Special Topics: Punishment
The Bail Industry
According to research by the ACLU and the Nation, the bail industry now pulls in $2 billion in revenue annually. They described the practices of bail bondsmen like Eric Amparan, who keeps 10% of a bail amount as a non-refundable fee even if the person is found innocent. The higher the bail amounts set by judges, the more bail bondsmen stand to make—and Prison Profiteers reported that between 2002 and 2011, the American Bail Coalition (a lobbying group for the bail industry) spent $3.1 million lobbying for judges to set higher bail amounts. Prison Profiteers also noted that average bail amounts increased substantially with the growth of the prison-industrial complex, going from $39,800 in 1992 (the year ABC was founded) to $89,900 in 2006
Alexander Chapter 5
Alexander describes a Father's Day in 2008 when then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama gave a speech at a church in Chicago urging black men to "be better fathers." Although this message has been advocated by several other famous black men, the mainstream media treated the speech as an astonishing event. Social research has shown that the idea that black men disproportionately "abandon" their families is false. However, criticisms of Obama's speech generally failed to mention the fact that the stereotype of the absent black father is created by a very real phenomenon: mass incarceration.
Media Focus
Always a focus on violent and drug crimes Never a focus on white collar/business crimes Focus on dark events instead of happy, glorify events as more likely to happen than it is like schools Focus on crimes by randoms/strangers than people they know Whites gets a lot more focus on news than latino If no knowledge on criminology, criminals in media are solely defined by their worst acts *******White shooters gets a lot more focus because people need an explanation for why they fell out of the white stereotypes, but people expect that stereotype of minorities
The New Jim Crow Intro
America saw disenfranchising black men as essential to the original union; today many are still not able to vote because of their status as a felon. They are subject to discrimination in many ways - housing, employment, voting, food stamps, jury service when she started her job at the ACLU she recognized that there was racial bias in the criminal justice system but that was the extent of it. After she left though, she was convinced it was more than that. The formerly incarcerated are "relegated to a racially segregated and subordinated existence" (4). Most people think the War on Drugs was launched as a response to the crack cocaine crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, but Reagan actually announced it before crack became a media issue. but the guerilla armies that the CIA supported in Nicaragua did bring in drugs to inner-city neighborhoods. Neo Liberalism: Reagan launched his war on drugs campaign, by labeling the ghetto as welfare cheats and undeserving of it allowing for him to cut welfare costs. Reagan's incentive to get the police to join the war on drugs through training and most importantly they were allowed to keep anything they confiscated The DEA ended up focusing on poor city ghetto areas
Willie Horton
As Governor of Massachussets, Michael Dukakis had supported a prison furlough program for inmates in state prisons. Willie Horton, a convicted murderer, was on one of the furloughs when he committed a rape and assault in Maryland. George H.W. Bush used Willie Horton (ran ads) as an example of Dukakis' ineptitude and lack of responsibility. Dukakis would lose the election.
Populist
Blacks and poor whites would come together as a class threat When the subordinate groups come together Caused the elite to split these two groups off by promoting racial superiority by granting poor whites certain rights like right to vote, join military, and several other citizenship rights Maintaining racial superiority to maintain economic order by keeping the working class vulnerable. Racial caste was created by giving power to small economic group and then gain loyalty of large economic force So why is there still a caste system still today despite successful blacks? That's because no caste systems has full subjugation, there are always outlier success stories, which ironically perpetuate the caste system
Death 13th
5% of world population, 25% of the world's prison population 13th Amendment loophole exploited by mass incarceration of blacks after civil war because convicts are excluded from 13th. And convicts were forced to work to rebuild the South's economy Over the top image of black people to depict them as out of control criminals. All because all the businesses needed black bodies working
Truth in sentencing law
A legislative attempt to ensure that convicts will serve approximately the terms to which they were initially sentenced.
Cheaper Free Labor
A system of domination that keeps people in their roles. Blacks were economic and social threats, they can target your jobs and people who are supposed to be subordinates suddenly getting equal rights
Clothing Manufacturers
A wide variety of products are being manufactured in U.S. prisons, from office furniture and bedding to sinks, toilets and clothing. All kinds of clothing is made in American prisons: shirts, hats, pants, shoes, jackets, you name it. Even Victoria's Secret has profited from the prison-industrial complex: in the 1990s, Victoria's Secret subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female inmates in North Carolina to sew lingerie.
Whites Favor Harsh Sentencing Policies After Seeing Images of Black Prisoners LEI WANG
Apathy syndrome might be more important than racism The Stanford University researchers, Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt, conducted two experiments that showed how making white people aware of the high numbers of blacks in prison actually made them more likely to pursue harsher punishments.
