveniles:

http://www.acslaw.org/node/15507

Lots of information in a few pages.

Freed from prison, some juveniles have no place to go

original here

By Steve Mills, Tribune reporter

7:13 PM CDT, March 31, 2010
Nearly 10 percent of the inmates in Illinois' juvenile prisons have essentially completed their sentences — in some cases more than a year ago — but are stuck behind bars because they have no place to go, state records show.

Many of the youths are being held longer in one of the state's eight juvenile prisons because officials cannot find an appropriate placement in a transitional living program or other kind of facility. Others are still in prison because officials found the homes of families or friends to be unacceptable, or because families simply refuse to take them back, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Notes in the records tell sad stories. "Youth has no family that will take him," reads the comment in the case of one downstate boy who was sent to prison for aggravated robbery and was still there two months beyond his scheduled release.

"Placement denied 5X w/relatives," reads the status report on another case. The names of the youths were redacted by state officials because of their age.

As of Tuesday, 104 of the 1,107 inmates in the state's juvenile prisons, or 9.4 percent, were still behind bars even though their expected parole dates had passed.

The percentage has remained relatively steady since the department began tracking the figures in September 2005, though at times it has crept higher than 10 percent.

The issue underscores a persistent problem that Department of Juvenile Justice director Kurt Friedenauer has made a priority to tackle: a lack of aftercare for some of the state's most troubled youths.

"Our goal is not to keep kids for the sake of keeping kids," Friedenauer said. "Our goal is to prepare them for re-entry back to the community and for them to be successful there. But you have to have a (placement) to do that. … We simply do not have the financial resources to purchase the appropriate services."

A youth's administrative review date, or ARD, is a guideline for when he or she is expected to be approved for parole by the state Prisoner Review Board. But without a plan in place for where the youth will go upon release, youths either are held back from appearing before the board or are approved for parole pending a placement, according to Friedenauer.

Many youths kept beyond their ARD remain in prison for months. In some of the more extreme cases, youths have been held for close to a year, with a handful held for more than a year after their ARD. Two youths were held for 1,000 additional days, or nearly three years, according to the most recent figures available, which date to January.

The Department of Juvenile Justice is responsible for finding placements for nearly all the youths. A small number of cases involve wards of the state, and as a result the Department of Children and Family Services is responsible for finding homes for those youths.

Some cases appear complicated by family and friends whose homes are deemed unsuitable because of their own legal problems or because they do not have the means to accommodate a youth. The documents suggest that officials, over time, make several efforts to find homes for the youths, often approaching various relatives and friends to try to find an appropriate placement.

Roundup of pieces and interviews on The New Jim Crow

We've talked a lot about Michelle Alexander's new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the age of Colorblindness through the series, so I thought I'd put together a little collection of recent interviews and articles she's done recently.  She's articulated a powerful analysis of the intersection of the history of white supremacy and mass incarceration, and is well worth paying attention to.

• Strapped for Cash, America Rethinks Criminal Justice Reform 
• Her Blog archive on Huffington Post 
• Interview on Democracy Now!
• Interview by the Black Agenda Report

Key terms from March 27th

Jim Crow

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.

Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms and restaurants for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated. These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800-66 Black Codes, which had also restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964[1] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Readings for third session

The topic of the next session is "How Race and Class Intersect with the Prison Industrial Complex."

Everyone who attended this past Saturday's session should have gotten a copy of the comic called "Prisoners of the War on Drugs."

The introduction to Michelle Alexander's new book called the "New Jim Crow." Please make sure that you are able to read this chapter as it will provide a good foundation for our next session.

This is a powerful article about the death penalty that I think will be of interest to everyone and relates directly to what we will be discussing.

This is a fact sheet called "How is the Criminal Justice System Racist." It comes from a toolkit called "Defending Justice."

Illinois Community Justice Project

We're developing a new resource that is going to make our work stronger. It’s an online site that will allow us to share our efforts, and to harness each other’s good work. This site will be transparent, participatory, and collective. And that’s why we’re writing for your help.

We’d like you to help us identify and archive key knowledge about the Illinois justice system. By collecting this knowledge in one online place, we hope to generate shared understandings, new initiatives, and more possibilities to connect our vital efforts.

Please take a moment to read through this call, and to think through the materials that have helped to inform your work. Think about materials that you would be willing to share with other folks working on justice issues.

Submissions will become a part of the wiki-site we are developing, and will be a significant resource for activists, community members, students, teachers, and movement workers across Illinois NOW and for years to come. No submissions are too old or too new. We welcome resources from other organizations and websites, from personal memories, and from institutional archives. Once it’s fully developed, this site will also have the capacity for posting "needs and wants" and for calls to immediate action.

Any One of Us: Words from Prison in Chicago

"Any One of Us: Words from Prison"
A Play By Eve Ensler

To benefit the Lesbian Leadership Council's Lavender Fund
and POW-WOW's Juvenile Justice/Crisis Care programs

Click image above to view full-size flyer

Friday, March 12, 2010
Pre-reception 6-7 p.m.
Performance 7:15-9 p.m.
Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies
700 E. Oakwood Blvd. (Bronzeville)
Chicago
     Note: All are welcome to attend this event.

Photos and audio from second session

This weekend's meeting was amazing!  We covered the basic dimensions of how the prison-industrial complex works, what it needs to continue operating, what communities it impacts, and how it impacts those communities.  Here's some photos from the workshop, along with audio of the entire event.  We're working on getting folks to share their notes and thoughts from the event, and that should be up in the next few days.  Take a listen, it's well worth it.

Second Session Readings

Prison Town- The comic book that was handed out at the first session. 

“Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex” by Angela Davis

“Crime, Captalism, and Croplands,” a chapter from The Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

What's happening here

About 40 folks got together at the Chicago Freedom School on January 30 to kick off a joint series of community workshops hosted by the Freedom School and Project NIA on the Prison Industrial Complex.  In this six-month workshop series, youth and adults are exploring the history, impacts, and current state of mass incarceration in the United States.  This website is going to archive some of the materials from these workshops, and hopes to provide folks who didn’t have the privilege to attend this series access to some of the discussions we engaged in.  Let me know if you’ve got any info you think should be included, or other info sources that we should connect this to.