From Welfare State to
Prison State
Annie Williams
Sociology Prof. Montes
SSS100
The article from “Welfare State to Prison State” by Loic Wacquant discuss the fact that
America has become highly obsessed with enforcing penal laws which has resulted in the
incarcertations of most of its male populations. Another issue brought to surface is how,
instead of the enforcement of these laws being conducted in a fair and just manner, the
majority of the times they are enforced or carried out by judiciary disciplinarians , such as police
officers and other officials, they are done mostly on prejudice assumptions. The targets of these
laws have become the people who are in dire need of help from the system not the discipline.
Loic Wacquant points out that during the beginning of the 90’s the amount of people
being incarcerated rose steadily by eight percent every year. In 1995 when the population
within all of the American States was a little over 262 million residents, 5,4 million were within
the prison system. The judicial system has made it a habit of targeting the members of society
who seem to “fit” the deviant characteristics. These include minority groups, primarily young
African-American males between the ages of 20 and 29 and also those who live in areas of low
income. Instead of seeking to find ways and means to help these members of society to
improve their means of life the states are busy finding ways to imprison them. In the year 1995
the population of African-American males was of 22 million throughout the nation. Of these
9,4% , Wacquant shows, were within the prison system.
Statistics have shown that Caucasian men are more prone to do drugs then the average
African-American male, yet the latter is a primary target for arrest because the vast majority
reside in areas where poverty is high, because of this very reason, these young men are then
labeled as society’s problem. Instead of using government funding to help those who are in
need of public assistance by creating jobs, providing better health care or child care for working
parents, whom because of the harsh and expensive conditions the nation has forced them to
live in due to its lack of adequate job sources, have no other means but to leave their children
at times with poor supervision for having to work rigorous hours, the nation is busy with
building more jails to fill up. In 2000 alone there were 24 new prisons opened throughout the
United States with a bed count of over 18,000. More were renovated to accommodate over
10,000 more prisoners.
There is an obscene amount of money that is being allocated for the funding of
these new government “projects”. Just four of the major states in the nation, New York, Texas,
California and Florida, have invested over one billion dollars in the prison system. This money
could have been used to open more job venues for the poor and decreasing middle class
workers, who because of budget cuts in the government funding lost their primary source of
income.
When we take into consideration also the amount of money that the nation makes off
of cheap prison labor we see that these detained are exploited to the maximum. This issue
alone is very controversial, but just to point out that 800,000 inmates are working in
commercial activities and are being paid much less than the minimum wage, to carry out jobs
that had they not been incarcerated in the first place, would be enough to ensure that their
families were fed and well taken care off. Also, the amount of money that each state makes in
phone calls to inmates is enough to cover many of the said “economic loses, of each state.
It is not fair that the bread winners of the working class of America are being targeted
and then punished harshly for crimes that, had someone with money committed the same
offense, would simply be given a slap on the wrist. After reading this article and others similar
as well as conducting a critical examination of the nations judicial system and its funding
spending, there is clear evidence that there needs to be a major restructure of what should be
the nations priority.