The African slave
trade of 16th - 18th century did not appear suddenly overnight; it
grew over a period of time driven by the “economic interests” of merchants
and businessmen; and it was sanctioned by their representatives in government.
This is precisely the process that is unfolding today with the creation
of a “prison industrial complex” on a scale never before seen. There are
two very disturbing aspects of the growth in this “new industry”: the contracting
out of penal institutions to business interests, and the increasing use
of physical and psychological torture on prisoners as a form of “control.”
The Growth of Private Prisons
Ten years ago there were
just 5 privately run prisons in the country, housing a population of 2000.
Today, 20 private firms run more than 100 prisons with about 62,000 beds.
That is still less than 5 per cent, but the industry is expanding fast,
with the number of private prison beds expected to grow to 360,000 during
the next decade. Already 28 states have passed legislation making it legal
for private contractors to run prisons; more are expected to follow
suit. Companies like Goldman Sachs and Co., Prudential Insurance Co. of
America, Smith Barney Shearson Inc., and Merril Lynch and Co., are among
those competing to underwrite prison construction with private, tax-exempt
bonds (where no voter approval is required). Why such a scramble for these
contracts? Consider the growth of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA),
the industry leader whose stock price has increased from $8 a share in
1992 to about $30 today, and whose revenue rose by 81% in 1995 alone. The
Nashville-based CCA, which runs 46 penal institutions in 11 states, controls
roughly half of the industry. It took ten years for the company to reach
10,000 beds; it is now growing by the same number every year.
The
Triangle of Interest
On
May 12 1994 the Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled: “Making
Crime Pay - Triangle of Interest Created Infrastructure To Fight Lawlessness
- Cities see Jobs; Politicians see a Popular Issue and Businesses Cash
In – The Cold War of the 90’s”. In other words, the media creates a climate
of fear about rates of crime, politicians campaign on this issue demanding
new legislation and get tough measures like “three strikes”; businesses
step in to snap up the lucrative prison contracts. Of course it is precisely
big business and their representatives in government who control the media.
This “Triangle of Interest”
has set the stage for the resurrection of slavery in America, since this
peculiar institution was never in fact abolished. From the time it was
written, the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which is popularly
known to have abolished “involuntary servitude” and “chattel slavery” of
Africans, has had an exception clause: “except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” This clause has been
consistently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, meaning that prisoners are
to be considered no more than “slaves of the state.”
A
Social Environment That Creates Criminals
It was this same clause in
the 13th Amendment that was used, after the emancipation of African slaves,
to sentence Africans who were once slaves, to new forms of slavery.
In a new book called Prison Writing in 20th-Century America, the editor
H. Bruce Franklin begins with an Autobiography of an Imprisoned Peon. A
brief extract from this essay, which was originally published in 1904,
shows clearly how slavery was continued using the exception clause. “One
of the usual ways of securing laborers for a large peonage camp is for
the proprietor to send out an agent to the little courts in the towns and
villages, and where a man charged with some petty offenses has no friends
or money the agent will urge him to plead guilty, with the understanding
that the agent will pay his fine, and in that way save him from the disgrace
of being sent to jail or the chain gang! F or this high favor the
man must sign before hand a paper signifying his willingness to go to the
farm and work out the amount of the fine imposed (E)very year many convicts
were brought to the Senator's camp.” The writer, who to this day remains
anonymous, goes on to explain that most of those “convicts” had been “set-up
for the crimes” they were convicted of with the collusion of state officials,
plantation owners and paid “agents” in the African community.
What is different about the
situation existing today? High proportions of people of color are filling
this country's prisons for drug-related crime, specifically offenses related
to crack-cocaine. The truth about the U.S. government's complicity in introducing
crack cocaine into the Black neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles,
through it's agency the CIA, is only now emerging. Since the release of
Gary Webb's articles in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996, detailing how
the CIA used the Nicaraguan Contras to flood the Black communities with
cheap drugs, the CIA has consistently denied these allegations. However,
in July of this year, CIA officials spoke anonymously to reporters about
an internal agency report relating to these charges. It is interesting
what one of them said, “In some cases, we knew that the people we were
dealing with would not qualify as Vienna choirboys, but we dealt with them
nonetheless because of the value they brought.” It is also interesting
that this 2-volume report is still classified.