Angela Davis
Black Communist college professor affiliated with the Black Panthers, she was accused of having been involved in a murderous jail-break attempt by that organization.
Telemarketing and Call Centers
But some Americans corporations in need of call centers have found an even cheaper source of labor: American inmates. USA Today reported in 2004 that 2,000 or more prisoners in the U.S. were working in call centers. About 80 of them were in Snake River Prison in Oregon, where inmates were being paid around $120-$185 a month for working full-time. When companies can get people to sell and promote products, handle customer service or make hotel reservations for 75 cents an hour
Economic Systems
Conservative corporatist Social democratic corporatist Oriental corporatist Neoliberalism, imperative is to reduce social spending so they'd target things like prisoners being able to get degrees. When you're not going to give welfare you need to show an iron fist of suppression to deter crime by supporting incarceration. A more reasonable explanation is they wanted to close off welfare causing people to commit crimes
9 Surprising Industries Profiting Handsomely from America's Insane Prison System Alex Henderson
If DOC people give companies these contracts, they're more likely to employ me when I leave. Correctional Association meetings would appeal to people with booze, food, and women in order to make legislators choose them The prison-industrial complex even has its own lobbyists: according to a 2011 report from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), the U.S.' largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and their competitor the GEO Group have both spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying forlonger prison sentences. And the American Bail Coalition has been lobbying for the bail bond industry for 23 years.
1994 Federal Crime Bill
Law that just put more people in jail instead of really helping with the crime rate. Bill clinton built the infrastructure of militarization all the way down to small rural police departments
Bush
Won election by creating a fear of black men as criminal
Assata Shakur
african american activist who was sentenced to prison for first degree murder
Prison Industrial Complex
the corporations and agencies with an economic stake in building and supplying correctional facilities and in providing services Aramark who provides food for the prison
Corrections Corporation of America
the largest of the private prison corporations that opened the first private, for-profit correctional facility in 1984 in Tennessee; currently operates seventy correctional facilities Prisons were required to keep private prisons filled to protect their interests
Agriculture
the prison-industrial complex has been using more prisoners as a source of farm labor. This is happening everywhere from Georgia to Arizona to Idaho, where in 2014, State Sen. Patti Anne Lodge (a Republican) sponsored a bill allowing agricultural employers to hire prisoners. The bill was quickly signed into law by Idaho's Republican governor C.L. Otter.
Healthcare Companies
Corizon, a company that specializes in prison healthcare, is making an estimated $1.4 billion annually despite doing an abysmal job caring for those they are paid to treat. In 2012, seven sick prisoners died in a Louisville, Kentucky jail where Corizon was in charge of healthcare; the city of Louisville later canceled its contract with Corizon. In the video, Prison Profiteers, a Tucson, Arizona woman whose incarcerated son had hepatitis C was told by Corizon employees that they had "no protocol for treating" the disease, which is rampant in prisons.
Campbell & Schoenfeld
Get tough on crime and mandatory arrests laws to win votes. Not about race but for political capital by being tough on crime Reagan thought if I talk about crime and race I'll get more votes States are very diverse from each other, but they all do the same thing of increasing prison population. It must be something that transcends place. Liberal states tried to do good Clinton saw michael dukakis lost to George Bush, because he was vulnerable in the matter of prison sentences after a prisoner who was let out ended up killing again. Furlow program, criminals prior to be released was released on furlow and willy horton raped some girl on furlow Early drivers were crime, war on drugs, and prison litigation. If you're going to understand incarceration you need to understand litigation. The feds are making the decisions but courts/judges are seeing prisons are overcrowded and giving shortened sentences but are blamed when these released criminals caught crimes putting pressure on the judges So Courts grant power to the prosecutors like mandatory sentences
Telecommunications
Global Tel* Link (GTL). The company has been making $500 million annually in profits thanks to its exclusive contracts with a long list of prisons. When prisoners make collect calls via GTL, the person accepting the call pays inflated rates of up to $1.13 per minute. GTL can get away with charging those rates because it doesn't have to compete with other telecom companies in the prisons where it has exclusive contracts.
Netherlands
Greater autonomy system allows to look at incarceration process at every individual process allowing them to change more individual processes to not have to worry about the politics Lack of central coordination in America makes it harder to change every single aspect in the system when they're all doing their own thing
England vs. Netherlands
In England and Wales, sentencing patterns were not the result of a policy in any strict sense because the government lacked the means to control or even coordinate penal decision making at key points of the process. English rates of imprisonment were, instead, the unprogrammed outcome of sentencing decisions made by thousands of magistrates and judges whose claim to judicial independence put them beyond the direct control of government ministers. In the Netherlands, by contrast, system management was enabled by a structure of closely collaborative relations between senior judges, prosecutors, and Ministry of Justice officials, relations that allowed these actors collectively to regulate the throughput of cases and ensure that prisons did not become crowded.
