It is worth noting that mass incarceration has been a thoroughly bipartisan phenomenon. While the common narrative links the rise of mass incarceration more-or-less to Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the truth is very different.
The nation’s first national Mandatory Minimums law was sponsored by Joe Biden (an early advocate), Ted Kennedy, Strom Thurmond, and Orrin Hatch in 1984. That essentially represents the entire ideological spectrum of the Senate at that time.
When the 100-to-1 powder to crack cocaine disparity was introduced by Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus gave it notable support. The infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws were instituted by Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a noted “liberal” when it came to the topic of “race relations.”
The thesis I posit in my book “Shackled and Chained” links this bipartisan consensus to the economic situation and, by extension, the social and cultural environment. In the wake of the economic crisis of the 1970s, capital went through a major restructuring globally. Long story short: this hollowed out working-class Black communities around the country. The changing structure of global capitalism engendered new ideas like the culture of poverty and new political voices like the conservative “New Democrats” to promote them. This current dovetailed with the aggressive New Right.
The result was a consensus that blamed the poor for their own condition and denigrated social programs aimed at uplift. Further, the idea of significant jobs programs went down the drain as “The Market” became the one true god for policymakers.
It is no coincidence then that the 1980s, where this sort of political dogma was now generalized, policies became more punitive and prison populations skyrocketed.
Reflecting on that experience, it is no surprise to see a bipartisan coalition now coming together to support “prison reform.”
The costs of mass incarceration have been tremendous. First and foremost, the terrible and brutal social destruction that has been wreaked on Black neighborhoods across the country has been truly criminal and deeply compounded by general economic dislocation. Second, the political costs have been very high for America’s rulers, who are routinely taken to task around the world for the popularly known “criminal injustice system.” Third, municipal, state, and federal budgets are groaning under the fiscal burden of locking up 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated people. On top of all of this, there is little evidence that this massive penal cattle drive has actually reduced crime.
This comes along with a clearly rising level of discontent among Black people and many others insistent on change.
A bipartisan coalition of establishment groups, from the ACLU to the Koch Brothers, has decided to ride to the rescue of the reputation of Imperial America creating a new organization: The Coalition for Public Safety.
Now that mass incarceration is seriously being questioned, what alternative are they proposing? Not unsurprisingly the proposed alternative, broken down expertly by news site Truthout, is simply moving from incarceration to a sprawling system of supervision outside of prison walls.
Kay Whitlock and Nancy Heitzeg for Truthout describe the new model:
“Under this model, people no longer held in prisons – a larger pool than the incarcerated population – will be housed in mandated (private) facilities – mental health institutions, residential drug treatment centers or halfway houses. Others may be sentenced to home arrest, probation, parole or other profit-making forms of community corrections. Corporations can charge for supervision fees, monitoring equipment, drug testing and counseling. Increasingly, these costs are “offender funded”-transferred to those least able to pay them.
“Consequently, the treatment-industrial complex will ensnare more individuals, under increased levels of supervision and surveillance, for increasing lengths of time – in some cases, for the rest of a person’s life.”
While presented as an alternative to mass incarceration, it is actually in line with the very organizations that spearheaded the mass incarceration phenomenon to begin with. It neatly, and tellingly, dovetails with a sample piece of legislation developed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange (ALEC) I detailed in Shackled and Chained:
“ALEC has put together a draft bill…the “Conditional Early Release Bond,” which proposes that correctional authorities release inmates early with a bond guarantee by a “surety” (insurer)…an inmates freedom would be contingent on meeting a certain number of conditions…the insurer would also have the ability to arrest the “principal” in the result of a breach…The ALEC bill…requires inmates and their families to pay an insurance company for the right to remain free. Further it would create a layer of militarized “collection agents.”
Obviously “alternatives” like these do very little to actually address the issues underlying mass incarceration. It deals solely with the cosmetic reality of the numbers of people in prison. It appeals to “diversion” and “treatment” as a left-wing sounding gloss on what is essentially an extensive privatized system of long-term monitoring of millions of people.
Nothing in this proposal to reduce the rate of imprisonment speaks to poverty and economic deprivation that underlies the entire discussion over “criminality” in America. It simply consists of another method of doing the same thing. Using systems of social control to contain the fall-out from the massive attack being waged by capital against working class and oppressed peoples rather than offer a better life.
