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WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : The Brutal Society

Prisons: a booming industry in the US and Europe

By Joseph Delius
5 June 2000

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For some years now, within the economically advanced countries two parallel developments have been proceeding at an increasing pace, and in direct proportion to each other: the dismantling of social welfare systems and the expansion of the prison system. The customary justification for the billions of dollars being spent on the construction of new prisons, increases in the scope and severity of criminal justice and the introduction of new forms of punishment is that all this "serves to protect the public from violent crime".

Yet most crime statistics show conclusively that the violent crime rate has declined, or at least stagnated, over the past few years. As opposed to this, the number of prison inmates who committed offences in no way violent, but intrinsically linked to poverty and social inequality, has increased dramatically. Government plans and "prison reforms" are all based on the assumption that this development will continue at an even greater pace and become a permanent feature of society. Thus, preparations are being made to accommodate a growing percentage of the population that will, at least temporarily, find itself behind prison bars.

This process is becoming more and more apparent in Europe. For instance, in Germany 2.5 billion marks ($US1.25 billion) have just been allocated for the expansion of the prison system, for construction work alone (i.e., not including overhead, administrative, personnel or other operational costs). The objective is to increase prison capacity by up to 50 percent in the eastern German states, and by about 25 percent in several of the western German states.

The same trend is evident in other European countries as well, particularly in Britain where current planning will require the construction of at least two dozen new prisons over the next 10 years. In France the Minister of Justice recently announced that seven new prisons will be built, and five of the largest existing prisons modernized at a total construction cost of 5.5 billion francs ($US800 million).

Noteworthy as these figures are, the growth of the prison systems in Europe is still far behind that of the "world leader" in incarceration, the United States, where approximately two million people are now in prison. In other words, a country whose population makes up only 5 percent of the world's population now accounts for one quarter of all prison inmates worldwide. The prison population of the US has increased by 61 percent over the past 10 years, and is still growing.

Some US states are already spending considerably more on their prison systems than on higher education. California has the highest incarceration rate in the world with over 626 prison inmates per 100,000 state residents. (By comparison, the incarceration rate in Indonesia is 21 per 100,000 inhabitants; Germany, 81; France, 84; and Britain, 94). Recent official statistics and independent studies show that California spends a total of roughly $5.6 billion dollars per year (all costs included) on its prison system, but only $4.3 billion on its schools and universities.

Not that this ominous "model" has damped the fervor with which European governments and established parties are pursuing their "get tough on crime" policies. On the contrary: The competition for recognition as the harshest propagator of repressive criminal law is being fought out among them with the same intensity as their vying for acclaim as the best representative of big business interests.

In an article published May 4 in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, journalist Heribert Prantl asked Christian Pfeiffer, the director of the KFN ( Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen) crime research institute, what he saw as the underlying reasons for the expansion of the prison system in Germany. Pfeiffer's conclusions are in striking contrast to official justifications.

The criminologist stated that the increase in the number of prison inmates had nothing to do with an increase in crime, but was rather a result of changes in criminal law practice. He pointed out four essential aspects of this: To begin with, the law courts had taken a much tougher approach in the second half of the 1990s. Secondly, more and more people were being incarcerated because they were not able to pay fines. This was due to the fact that courts were taking less and less account of people's financial situation, sending out court orders after the most superficial inquiries, instead of arranging for oral hearings to establish offenders' personal circumstances.

The judicial system is truly blind in this respect, said Pfeiffer, only noticing when it's too late that "they've ordered an unemployed person to pay a four thousand mark fine". The third aspect Pfeiffer sees is that not only is prison "input" on the increase, but fewer inmates are being granted early release—so more people are being put into jail, and fewer are getting out. The fourth reason for the growing prison population, according to Pfeiffer, is that "immigrants are being punished more severely for the same crimes than Germans are".

It can come as no surprise that this kind of critical analysis meets with vehement rejection, or is completely ignored by the governments and responsible authorities and politicians in the involved countries. Otherwise they would have to admit that they themselves are responsible for the overcrowded prisons they publicly deplore.

The ruthless dismantling of social welfare systems and the effects of global capitalism have dramatically changed the lives of millions of people. Many who previously just managed to get by on the fringes of the "social network" are now faced with destitution. But even layers of the population who in the past were able to make a fairly secure living are now confronted with financial difficulties that were previously quite alien to them. There is an explosive potential for social unrest in this, and the ruling class is aware of it. The shocking realization of how easy it is to land in jail these days is thus something which can be put to use as a means of disciplining the population. Also, constant emphasis of the danger posed by crime is used to direct the anxieties of people disturbed and confused at the way society is evolving towards the support of repressive policies, including those involving attitudes towards foreigners and ethnic minorities.