What sustains the new jim crow
Legalized Ignorance/indifference states of denial, you can see the blacks going to prison but you're not seeing the mechanisms for why Police/Prosecutors: What they do on a daily basis is put inputs into a system which decides what they see, it provides a filter to only see their crimes and misdeeds distorting their image The new jim crow is primarily racist because
Beckett & Sasson: "Crime in the News"
Media giving people the entertainment they want for ratings Distortion is due simplified things since not enough time for an in-depth research News areas primarily get their info from the police is they're the most reliable but the problem is police as an agency has an interest. If the police are telling the story they're the obviously protag in the conventional narrative. Crime news are in a way more accurate than news by representing white criminals. Shows give the impression that if they weren't stopped they were definitely going to do it, irredeemably violent and nothing on the consequences of their incarceration
DO RURAL PRISONS BENEFIT LOCALS?
New York state's prison population has spiraled upwards from less than 13,000 in 1970 to more than 70,000 today. So in 1983, the state took over my family's property and shuttered the resort to build access roads to Sullivan Correctional Facility, a maximum-security addition to neighboring Woodbourne Correctional. These towns want to attract businesses but if you're a prison they're not going to be as attracted Having a high prison guard population means they're going to have high suicide rates, domestic violence, divorce rates, drug use. Which in turn affects their kids
Southern Strategy
Nixon's plan to persuade conservative southern white voters away from the Democratic party by speaking to in veiled non racist terms
Devah Pager's Milwaukee audit study rate of employer call-backs by race
Non-Felon White: 34% White Felon: 17% Non-Felon Black: 14% Black Felon: 5% The caste structure doesn't affect all felons equally, it's a racial one
American Legislative Exchange Council
Nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives that drafts and shares model state-level legislation for distribution among state governments in the United States Like walmart supporting stand your ground laws to sell guns Alec pushed forward policies to increase the number of people in prison and extend the time of people in prison
Gottschalk
One of the big reasons for racial disparities is geographic disparities due to living areas being more prone to crime A lot of white people being arrested out west are meths/white trash. To imply it's the new Jim Crow means blacks only care about blacks and not white trash. But ultimately it's to keep the working class down Alexander leads us to explain more about racial disparity but then you're not looking at prison conditions or why they were built in the first place. Prisons are such awful places to keep second class citizens marginalized, new jim crow is built on dehumanization
Food Supply Companies
Philadelphia-based Aramark Corporation, which brings in millions of dollars bringing food to around 600 prisons in North America Aramark's profits continue to roll in even when the company does a terrible job. In 2014, Aramark received fines of $98,000 and $200,000 from the state of Michigan for a long list of infractions, including meal shortages, unsanitary conditions (maggots found in the food, for example) and Aramark employees smuggling contraband into prisons. But such fines were a small price to pay in light of the fact that, in December 2013, Aramark signed a three-year, $145-million contract with the state of Michigan. Florida (where state officials ended a contract with Aramark after accusing the company of boosting corporate profits by skimping on meals) and Ohio (where Aramark employees have been fired for having sex with inmates).
Why Drugs?
Prevalence, drugs are a very common offense that effects a huge part of the population The distinction between being able to find the crime yourself or being called to the scene Need a crime you can do proactive police work in like stops and searches It's a crime where police are given a ton of discretion, important to choose a crime with a lot of discretion since there can't be discrimination without discretion Discretion, prevalent, plenty of black people, not just about getting called but they do the search
mass incarceration
Prosecutors started applying felony chargers on more crimes. More discretion for prosecutor Harsher punishments for violent offenders or changing a crime to seem violent The high increase of whites getting incarcerated perpetuates the caste system. White people living in rural and suburbs drug dealing is treated differently means less rivals and turf wars. More sympathy for the users in white suburbs
Legal Fallacies
Reasonable Suspicion Probable Cause (Voluntary) Consent -> Scent. Really Coercion Warrant Equal Protection
Alexander Chapter 3
She asserts that the drug war racially defines the enemy. Although most of the dealers and users of drugs are white, three-fourths of those imprisoned for drug offenses are black or Latino; in seven states they are 80-90 percent of those imprisoned. People of all races use drugs at the same rate and young white men are actually those most likely to be guilty of illegal possession or selling and those most admitted to emergency rooms.
