Some of us think of the issue of mass incarceration as a state problem, a national problem, or even a legal problem. The immense growth of the prison industrial complex is all of these things and more. It is a global problem, as we saw in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, when state prison guards, the most notorious of which hailed from Pennsylvania’s prison in Greene County, CO Charles Graner, who were also members of the U.S. Army Reserves. For there, the bulk of the torture and brutality against Iraqis was perpetrated by men and women who had civilian gigs in state prisons across America.
Abu Ghraib almost singularly undermined the U.S. Imperial mission in Iraq and erupted into scandal. To be sure, America is the biggest incarcerator on earth, and the greatest damage, therefore, is to fellow Americans who live half lives where every option of social advancement is closed to them upon release: jobs, education, public housing and social benefits. In modern day America, a felony conviction is the latest version of the The Scarlet Letter. It is the mark of Cain, meant to deter people from achievement and class ascent. Law professor Michelle Alexander argues that it is, as shown by the title of her recent book, The New Jim Crow, but it is more, for dead vast swaths of society desensitizes them so that this vast population of some 3 million people are out of sight, out of mind. They are today’s non persons, merely a commodity for an industry that grows by leaps and bounds, providing jobs and job security for white rural districts, which have long ago lost their place in the realm of manufacturing. This is the terrible link that keeps this non productive industry alive — economic interest.
Years ago, such rural districts shunned and protested the placement of prisons in their midst. Now, they beg for them. As manufacturers fled U.S. shores in search of ever lower labor costs after NAFTA’s 1994 passage, prisons became the biggest growth industry, producing the prison industrial complex. It is this complex of misery that must be undone, and only a mass movement can achieve it. For ‘home is where the hatred is.’ This is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