The
Criminalization of Youth of Color
This is simply one method
that has been used by those with power to criminalize poor and oppressed
people, especially young males of color, but increasingly also women of
color. Some of the processes used to create entire communities of
“criminals” are very subtle; this subject could warrant an entire article
by itself. But a measure of how successful these attempts have been is
the acceptance of prison as a part of life among large sections of our
youth. While Black people, conservatively, comprise only 12.5% of the entire
population; we make up 48% of the prison population. The fastest growing
ethnic group being imprisoned today is people of Mexican descent. This
country imprisons more of its citizens than any other industrialized nation:
1.7 million people are currently in state and federal prisons. This number
does not reflect those in children's facilities, immigration detention
centers, or county and city jails.
Could it be that these figures
in some way reflect a growth in crime? Well, none other than the FBI recently
reported that crime in America is in fact decreasing (the one exception
is crimes of violence by police officers!). The truth is that to be profitable
private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also
filled. Experts in the “industry” claim that 90-95 % capacity is needed
to guarantee the hefty rates of return required luring investors. Prudential
Securities, for example, issued a wildly bullish report on CCA a few years
ago, but cautioned, “it takes time to bring inmate population levels up
to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits.”
Businesses
and Politicians –“Working” Together
It is hardly surprising that
all the major firms in the field have hired big time lobbyists to push
for the type of “get tough policies” needed to ensure their continued growth.
When it was seeking a contract to run a halfway house in New York City,
Esmore (the number 3 firm in this new industry) hired a former aide to
State Representative Edolphus Towns to lobby on its behalf. The former
aide won the contract, as well as the support of his former boss, who had
been an opponent of the project. In 1995 the chairman of Wackenhut (which
has a third of the “private prison market”) testified before the Senate
Judiciary Committee urging support for amendments to the Violent Crime
Control Act. The amended provisions of the Act subsequently passed, authorizing
the expenditure of $10 billion to construct and repair state prisons.
CCA has been especially adept
at expansion via “political payoffs.” The first prison the company managed
was the Silverdale Workhouse in Hamilton County, Tennessee. After Tennessee
Commissioner Bob Long voted to accept CCA’s bid for this project, the company
awarded Long's pest control firm a lucrative contract. When Long decided
the time was right to quit public life, CCA hired him as a lobbyist.
The company has been a major financial supporter of Lamar Alexander,
the former Tennessee governor, and failed presidential candidate. In one
of many "sweetheart” deals, Lamar's wife made more than $130,000 on a $5,000
investment in CCA. Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter is another CCA stockholder;
he is quoted in the company's 1995 Annual Report as saying “the federal
government would be well served to privatize all of their corrections.”
The young male of color who
is worth less than nothing in this economic system is suddenly worth between
$30-60 thousand dollars a year in the “justice” system. About three-quarters
of new admissions to American jails and prisons are men of African and
Mexican descent. Jerome Miller, a former youth corrections officer in Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts, says, “The race card has changed the whole playing field.
Because the prison system doesn't affect a significant percentage of young
white men, we'll increasingly see prisoners treated as commodities. For
now the situation is a bit more benign than it was back in the 19th Century,
but I'm not sure it will stay that way for long.”
Controlling
These New Slaves
In July of this year a judge
in California ordered a defendant in her courtroom to be zapped with a
“stun belt” because he would not keep quiet when told. In a September 13th
1997 People's Weekly World article by Julia Lutsky entitled “Torture In
America,” the writer describes stun belts. “A relatively new restraint
device is the stun belt, in use since 1993. It delivers an 8 second 50,000
volt shock to the prisoner's kidney area, often leaving him writhing in
pain on the floor. Some states are considering it as a possible alternative
to chaining work gangs. It leaves prisoners free to move about, and can
be activated by a guard from 300 feet away. Stun belts are currently used
in the federal prison system, the US Marshall's Service, over 100 county
agencies and the corrections facilities of 16 states.” The nonchalant
use of this device in a courtroom against someone who was no physical threat
whatsoever, merely reflects the increasingly common use of such means of
torture within the prisons.
There are also “stun guns,”
“tasers” and “electric riot shields,” which like the belt are all electronic
shocking devices. In 1996, the Phoenix New Times reported the death of
inmate Scott Norberg at the Maricopa County Jail. Allegedly, he died while
fighting with officers who were attempting to confine him in a “restraint
chair,” while strapping a towel around his mouth to “keep him from spitting.”
During the struggle, Norberg was shocked multiple times with stun guns.
Inmates who witnessed his death estimated that he had been shocked between
8 and 20 times. Guards estimated the number of shocks between 2 and
6. An examination of Norberg's corpse, commissioned by his family, puts
the number at 21.
