A REVIEW; THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

While small in size, PRISON by Goldberg and Evans covers a lot of territory. Prisons as big business, prison labor, and how the war on drugs is really a war on the people are just a few of the topics. In very short order, authors Goldberg and Evans demonstrate that the new prison building craze has a twofold purpose– profit and social control.

The book illustrates that in actuality, crime has little to do with prisons. That may be a surp;rising statement to some. Consider this, most of the "criminals" locked up in this country today are poor people who commit nonviolent crimes out of economic need or to feed their addiction to drugs. Violence is reported in les than 14% of all crimes. Injuries occur in just 3%.

Arrests relating to drugs alone account for 85% of the court’s calendar. While the drug epidemic could be sanely and humanely treated as a health issue, the powers that be would rather regard it as a criminal issue to be met with an "iron fist". (Let’s not forget that the government’s own CIA has been reported to be the largest single importer of illicit drugs into this country.)

As the Cold War has wound down and the Crime War has heated up, industry has been re-tooling. Companies like AT&T, Sprint, and MCI conspire with states to gouge prisoners and their families with exorbitant rates that are as much as six times higher than the normal rates. Private correctional companies make good profits. Prisoner labor is plentiful with great potential for expanded super-exploitation. Meanwhile, as rural America is being downsized by agribusiness, prisons, full to the brim, have become a new crop.

The authors advise middle class America to wake up to this reality. Transnational corporations with national armies at their behest and police and prisons seem hell-bent on maintaining as well as widening the division between the rich and poor.

Goldberg and Evans colnclude their booklet with these two paragraphs:

"Just as the prison industrial complex is becoming increasingly central to the growth of the U.S. economy, prisoners are a crucial part of building effective opposition to the transnational corporate agenda. Because of their enforced invisibility, powerlesness, and isolation, it’s far too common for prisoners to be left out of the equation of international solidarity. Yet, opposing the expansion of the prison industrial complex, and supporting the rights and basic humanity of prisoners, may be the only way we can stave off the consolidation of a police state that represses us all, where you or a friend or family member may yourself end up behind bars.

Clearly, the only alternative that will match the power of global capital is an internationalization of human solidarity. Because, truly, we are all in this together."

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