Hungarian political economist Karl Polanyi wrote The Great Transformation in 1944 which rebuked conservatives for privatizing common property resources.
He wrote that
“ .. allowing the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings ..will .. result in the demolition of society.”
Christopher Petrella, a doctoral candidate in African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley published on November 19th the following information on the privatization of prisons.
“I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of human bodies in the United States languishing under some form of state surveillance has ballooned by nearly 400% despite a U.S. population rising ten times as slowly.
I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of private corrections facilities has burgeoned by 4000%. I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of black men in prison has grown by 800%; 73% of people of color incarcerated since 1984 are non-violent, drug-related offenders.
I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of black men in college has withered by almost 50%. Today, there are some 820,000 black men in cells, but only 270,000 in dorms.
I was born in 1984, the year that incumbent President Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale by nearly 18% in the national popular vote. No candidate since 1984 has managed to equal or surpass Reagan’s electoral gulf. Perhaps we should repeal “right on red” laws?
I was born in October of 1984 and during that month a Republican controlled Senate under the leadership of George H.W. Bush, Howard Baker, and Strom Thurmond passed legislation allowing federal agencies to experiment with privatized corrections. Later that year the INS struck a deal with CCA, the Corrections Corporation of America, on whose Board of Directors Thurgood Marshall Jr. currently sits.”
The relationship between the INS—now Citizenship and Immigration Services—and the CCA is critical to consider because it demonstrates the circuitous pathways between race, citizenship, containment, and profitability. This state agency deals primarily with people of color and it was the first government organization to contract with private prison companies.
“Testing privatization on the most vulnerable and politically disenfranchised groups allowed the private prison industry to externalize costs without facing ‘legitimate’ public backlash.”
The message from the U.S. corporate state is clear.
“ .. bodies of color are not, nor have ever been, worthy of taxpayer supported public investment. In the eyes of the U.S. corporate state people are color aren’t part of the commons ..”
This makes people of color excludable and seen as a source of profit extraction. Note that bodies of color are incarcerated at significantly higher rates in private facilities than in public operated institutions.
Geographer David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center
of the City University of New York (CUNY), and a leading social theorist of international standing, suggests that during moments of crisis “accumulation by dispossession” is one strategy the state implements to stabilize the economy.
Today, “accumulation by dispossession” works by dispossessing citizens of their assets (and rights) through two primary strategies: 1) personal indebtedness (think average student debt loads of $24k / structural readjustment policies on the personal level) and 2) externalizing risk and cost from the corporate state to the citizenry.
The latest example of “externalizing risk” can be seen in Riverside County, California where the Board of Administrators plans a fee-for-service plan for “criminals,” or as the state now conceives of them, “consumers.”
Governor Brown claims that pay-to-stay programs will reduce the state’s corrections expenditures and therefore free up additional outlays for public education. But Brown’s comments come at a time when the Regents at the University of California have proposed an 81% tuition hike over the next four years.
California’s adult prison population has grown from about 97,000 in 1990 to nearly 161,000 today, while the cost of incarceration during has risen from $20,562 per inmate to $47,101.
The corrections department draws $9.8 billion from the state’s general fund, which is 11.4% of this year’s spending. This is more than the state spends on the University of California and California State University systems combined.
Over eighteen states, in fact, spend more on corrections than public education.
“...Has been part of an intentional effort by the private prison industry to shape public policy to push more people into prison and keep them there longer. The industry has achieved this through the classic three-pronged strategy of contributing to political campaigns, lobbying, and gaining access to policymakers through close relationships.”
Riverside officials justify their pay-to-stay program by contending that new revenue from inmates could save low to mid-wage county jobs that would otherwise be on the chopping block.
Really?
We need to realize that this rhetorical strategy is an old play.
“Pit prisoners against the class from which they come.”
Punish the Poor
U.C. Berkeley sociologist Loic Wacquant reported, In Punishing the Poor (2009), that 60% of those currently incarcerated were at the time of their arrest living at or below 50% of the poverty line. The U.S. Census Bureau two weeks ago reported that nearly 20.5 million Americans, or 7% of the U.S. population, live at or below 50% of the poverty line.
Forcing prisoners to pay for their imprisonment through privatization has never really been about stimulating the economy. Period.
“At the same time the Obama administration has recommended a dramatic ‘spending freeze’ on any and all projects unrelated to empire building, it has surreptitious increased the federal budget for prison expenditures. President Obama’s combined budget requests for fiscal years 2011 and 2012 include a 10% increase in funding for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, bringing the total to more than $6.8 billion. The Left has been pusillanimously silent.”
“The strategy from the top has been consistent: Divide, conquer, shift costs, and repeat.”
Now prison abolitionists and ‘Occupy’ Wall Street activists must condemn the corporate capitalist carceral class (.. which is the idea of a Incarceration system producing society’s need for prisons.. ) that preaches market but practices monopoly. (CCA oversees 62% of total number of inmates in private prisons), that privatizes profit while socializing debt.
Accumulation by dispossession is about plundering, robbing other people of their rights. When we start to look at what has happened to the global economy for the past thirty years, a lot of that has been going on all over the place. In some instances, it is taking away peoples rights to dispose of their own resources ..
Both activist communities must strive to build, in the words of Dr. King,
“ .. a person oriented society over a thing oriented society.”
“We (must) demand a world where prisoners aren’t assumed to be chattel and workers aren’t assumed to be commodities; we (must) demand a world where prisoners aren’t degradable and workers aren’t dispensable.”
Peace to You ..
