105-427: The prison-industrial complex ( PIC ) is a term, coined after the " military-industrial complex " of the 1950s, used by scholars and activists to describe the many relationships between institutions of imprisonment (such as prisons, jails, detention facilities, and psychiatric hospitals) and the various businesses that benefit from them. The term is most often used in the context of the contemporary United States, where
210-406: A Freedom of Information Act . Military%E2%80%93industrial complex The expression military–industrial complex ( MIC ) describes the relationship between a country's military and the defense industry that supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy . A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense-minded corporations
315-458: A crime or are awaiting trial on criminal charges." The definition includes secure facilities and community-based correctional facilities. Federally sentenced juveniles may be moved into federal adult facilities at certain points; juveniles sentenced as adults are moved into adult facilities when they turn 18 and juveniles that were sentenced as juveniles are moved into adult facilities when they turn 21. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 reinstituted
420-661: A decade later in 1940, the system had 24 institutions with 24,360 incarcerated. The state of Alaska assumed jurisdiction over its corrections on January 3, 1959, using the Alaska Department of Corrections ; prior to statehood, the BOP had correctional jurisdiction over Alaska. As a result of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and subsequent legislation, which pushed for longer sentences, less judicial discretion, and harsher sentences for drug-related offenses,
525-544: A growing immigration industrial complex: "Companies dependent upon continued growth in the numbers of undocumented immigrants detained have exerted themselves in the nation's capital and in small, rural communities to create incentives that reinforce that growth." A study by the ACLU says that many are housed in inhumane conditions as many facilities operated by private companies are exempt from government oversight, and studies are made difficult as such facilities may not be covered by
630-798: A high of 19,155 in Texas. Overall U.S. incarceration (prisons and jails) peaked in 2008 at 2,308,400 people, approximately 1% of the adult population. A 2010 investigation by the United States Department of Justice found that Federal Prison Industries (the New Deal–era public-sector prison labor program, rebranded in 1977 as UNICOR ) had routinely exposed federal inmates to toxic heavy metals, exported hazardous wastes to developing countries, and attempted to conceal evidence of unsafe working conditions from OSHA inspectors. In 2016, President Barack Obama issued an executive policy to reduce
735-447: A high rate of recidivism can be attributed in part to the difficulty formerly incarcerated people encounter in finding stable employment. The Evidence-Based Professionals Society suggests two reasons for this difficulty: "First, most of the offenders may simply lack the necessary job skills for specific positions, keeping them from those usually higher paid and more stable jobs. Second, many employers are reluctant to hire these people due to
840-406: A higher likelihood of incarceration after leaving school. Moreover, since the 1970s, urban public school districts have dramatically increased police presence in their schools, and students have been increasingly subject to "arrests for minor noncriminal violations of school rules." This trend has both disrupted urban learning environments and decreased the average age of the incarcerated population of
945-564: A net worth of $ 1.2 billion and net income of $ 78 million. As of 2012, CCA has over 75,000 inmates within 60 facilities and the GEO Group owns over 114 facilities. Over half of the prison industry's yearly revenue comes from immigrant detention centers. For some small communities in the Southwestern United States, these facilities serve as an integral part of the economy. According to Chris Kirkham, this constitutes part of
1050-440: A period of relative stability since 1925 (around 0.1 percent of the population), the overall U.S. imprisonment rate grew rapidly and continuously from 1972, increasing annually by 6 to 8 percent through 2000. President Ronald Reagan's 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act further accelerated mass incarceration. Very shortly many state prisons were experiencing unprecedented overcrowding. Rockefeller's successor, New York Governor Mario Cuomo ,
1155-436: A product to producing a successful offender as our product." Indeed, studies have shown that participants in prison labor programs often have a lower risk of recidivism ; these studies may be misleading, however, as it is often only obedient and industrious inmates who are allowed to participate in prison labor in the first place. Anti-prison activists have argued that corporations that contract or subcontract prison labor have
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#17327986609891260-600: A report, The Case for More Incarceration , which argued for an even further increase in the United States incarceration rate . In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act , the largest crime bill in U.S. history, which directly allotted a $ 9.7 billion funding increase to prisons and introduced the three-strikes law , assigning unprecedentedly long sentences (25 year to life minimum) to third-time convicts. As
1365-649: A sense close to that it would later acquire, and sociologist C. Wright Mills contended in his 1956 book The Power Elite that a democratically unaccountable class of military, business, and political leaders with convergent interests exercised the preponderance of power in the contemporary West. However, following its coinage in Eisenhower's address, the MIC became a staple of American political and sociological discourse. Many Vietnam War –era activists and polemicists, such as Seymour Melman and Noam Chomsky employed
1470-504: A study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state. Within decades of its inception, the idea of the military–industrial complex gave rise to the ideas of other similar industrial complexes , including: Virtually all institutions in sectors ranging from agriculture, medicine, entertainment, and media, to education, criminal justice, security, and transportation, began reconceiving and reconstructing in accordance with capitalist, industrial, and bureaucratic models with
