Salon.com > Prison Industrial Complex

The truth in Kanye’s anti-prison rap

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:10:00 +0000

The backdrop to Kanye West's "Saturday Night Live" performance was a lie. Projected behind the rapper, as he let loose with two rage-filled and politically fueled tracks, were the words "Not For Sale."

Yeezy wouldn't have graced the set if he wasn't hawking a soon-to-be released LP. But his incendiary performance was peppered with damning truths: Angry and pointed condemnations of institutional racism and the prison industrial complex, which disproportionately jails young men of color to fill state budget holes and enrich private corporations.

In the final verse of "New Slaves," a track released Friday with the coordinated projection of a video on 66 buildings worldwide, and the second performance in his "SNL" set, West raps:

Meanwhile the DEA
Teamed up with the CCA
They tryn'a lock niggas up
They tryn'a make new slaves
See that's that private owned prison
Get your piece today

Drug war and mass incarceration, by the numbers

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:19:00 +0000

According to policy reform advocates the Drug Policy Alliance, combining state and local spending on everything from drug-related arrests to prison, the total cost of the drug war in this country adds up to at least $51 billion per year. "Over four decades, the group says, American taxpayers have dished out $1 trillion on the drug war," HuffPo reported Monday.

Meanwhile, the U.S. boasts the highest incarceration rates in the entire world -- 2.2 million prisoners. Staggeringly more than half of all federal inmates are incarcerated for drug crimes. Via HuffPo:

Despite more relaxed attitudes among the public at large toward non-violent offenses like marijuana use, the number of people in federal prison for drug offenses spiked from 74,276 in 2000 to 97,472 in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The punishment falls disproportionately on people of color. Blacks make up 50 percent of the state and local prisoners incarcerated for drug crimes. Black kids are 10 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes than white ones -- even though white kids are more likely to abuse drugs.

Taibbi: “Three strikes” laws are cruel and unusual

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:30:00 +0000

In the April issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi eviscerates California's tough-on-crime "three strikes" rule, which sees thousands of individuals -- largely poor and black -- held in state penitentiaries for decades over minor offenses, like stealing a pair of socks worth $2.50. Taibbi explains that by the late '90s, 24 states and the federal government had some kind of "three strikes" law, with California's iteration the harshest of all.

In his feature, that is well worth reading in full, Taibbi writes:

Football stadium named after private prison corporation

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 20:30:00 +0000

The GEO Group, a Florida-based multinational private prison corporation, has given $6 million to Florida Atlantic University to rename its football stadium "GEO Group Stadium."

As the New York Times pointed out, it's hardly the first instance of a major corporation with ties to a university (GEO Group's chairman is an FAU alum) buying naming rights to a building or sports stadium. "In recent years, where stadium naming rights could be sold, universities and professional sports teams have sold them — to airlines and banks and companies that sell beer, soda, doughnuts, cars, telecommunications, razors and baseball bats. This led to memorable examples like Enron Field, the KFC Yum! Center and the University of Phoenix Stadium," noted the Times' Greg Bishop.

Human Rights Watch decries U.S. prison system

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:25:00 +0000

Human Rights Watch Thursday published its annual World Report, in which it lays out a pointed critique of the U.S. prison system. The enormous prison population -- the largest in the world at 1.6million -- "partly reflects harsh sentencing practices contrary to international law," notes the report.

The 2013 World Report, a 665-page tome which assesses human rights progress in the past year in 90 countries, highlights particular issues undergirding the U.S.'s blighted carceral system. It notes that "practices contrary to human rights principles, such as the death penalty, juvenile life-without-parole sentences, and solitary confinement are common and often marked by racial disparities." Via HRW:

Research in 2012 found that the massive over-incarceration includes a growing number of elderly people whom prisons are ill-equipped to handle, and an estimated 93,000 youth under age 18 in adult jails and another 2,200 in adult prisons. Hundreds of children are subjected to solitary confinement. Racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately represented in the prison population.

US has more prisoners, prisons than any other country

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:52:00 +0000

The U.S. imprisons around 730 in every 100,000 people -- the highest incarcerated population in the world -- Department of Justice data shows. Once again, the U.S. has beat any other nation in terms of its number of prisoners and prisons. There are currently around 2.2 million people behind bars, "equal to a city the size of Houston," noted Bloomberg News. There are 4,575 prisons in operation in the U.S., more than four times the number of second-place Russia at 1,029.

According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” Ample studies in recent years have detailed the swift rise nationwide in the for-profit prison industry.

Bloomberg's "chart of the day" Monday illustrates U.S. incarceration rates in comparison to other countries (via International Centre for Prison Studies):