Slavery and Prison -- Understanding the Connections (2000)

I'M BEGINNING TO BELIEVE THAT 'U.S.A.' STANDS FOR THE UNDERPRIVILEGED Slaves of America (Esposito and Wood, 1982: 149), wrote a 20th-century prisoner from Mississippi in a letter detailing daily violence he witnessed behind prison walls. His statement resounds with a long tradition of prisoners, particularly African-American prisoners, who have used language and narrative of slavery to describe conditions of their imprisonment. In year 2000. as punishment industry becomes a leading employer and producer for U.S. state, and as private prison and security corporations bargain to control profits of this traffic in human unfreedom, analogies between slavery and prison abound. This year U.S. prison population cascaded past 2,000,000, [1] with millions more under jurisdiction of criminal justice system in local jails awaiting trial, in INS prisons awaiting deportation, or in their homes linked with criminal justice authorities through ankle bracelets that track thei r every move. Recent studies of prison boom stress persistent disparities in sentencing according to race -- prison populations continue to be disproportionately African American and Latino. With longer sentences being imposed for nonviolent drug offenses, with aggressive campaigns aimed at criminalizing young people, and with growing number of children left orphaned by criminal justice system, carceral reach of state and private corporations resonates with history of slavery and marks a level of human bondage unparalleled in 20th century. Scholars and activists have plunged into an examination of historical origins of racialized slavery as a coercive labor form and social system in an attempt to explain huge increase in mass incarceration in U.S. since end of World War II. Drawing these links has been important in explaining relationship between racism and criminalization after emancipation, and in connecting rise of industrial and mechanized labor to destructive effects of deindustrialization and globalization. The point of retracing this history is not to argue that prisons have been a direct outgrowth of slavery, but to interrogate persistent connections between racism and global economy. Mass imprisonment on level seen in U.S. in 20th century occupies a phase along spectrum of unfree labor related to, yet distinct from, chattel slavery. As many scholars of punishment industry have shown, regardless of labor prisoners do to service larger economy (either private or public), pr isons increasingly function in U.S. economy as answers to devastation unleashed by dual forces of Reaganomics and globalization of capital (Parenti, 1999; Gilmore, 1997; Manning, 1983). The immediate post-emancipation period is a key place to start in outlining investment of U.S. state in this trade in humanity. Related to above is growth of new abolitionist movements whose goals are elimination of mass imprisonment as a method of treatment for addiction and mental illness, as an economic ameliorative, and as a method of social control -- what one scholar has termed the carceral management of poverty (Wacquant, 1999: 349). The connections between slavery and imprisonment have been used by abolitionists as an historical explanation and as part of a radical political strategy that questions feasibility of reform as an appropriate response to prison expansion. As a leader in creation of this new abolitionist movement, Angela Davis (1996: 26) has written, I choose word 'abolitionist' deliberately. The 13th Amendment, when it abolished slavery, did so except for convicts. Through prison system, vestiges of slavery have persisted. It thus makes sense to use a word that has this historical resonance. Though some 20th-century abolitionist movements connect themselves expressly with tradition of 19th-century abolitionists and antislavery advocates, abolitionism as defined here is conglomerate of many local movements that express abolitionist aims indirectly through challenging fundamental methods of prison-industrial complex -- mandatory minimum sentences, harsh penalties for nonviolent drug offenses, and continuous construction of prisons that goes on regardless of crime rates. …