Structural Racism/Institutional Racism
Social policies and institutional practices that upholding racial divisions and disadvantage racialized groups (e.g. The Federal Government denying black families access homes in the suburbs that it financed through the GI bill).
Texas
The public's views on punitive measures, Texans are more receptive to Leftist arguments Prison guards do not have collective bargaining rights so their union is weaker in Texas. They support from decarceration due to all the money being spent on private prisons Texas has no State income tax so would have to raise sales tax, so they're less flexible money wise
Chapter 1: The Rebirth of Caste
The racial system has evolved with new rules but the same endgame. After the collapse of each system of social control there was a period of transition followed by backlash and the development of a new form of social control. As the systems evolved, they became "perfected, arguably more resilient to challenge, and thus capable of enduring for generations" (22). "Race" was devised to helps whites reconcile themselves with chattel slavery and the extermination of Native Americans. Indentured servants and Native Americans were not ideal laborers and slaves were brought in increasingly high numbers. Poor whites welcomed someone else at the bottom of the social ladder; the aristocracy gave them just enough to keep them loyal.
Garland
The war on drug has a mechanistic relationship with incarceration 1980 wave of policies that work against ex offenders so they offend again From the 1980s onward, correctional officials lost much of their power (and prosecutors saw their power enhanced) when the U.S. Congress and state legislatures enacted mandatory sentencing laws, abolished parole, and curtailed prison programming
Alexander Chapter 2
The way television portrays the criminal justice system is misleading. The explosion of incarceration rates is due to convictions for drug crimes: two-thirds of the federal inmates entering between 1985-2000 were incarcerated for drugs and there have been 31 million since the drug war began. There are a few myths to be aware of: the War on Drugs is aimed at big drug kingpins (no, it's mostly regular people with no history or violence) and it is aimed at dangerous drugs (no, it's mostly getting marijuana users).
Reagan
Turned the war on drugs into a literal one Polls showed war on drug wasn't a big problem for the general populace Nancy was more about just saying no and education Crack was given more punishment than cocaine because minorities primarily used crack causing huge chunks of black men to disappear Reagan took problem of economic inequality, economic segregation and the problem of drug use and criminalizes it all in the form of war of drugs Reagan promised tax cut for rich, and throw crack users in jail which devastated black communities but good at getting southern votes
The Technology Sector
U.S.: inmates, whose pay can be as low as 35 cents an hour. The technology sector has been willing to make use of prison labor. Exmark (a Microsoft subcontractor) used prisoners in Washington State for shrinkwrapping Microsoft products (including mouses and software) in the 1990s, and in 2003, Dell used federal prisoners for recycling desktop computers.
Thorpe, "Perverse Politics"
We can't just say the factors of the prison system being sustained isn't enough Fear and racializing of inner city criminals should've gone down in the 2000s because of 9/11 directing that to overseas terrorist Crime plummeted in the 1990s especially in New York, the miracle Recession of 2007, means people don't have jobs and less tax money funding the government means they would've wanted to let more people out since they can't afford to keep so many incarcerated Prisons didn't decline because locations benefit from prison population appropriation The biggest driver to this system those who don't have a big stake in it don't care Poor white needs someone even lower than them and a jobs which led to incarceration Places that are economically on prisons want to keep them
Nixon War on Drugs
We decided to deal with drug addiction as a criminal problem than a health care problem
Penal Welfarism
a theory in the study of criminal justice which holds that prisoners should have the right and the positive motivation to gain opportunities for advancement within the criminal justice system.
super predator
aggressive juvenile offender believed to engage in frequent and dangerous behaviors animals that needed to be controlled, many communities began to support policies that criminalized their own kids
Malkia
black men are over represented in news as criminals, aka more times than they actually according to FBI statistics you have educated a public that black men are criminals, not just whites but blacks too and were afraid of themselves
Food Processing and Packaging
it can also use prison labor to process food for people on the outside. In 2008, Mother Jones' Caroline Winter reported that in California alone, prisoners were processing "more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs." Winter reported that Signature Packaging Solutions, a Starbucks subcontractor, was using prisoners to package holiday coffees.
Baranauskas & Drakulich "Media Construction Of Crime"
television crime programming, both journalistic and fictional, plays a role in shaping the public's understandings of crime and support for crime policy. researchers should consider the critical role of the media consumers' local context, particularly racial composition, in conditioning the resonance of media depictions of crime. The more you think crime is a problem the more you think something should be done about it Our sense of reality comes from what we watch. The TV visual factor increases the emotion valance, primes more easily for you the issue of crime Whites no Perpetrator/blacks: Crimes are caused by the people and support punitive policies/harsher sentences
