Prison Industrial Complex
The term prison–industrial complex (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The term is borrowed from the military–industrial complex President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in his famous 1961 farewell address. Such groups include corporations that contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activists have argued that the Prison-Industrial Complex as perpetuating a belief that imprisonment is a quick yet ultimately flawed solution to social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy.
The term 'prison industrial complex' has been used to describe a similar issue in other countries' prisons of expanding populations.
The promotion of prison building as a job creator and the use of inmate labor are also cited as elements of the prison-industrial complex. The term often implies a network of actors who are motivated by making profit rather than solely by punishing or rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates. Proponents of this view believe that the desire for monetary gain has led to the growth of the prison industry and the number of incarcerated individuals.
Read more about Prison Industrial Complex: History, Economics, Prison Abolition, Immigration, See Also, Media
Famous quotes containing the words prison, industrial and/or complex:
“Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine with bondage and restraint;
And with remembrance of the greater grief
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.”
—Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)
“Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)