The Prison Industrial Complex

Throughout human history, prisons have been portrayed as institutions that are set to protect the masses, and punish those that need to be punished. However, by analyzing the prison system, the fact of the matter is that prisons exist to protect dominant groups and vilify and criminalize minority groups. This is an evident and clear fact that can be seen through the numerous statistics that support the fact that visible minorities and racialized individuals are incarcerated at alarming rates, compared to their Caucasian counterparts. Therefore, although it is an ugly truth, the prison system is set up to perpetuate structural inequalities, and reinforce dominant ideologies over who is “good” and who is “bad”, by vilifying the actions of one
To clarify, this system vilifies the majority of racialized individuals within society, in order to benefit the minority of those in power. Not only does this system place racialized minorities in jail at astonishing rates, this system has a massive affect on racialized minorities that do not exist in the prison system. Specifically, by vilifying the black body as “criminal”, the prison industrial complex impacts the livelihood and daily activities that black individuals partake in (38). This is a clear fact due to the statistics that support the fact that black individuals find acquiring proper education and employment within society increasingly difficult, due to the negative perceptions that society holds towards the black community. These negative perceptions have been created and supported by the prison industrial complex through the degradation and over criminalization of the black community, and the continued existence of mandatory and extreme prison times for the low level crimes committed by black youth in particular (38). Families are torn apart and racial lines are drawn within society due to a system that economically benefits from the continued existence of racism and discrimination towards the black community. However, as Angela Davis stated, the over criminalization of the black
Carceral logics is the theory and belief that incarceration and policing is the best possible solutions to solve the social problems that exist within society. To clarify, this theory assumes that instead of solving the inherent structural inequalities that cause crime, such as racism and discrimination, the system should instead punish those that are simply the victims of extreme structural inequalities. Carceral logics is the idea that there is no need to fix societal inequalities, and punishment and incarceration are the best solution, which is a direct support and reinforcement of the prison industrial complex, and the structural inequalities that grow as a response to this