How do prisons work in America?
The prison industrial complex (PIC) could be viewed as the most obvious example of enduring racism against black people in the United States. With its origins dating back all the way to the abolition of slavery in the mid 1800s, the PIC continues to enforce a hegemonic order that has been in place for centuries.
Within hegemony, African Americans are pushed to the bottom and exploited, while white people gain the economic and social benefits of this hierarchy. In the documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay, the ways in which the PIC is designed to enforce this particular hegemony is explored by showing the initial reasons why it was developed. By showing these initial, undeniably racist, intentions, she demonstrates how the elite found a way to maintain hegemony even after the abolition of slavery.
The legacy of these actions are shown in the article “Race, Disability, and the School to Prison Pipeline” by Julianne Hing. In this article, the impact of the ideology produced by the PIC is explored as it relates to African American students. Hing describes how black students suffer harsher punishment more frequently than most other races, and are made more likely to be incarcerated as a result. She describes how this issue could be attributed to how teachers and other school disciplinaries have negative preconceived thoughts about black students as a result of an ideology that sees African Americans as criminals.
The arguments of DuVernay and Hing work together to depict the issues of the Prison Industrial Complex as institutional problems. DuVernay’s argument that hegemony is upheld by institutions like slavery or the PIC that exercise oppressive control over African Americans and Hing’s argument that racist ideology plays a role in harming black students in the institution of school demonstrate how injustice is furthered by institutions that are supposed to be fair.
Because of these realities, justice could be achieved by changing these institutions on a systemic level. This would look like reforming the prison system to rehabilitate instead of punish, changing laws that have targeted black communities and have sent countless to prison, as well as putting in place measures that prevent vulnerable African American students from being punished with unfair severity in the institution of education.
How do prisons work in America?
In the documentary 13th directed by Ava DuVernay it is explained how, on an institutional level, the PIC operates as a system that is similar to slavery. DuVernay supports her argument by showing how, after slavery was abolished, certain measures were taken in order to keep black people at the bottom of the social hierarchy. In this sense, the PIC could be viewed as another method of how whites exercise control over African Americans and their bodies. DuVernay explains how, rather than allow freedmen to take advantage of their recently granted freedom and rights, black people were immediately criminalized and put in prison for minor misdeeds. Jelani Cobb, an interviewee, explains:
“…when we think about slavery, it was an economic system and the demise of slavery at the end of the civil war left the southern economy in tatters. So this presented a big question. There are 4 million people who…were formerly an integral part of the economic production system in the south. And now those people are free. And so what do you do with these people? How do you rebuild your economy? The 13th Amendment loophole was immediately exploited” (00:05:46-00:06:04).
After the Civil War, massive amounts of labor was needed in order to begin the process of recovery. The 13th Amendment loophole left room for exploitation in that it allowed for criminals to be subjected to forced labor in a state similar to slavery. Consequently, African Americans were imprisoned for minor offenses and were characterized as criminals. By criminalizing African Americans and forcing them into the prison system, an effective replacement for slavery was found. DuVernay links slavery and the PIC by pointing out how both slavery and the PIC capitalizes off of racial difference by deeming black people inferior, or criminal, for the economic benefit of the white elite; this ultimately maintains an oppressive hegemonic order.
According to another interviewee, Bryan Stevenson, “[private prisons] started making contracts with states, and they had to protect their investments, so the states were required to keep these prisons filled, even if nobody was committing a crime…this became a growth industry…guaranteed to succeed”(01:22:03-01:22:29). Similar to how the southern economy benefited from the forced labor of slaves, private prison companies run by the wealthy elite benefit from the incarceration of African Americans. In light of the evidence that suggests that the prison industrial complex was developed as a replacement for slavery, it becomes clear that the U.S insitution of prison is in need of change if justice is to ever be achieved.
