Abstract Concept
High levels of incarceration concentrated in impoverished communities have a destabilizing effect on community life, so that the most basic underpinnings of informal social control are damaged. This, in turn, reproduces the very dynamics that sustain crime.(William Raspberry, quoting Todd Clear (via Racism Ain't Over))
Concrete Example
The greatest economic drain to the African American and poor community is not buying food. It's court costs. See a mother whose son is just arrested for a $5 bag of weed. Now all of a sudden she's got to mortgage her house to get him out and pay some little shyster lawyer that know that this is his first offense and he gonna get probation. But he won't tell her that. He make her believe that her child gonna wind up in the penitentiary for life. And we live in a city that will spend $90,000 to keep a child in detention—per year—and won't spend $90,000 on the community...(Malik Rahim, transcribed from his talk about Common Ground and NOLA)
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Have you heard Angela Davis’ audio lecture “The Prison Industrial Complex” that she gave in Colorado in 1997. I have my students listen to that every semester.
No, I haven’t.
My friend Jonathan just told me he is sending me a copy of her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, a book I’ve been meaning to read for quite a while.
I just googled the recording and see it on Amazon
I’ll add it to my list… Thanks for telling me about it.