1575-632: A trade-off for allowing prisons to be more cheaply run and operated, the degree to which prisoners are reformed goes down. Because the privatized prisons are so much larger than the public-run prisons, they were subject to economies of scale , allowing for a more efficient, lower-cost alternative to government spending on incarceration. In 2016, GEO Group and CoreCivic each commanded $ 900 million in open credit from six banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo. In 2011, The Vera Institute of Justice surveyed 40 state correction departments to gather data on what
1680-586: A vested interest in the expansion of the prison system, since its expansion provides more inmates available for cheap labor. Activists Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans (writing while incarcerated in California) explain that For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers' compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of eerie acres of factories inside
1785-468: Is a constant supply of new drug sellers, there is thus a constant supply of potential prison inmates. According to this view, the prison-industrial complex depends on this guarantee of future inmates to ensure its growth and profitability, making prison construction, operation, services, and technology all safe investments. Professor Angela Davis , one of the most recognized American prison abolition activists, has argued that while some appear to believe that
1890-648: Is a continuation of the U.S. history of slavery . These scholars all cite the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing the institution of slavery "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." In a Bureau of Prisons (BOP)–funded study, privatized prisons were compared side-to-side with the public prisons on economic performance, and quality of life. The study found that in
1995-414: Is an emergent property of the prison-industrial complex. Because mass incarceration has exacerbated the economic and racial inequality in the United States, contemporary social critics like Ruth Wilson Gilmore refer to the prison-industrial complex as an infrastructure of racial capitalism . Marc Mauer , executive director of the criminal justice reform group The Sentencing Project , has argued that
2100-792: Is an example of a complex system , comprising many institutions interacting in mutually reinforcing patterns. Minimal definitions of the system focus on the relationships between the federal and state criminal justice system; the for-profit companies that build, operate, and service public and private prisons; and the special interest groups that grow in size and influence as incarceration increases. These groups include ICE , police unions , correctional officers unions, and private probation companies, as well as private businesses that sell surveillance and corrections technology, operate prison food services and medical facilities, and private- and public-sector businesses that contract or subcontract prison labor. More expansive definitions often include as elements of
2205-508: Is an integral sector in the neoliberal national economy, with the largest and fastest-growing states—like Florida, California, and Texas ("Flocatex")—also leading the country in number of inmates and prison privatization. As large-scale human holding facilities, prisons contain enormous reserves of labor power . Since the establishment of the Federal Prison Industries in 1930, these capacities have been put to work for
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#17327986609892310-548: Is now tied directly to the success of the MIC which has led to concerns of repression as Cold War-era attitudes are still prevalent among the American public. Shifts in values and the collapse of communism have ushered in a new era for the military–industrial complex. The Department of Defense works in coordination with traditional military–industrial complex aligned companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman . Many former defense contractors have shifted operations to
2415-536: Is promoted through discipline, a strong work ethic, and providing inmates with valuable skills to be used upon release. Gina Honeycutt, executive director of the National Correctional Industries Association, stated in 2015 that moreover, "in recent years, the focus of many work programs has shifted to concentrate even more on effective rehabilitation of inmates. The transition in the last five years has been away from producing
2520-561: Is responsible for all federal prisons and provides for the care, custody, and control of federal prisoners. The federal prison system had existed for more than 30 years before the BOP was established. Although its wardens functioned almost autonomously, the Superintendent of Prisons, a Department of Justice official in Washington, was nominally in charge of federal prisons. The passage of the "Three Prisons Act" in 1891 authorized
2625-492: Is so ineffective that "92–97%" of immigrants who attempt to cross in illegally "keep trying until they succeed", and that such measures actually increase the risk and cost of travel, leading to longer stays and settlement in the US. There are around 400,000 immigrant detainees per year, and 50% are housed in private facilities. In 2011, CCA's net worth was $ 1.4 billion and net income was $ 162 million. In this same year, The GEO Group had
2730-482: Is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them. The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the armed forces of the United States , where the relationship is most prevalent due to close links among defense contractors, the Pentagon , and politicians. The expression gained popularity after a warning of the relationship's detrimental effects, in
2835-564: The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was founded by Nashville businessmen who claimed they could build and operate state and federal prisons with the same quality of service provided by government prisons, but at a lower cost. In 1984, CCA was awarded a contract for a facility in Hamilton County, Tennessee, the first instance of the public sector contracting management of a prison to a private company. By 1987,