One of the worst consequences of the PIC can be found in the school-to-prison pipeline. Julianne Hing’s article, “Race, Disability, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline” shows the ways in which racialized ideologies produced by the PIC serve to reinforce themselves by furthering the PIC within the institution of education. Ideologies are lenses through which people apply preconceived subjective notions onto objective facts, creating different, and usually harmful, interpretations of those the ideology affects. Hing shows that the racist ideology that the PIC has produced that portrays black men as criminals and threats to society harms even young African American boys in the educational system by causing adults to interpret their actions differently, sending them down the school-to-prison pipeline. Hing defines the school-to-prison pipeline as, “the nebulous mix of forces that join with harsh school discipline policies to drive striking
numbers of students of color away from school and into the criminal justice system” (Hing). The most obvious case of this is the Department of Education statistic that,” black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students” (Hing). Combined with the fact that, “even one suspension in ninth grade doubles the likelihood that students will drop out eventually” (Hing), it is apparent that the educational system comes down much harder and more frequently on African American students than white students. The cause of this is the ideologies that define what African American boys are in the minds of the predominantly white and female school teachers. According to Hing, there are,
“a host of possible explanations [for the higher rates of African American students being placed in special education programs], ranging from unchecked implicit bias on the part of inadequately prepared teachers to explicit racial bias on the part of educators who want to circumvent federal mandates to integrate schools” (Hing).
Both of these explanations rely on a racist ideological conception of African American students, and Hing states that “cultural stereotypes [i.e. ideologies] about African Americans being inherently criminal or suspect can condition a teacher to react more harshly to a student who’s acting out” (Hing). Furthermore, these ideologies also mean black students with disabilities are suspended or expelled at more than double the rate that their disabled white counterparts are (Hing). Ideologies that affect the perceptions by white school teachers of their black students
cause them to place black students in special education more often, punish them more strictly and more frequently, pushing them towards the school-to-prison pipeline. This is the injustice of the PIC showing itself even at the elementary school level — young black students are unfairly treated for no other reason than the color of their skin, sending them on a path to prison before they even had a chance to complete their education. The horrible injustice of being forced towards incarceration from a young age because of racist ideologies is something that needs to be addressed if we want to achieve social justice in America.
How do prisons work in America?
Today, the mass incarceration of African Americans and all the injustices that come with it demonstrate powerful racism that still exists today. DuVernay and Hing both show instances of injustice caused by the PIC: DuVernay depicts how the original intent of mass incarceration was to maintain hegemonic and exploitative oppression against black people, while Hing depicts how the PIC creates negative ideologies about black people that appear in the form of disproportionately severe treatment of black students.
Both examples demonstrate how U.S institutions, like the system of law and education, frequently perpetuate injustice in their practices. In the excerpt “Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us,” by Allan Johnson, a similar pattern of injustice is explored. Similar to how racism is promoted by systems we do not question and ideologies masked as truth, patriarchy and gender inequality are promoted by “cultural ideas about men and women…and the unequal distribution of power…” (Johnson). Injustice in these cases is replicated when systems or institutions we take for granted as the “norm” fail certain marginalized communities by relegating them to an inferior status. It succeeds easily when citizens do not question the inequities inherent in the system, but merely accept them as necessary and go along with it.
Regarding the PIC, justice could be attained by recognizing how grave inequity within our justice and education system has perpetrated harm against the African American community for decades. By recognizing injustice, this could be stopped and remediated by reforming these institutions through changing laws that target African Americans and transforming the prison system into a place of rehabilitation. Also, the school to prison pipeline could be stopped by enforcing measures that prevent blacks students from falling victim to preconceived ideology by being punished with unfair severity. Ultimately, justice should thoroughly transform institutions that have furthered racism into institutions that could remediate the harm of racism.
How do prisons work in America?
Dear Reader,
Throughout my time taking DOC, I’ve learned things about the United States that definitely altered my perception about this country. Some topics, like labor or reproductive rights, were entirely new to me. And showed me that the U.S has many forms of injustice outside of racism. To me, every single one of these topics were similar in that they were all caused by institutions and norms.
Though we’ve discussed many other issues in this class, I feel like the prison industrial complex is the most unjust. The massive scale that the prison industrial complex operates on. And the fact that it destroys the lives of the African Americans that it affects made me want to focus on it.
How do prisons work in America?
Because I’m from China, these issues were entirely new to me when I began taking DOC. Watching 13th made me realize just how large and harmful the effects of the prison industrial complex are. Because China is mostly all Chinese people. By luck, we do not have the same issues of racial divide that exists in America. And seeing how large and deeply set it is into the foundation of America was very shocking.
Another reason I ended up picking the prison industrial complex over the other issues in the class is because I felt that it was the issue that really made me think hard about my future plan to live in America. The prison industrial complex really made me think about if I wanted to live in a place as a Chinese man where racism against minorities is as extreme as seen in the prison industrial complex. I know that African Americans are treated far worse than Chinese Americans, but it made me realize the deep acceptance of racism in America which I did not know about when I was in China.
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How do prisons work in America?
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