But the risk of falling victim to a crime does not diminish with the increase in the number of prison cells, as all crime statistics show. It increases with the demise of social cohesion, of available income, of employment and social perspectives, of the prospect of a life worth leading. It is thus directly linked to the growth of social inequality.

Organized crime, another phenomenon often cited by the proponents of "law and order", also needs to be seen in this context. Both historically and in present times, its roots lie in the ruins of collapsed social structures, where it constantly emerges anew. As long as those preconditions exist, no manner of prison capacity increase will curtail the activities of these ruthlessly organized, maximum-profit-oriented criminal corporations whose structures reach far into the inner workings of prison life—and whose connections often enough extend to the upper echelons of the legal power elite.

However, such root causes and consequences are not the subject of today's official debates on legal and prison reform. The main topic there is how to organize the growing prison world better—and, above all, how to finance it. For all the differences of opinion on how this can be best achieved, there is general agreement that the solution must be in line with the principles of the market economy, through increased exploitation of prison labor and more privatisation of the prison world.

The prison industry has become a multibillion-dollar business that directly affects regional economy structures and labor conditions. In the US, the stocks of successful companies in this field of activity such as C.C.A. (Correction Corporation of America) have been regarded as a "sure-fire" long-term investment for some time now.

Apart from supplying prisons with food, installations and equipment, the three core profit areas for companies active in the prison industry are the construction of new prisons, the management of private prisons and the economic exploitation of prison labor. The business advantages of these sectors are obvious: prison construction is one of the few boom sectors with steady growth rates and great prospects for the future in the otherwise crisis-beset building industry. Contracts that include the installation of surveillance and other security systems offer profit rates that go far beyond the norm.

The operation of privately owned prisons also has a high profit potential. Above all, it is a secure source of income, since the operators receive a guaranteed amount of money per inmate from the authorities. Which is why, a few years ago, the US business newsletter Cabot Market Letter compared C.C.A. (which also has branches in England, Australia and Puerto Rico) with a "hotel that is permanently booked up"—for years in advance.

Profits are even better if staff requirements are reduced through the use of video cameras, "panoptical transparence" and other techniques. In the words of C.C.A. spokesman Russel Boraas, "the trick is to have a minimum number of personnel observing a maximum number of prisoners". In one of the newest prisons in Britain, for instance, "Her Majesty's Prison Park" in Wales, there are only 13 guards in the control room. One guard can supervise 75 prisoners from the control console, speaking to them without ever being physically in their presence, opening or closing every door electronically.

But the sector with the highest earnings potential is prison work, a veritable paradise for the profitable exploitation of human labor. Largely freed of expenses such as health insurance, welfare benefits and safety requirements, companies can have products manufactured here that now go far beyond the former traditional range of prison goods at wage lavels that essentially amount to indentured slavery. A typical example: D.N, a prisoner serving time in a "medium security" prison in California a few years ago, sewed working apparel. His net earnings after all deductions for a full month of nine-hour working days were roughly $60. With that kind of profit rate, it is little wonder that the number of inmates working in the US prison industry increased by 358 percent from 1980 to 1994 alone. And that was only the beginning.

Initially, prison labor was attractive mainly for mid-scale companies that couldn't afford to relocate their production facilities to low-wage countries. But now more and more large companies in industries such as semiconductors, telecommunications, store chains and fashionwear have discovered the benefits of this form of exploitation. The effect on local labor markets is immediate. Prisons now move to the front as "unbeatable" wage competitors of workers in the involved industries and regions. And companies enter into wage negotiations with a form of "implicit leverage" that everyone involved is aware of. This also reveals the hyprocrisy of claims that prison labor results in the "rehabilitation" of inmates, providing them with working skills that help to "re-integrate them into a normal working life". In reality, they are only interesting as workers as long as they manufacture products for the lowest wages possible.

It would be quite mistaken to imagine that such conditions could not spread to the formerly welfare-oriented societies of Europe. In actual fact, this process is already in full swing there, with Britain taking the lead and other countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain rapidly catching up. It is in this context that "reforms" such as the use of “electronic shackles” or demands for community work as an alternative form of punishment must be seen. The official rationale for these projects—such as German Minister of Justice Däubler-Gmelin's demands for more sentencing to enforced community work modelled on recent practice in Austria—is that they take the load off prisons and provide better re-integration of offenders into society. But taking into account the overall development, the inevitable conclusion is that it is the prison system itself which is being integrated into society as a whole, not the inmates of that system.