POLS 3065 Lecture 7:
Modern Racism and the Prison-Industrial Complex
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Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag
Christian Parenti, Lockdown America
Mass incarceration as “a racial caste system” and as a “race-making institution” (Alexander,
200)
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The Dimensions of Mass Incarceration
US has 5% of world population, 25% of world’s prisoners
US: 2.3 mn prisoners; China: 1.6 mn of population 4X bigger
1% of adult Americans are behind bars
In less than 30 years, US prison population exploded from 300,000 to well over 2 million
Germany: 93 prisoners per 1000, 000 people/ US 750 – eight times
These incarceration rates are driven by drug convictions – more than half, sometimes
nearly two-thirds of federal prisoners have been convicted of drug offences
Arrests for marijuana possession accounted for 80% of the growth in drug arrests in the
1990s (Alexander, 60)
And the racial bias of these imprisonments is staggering. In at least 15 US states, black
men are sent to prison on drug charges at a rate 20 to 57 times greater than white
men.
Although the majority of drug users and dealers are white, 75% of drug convicts are
black or Latino
The US imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than did South Africa under
apartheid
Yet, African-Americans and Latinos are no more likely – and according to some studies
are less likely -- to use drugs than whites (Alexander, 7)
2. The “War on Drugs” as Racialized Social Control
 When it was launched, drug use in the US was declining
 Origins in Nixon presidential campaign 1968: Clamp down on social protest and win
votes
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Nixon: “I have found great audience response to this [law and order] theme in all parts
of the country, including areas like New Hampshire where there is no race problem and
relatively little crime” (in Parenti, p. 7)
NOTE: Federal Conservatives in Canada today
1968: Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (Mike Harris gov’t 1995)
Included preventive detention and no-knock warrants
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, 1970
Organized Crime Control Bill (1970) – Secret Special Grand Juries; RICO powers turned
on the Left (Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act)
Thousands of anti-war activists, journalists, Black Panthers, Puerto Rican
independentists were dragged before RICO grand juries (Parenti, 12)
H. R. Haldeman diary: “[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the
whole problem is the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not
appearing to” (ibid.)
So, we are talking about a system of racialized social control that is devised to look like
getting tough on crime in order to keep our streets “safe”
Eventually DEA emerged, accountable to White House
Prisons and “surplus population”: From the welfare state to the penal state(Wacquant)
Early 1970s crisis and restructuring – down-sizing, new tech, rising unemployment and
poverty – “surplus population”
Rise of precarious employment, especially for black men (Wilson Gilmore, p. 75)
Prisons and the shift from labor exploitation to warehousing
“the hyperincarceration of (sub)proletarian African American men from the imploding
ghetto (Wacquant, 74)
“Class, not race, is the first filter of selection for incarceration” (78)
 “the ethnoracial makeup of convicts has completely flip-flopped in four decades,
turning over from 70 percent white and 30 percent “others” at the close of World
War II to 70 percent African American and Latino versus 30 percent white by
century’s end. This inversion, which accelerated after the mid-1970s, is all the
more stunning when the criminal population has both shrunk and become whiter
during that period: the share of African Americans among individuals arrested by
the police for the four most serious violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery, and
aggravated assault) dropped from 51 percent in 1973 to 43 percent in 1996, and it
continued to decline steadily for each of those four crimes until at least 2006 (79)
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“The ghetto was prisonized . . . the prison was ghettoized” (82)
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Controlling young black males
One-third of black males between 20 and 29 are under criminal justice supervision – and
that is a message to all others.
African Americans: 13% of all drug users; 35 % of all drug arrests; 55% of all drug
convictions; 74% of drug prisoners (Parenti, 239)
48 states deny prisoners the right to vote (Maine and Vermont only exceptions); the
majority deny vote to those on parole. And many ex-prisoners lack the right because
they must pay fines or court costs to regain it. One in seven black men has lost the right
to vote (Alexander, 158-9, 193)
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3. Class, Race, Poverty and Incarceration
 Two-thirds of the people detained in US jails report incomes of $12,000 or less prior to
arrest
 Approximately 80% of criminal defendants in the US are too poor to hire a lawyer –
some are entitled to turn to the under-resourced public defender/legal aid system
 But tens of thousands of people go to court every year without any legal representation
– because they are deemed able to afford a lawyer, but in fact cannot. In Wisconsin,
11,000 go to court without any representation every year, b/c anyone making over
$3000 is considered capable of hiring a lawyer
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Drug felons are subsequently barred from public housing and food stamps and forced to
“check the box” on job applications. This locks them into poverty – and many return to
prison for minor parole violations – missing an appointment, failing to maintain
employment or failing a drug test
1980: 1% of prisoners were parole violators; 2000: 35% (Alexander, 95)
Mandatory minimum sentences often make it impossible for prisoners to return to
“normal life” – See examples in Alexander, 92-3
4. The Canadian Case
 Toronto Star, 1 March 2013