History
While many people look to the early 1970s as the genesis of mass incarceration in the United States, the problem is rooted in practices going back even further into the country’s history.
In fact our nation’s “first prison boom” occurred a full century before this period. With the abolition of slavery came waves of laws in Southern states that effectively kept black people from realizing the freedom they were supposed to have been granted. Black Codes were passed in states throughout the region, legislation that allowed law enforcement to incarcerate black people for transgressions such as “walking at night” or “hunting on Sundays.”
While one may look at this system as ultimately an act of racism, a result of white people wanting to hinder the success of their newly-free black neighbors, the truth is perhaps even more sinister: The economy of the South was entirely reliant on free labor, and without it, the region was entering into a depression. White Southerners saw the 13thAmendment as the cause of this issue, but they also saw its final phrase as a solution: As long as it was “as punishment for a crime,” slavery was still legal. By convicting black citizens of crimes, the region could reinstate its free labor force, and boost the economy.
Throughout the 1870s, 95% of people incarcerated in the South were black. In Alabama, they were hired out to work as miners. In Mississippi, they worked on a prison farm modeled on traditional slave plantations. Sometimes convicts were leased to private companies; sometimes they were put into “chain gangs” and forced to labor over public works. Whatever the type of labor, one thing became clear even in this earliest stage of mass incarceration: More prisoners meant more profit.
By the 1920s, prison populations were rising in the North as well. This decade witnessed a spike in violent crime which the media was quick to associate with black Americans, and it also saw the introduction of many mandatory minimum sentencing policies across the country. New regulations inhibited the use of prison labor for profit in this era, so the purpose of prisoners’ labor became more strictly punitive.
During the Great Migration of 1910 to 1970, as many black Americans fled the South and made homes in Northern states, racist beliefs flourished. The pseudoscience of racial classifications became popular, and the concept of “whiteness” took hold; while the public attributed the criminality of poor white Americans and immigrants to their circumstances, they saw black criminality as a consequence of biology. During this era, “racial disparities in prison populations doubled in the Northern states most affected by the Great Migration.” (Vera)
The 1940s ushered in a period of prison reform, aiming to make prison life more tolerable and more focused on rehabilitation, predominantly for white prisoners. However, the riots of the 1960s increased rhetoric linking race and criminality from politicians, including Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
In the 1970s, mass incarceration took off as politicians’ promises to be “tough on crime” were translated into throwing more people in jail than ever before. Under the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, prison privatization increased rapidly, adding more incentives to an already runaway problem. Today, there are 2.2 million people behind bars in the United States of America—an unfathomable increase from just 200,000 in 1972.
What Prison Does to an Inmate…
Life in and after prison can produce many negative psychological effects. The model of incarceration is dependent upon the loss of self-determination and autonomy for inmates; in being treated as a criminal, incarcerated people may internalize this label and incorporate it into their identity, even as they minimize other roles such as being a parent.
The harsh physical realities of prison can also have terrible psychological effects. Violent acts such as rape are notoriously common in our prisons, and in efforts to avoid them incarcerated people may become distrustful of others or even revert to a state of empathetic inurement, in which their ability to feel empathy is inhibited in order to protect them from experiencing trauma vicariously.
These conditions are born out of imprisonment, but they can last long into a person’s reintegration to society.
…And His Community.
It is vital to also look at the effect that mass incarceration can have on communities, particularly black and other racial minority communities. When a person is incarcerated, it puts a wide range of stresses on their family, which in turn damages the social networks to which they belong. When many members of a single community are incarcerated, it has even more dire effects for a community, particularly influencing the way that they think about the government. When much of a community is in jail or has been in jail, incarceration loses its stigma, potentially being viewed more as a rite of passage than as something that should—or even can—be avoided. Additionally, when a community’s experiences with police have been largely related to the arrest of their neighbors, police seem to stand more to hurt than to help the community, and community members may be less likely to report crimes.
The impact of incarceration on the family is even more direct. About 10 million Americans have an immediate family member in jail. In 1999, a majority of prisoners reported having a child under the age of eighteen; 1.5 million kids had an incarcerated parent. Children with an incarcerated parent can develop a range of psychological and emotional issues and often have problems at school; they can also end up in the foster care system, putting them under the supervision of the state just like their parents.
In communities where many of the men are incarcerated, the perceived shortage of potential male partners may lead women to have less leverage in romantic relationships, or even begin relationships with men who are already attached. Women with incarcerated partners, on the other hand, suffer from depression and economic hardship.
The Prison-Industrial Complex
Issues as damaging as mass incarceration can only persist if they are benefiting someone. In this case, the beneficiaries of this system are largely private prison corporations and companies that utilize prison labor, making up the prison-industrial complex.
Private prisons receive a set amount of money for each inmate, regardless of how much it costs to maintain the prison. Private prisons thus have an incentive to overcrowd and understaff their penitentiaries, and they respond by doing just that. These institutions hold 7% of state and 18% of federal prisoners, including the majority of federal immigration detainees.
Prison labor is the other component of the prison-industrial complex. While the prison farms that so resembled chattel slavery are gone, the profit-over-people inclinations that built them are alive and well in the modern system of prison labor. Today, prisoners are paid for their work, although the wage varies. Some inmates receive minimum wage—others make just seventeen cents an hour, giving companies that use prison labor a huge profit margin. To ensure a large workforce, “corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences” (globalresearch).
Between private prisons and companies that rely on prison labor, the prison-industrial complex works to perpetuate a system of mass incarceration, lining a few pockets at the expense of many people’s freedom.