2940-866: The Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia . The BOP has five security levels : Some units have small, adjacent, minimum-security "satellite camps". Twenty-eight institutions hold female inmates. As of 2010 , about 15% of Bureau inmates are in facilities operated by third parties, mostly private companies, while others are in local and state facilities. Some are in privately operated Residential Reentry Centers (RRC) or Community Corrections Centers. The Bureau uses contract facilities to manage its own prison population because they are "especially useful" for housing low-security, specialized groups of people, such as sentenced criminal aliens. Officers employed by
3045-515: The Rockefeller Drug Laws , establishing mandatory minimum prison sentences for small-scale drug possession. Although not as harsh as Governor Nelson Rockefeller had originally called for, these laws inspired other states to enact similarly strict punishments for drug offenses, including mandatory minimum sentences in almost every instance. Also in 1973, conservative businesses and tough-on-crime politicians came together to establish
3150-464: The September 11 terror attacks and the ensuing global war on terror , as well as the more recent increase in geopolitical tensions associated with strategic competition between the United States, Russia , and China . Some sources divide the history of the military–industrial complex into three distinct eras. From 1797 to 1941, the government only relied on civilian industries while the country
3255-580: The expansion of the U.S. inmate population has resulted in economic profit and political influence for private prisons and other companies that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. According to this concept, incarceration not only upholds the justice system, but also subsidizes construction companies, companies that operate prison food services and medical facilities, surveillance and corrections technology vendors, corporations that contract cheap prison labor , correctional officers unions , private probation companies, criminal lawyers, and
Prison–industrial complex - Misplaced Pages Continue
3360-555: The fascist government ties to heavy industry. It can be defined as, "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs." An exhibit of the trend was made in Franz Leopold Neumann 's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942,
3465-879: The lobby groups that represent them. The term also refers more generally to interest groups who, in their interactions with the prison system, prioritize financial gain over rehabilitating criminals. Proponents of this concept, including civil rights organizations such as the Rutherford Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), believe that the economic incentives of prison construction, prison privatization, prison labor, and prison service contracts have transformed incarceration into an industry capable of growth, and have contributed to mass incarceration . These advocacy groups note that incarceration affects people of color at disproportionately high rates. Many commentators use
3570-505: The moe that it engenders to shape domestic and international perceptions. An alternative term to describe the interdependence between the military-industrial complex and the entertainment industry is coined by James Der Derian as "Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network ". Ray McGovern extended this appellation to Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT. Federal Bureau of Prisons The Federal Bureau of Prisons ( BOP )
3675-491: The news media sensationalizing crime and influencing public perception, gentrification disrupting urban environments and displacing precarious residents, and public schools increasingly subjecting students to police oversight and legal punishment since the 1980s. In the U.S., the specific relationships between the criminal justice system and the private businesses that interact with it vary significantly from state to state. Critics and scholars argue that mass incarceration
3780-404: The privatization of government services, the transformation of welfare to workfare policies, and suburbanization , including white flight from city centers. These large-scale transformations had particularly damaging effects on the economic activity of large American cities, generally increasing urban unemployment and exacerbating income and racial inequality . Statistics have shown that
3885-578: The 1999 fiscal budget. This expansion, experts claim, has been too rapid and thus has led to an increased chance on the part of faculty for negligence and abuse. Lucas Guttengag, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project stated that, "immigrants awaiting administrative hearings are being detained in conditions that would be unacceptable at prisons for criminal offenders." Such examples include "travelers without visas" (TWOVs) being held in motels near airports nicknamed "Motel Kafkas" that are under
3990-464: The 2000s, the federal government continued outsourcing prison management to private facilities, while states varied in their approach to private incarceration. Between 1999 and 2010, six states began using private prisons, while nine states ended their private prison contracts. By 2010, the number of privately held state prisoners in the 30 practicing states ranged from a low of 5 in South Dakota to
4095-465: The Bureau of Prisons is Colette S. Peters. As of 2020, 62.5% of Bureau employees are white, 21.3% are black, 12.6% are Hispanic, 2.3% are Asian, and 1.3% are Native American. 72% are male. There is roughly one corrections officer for every 12.5 prisoners. All BOP law enforcement employees undergo 200 hours of formal training in their first year of employment and an additional 120 hours of training at
4200-572: The Bureau of Prisons). The Bureau of Prisons was established within the Department of Justice on May 14, 1930 by the United States Congress , and was charged with the "management and regulation of all Federal penal and correctional institutions." This responsibility covered the administration of the 11 federal prisons in operation at the time. By the end of 1930, the system had expanded to 14 institutions with 13,000 inmates, and
4305-493: The Bureau was responsible for approximately 131,040 inmates, in 122 facilities. 57.9% of inmates were white, 38.2% were black, 2.5% native American, and 1.5% Asian; 93.3% were male. 30.4% were of Hispanic ethnicity, which may be any of these four races. 75% of inmates were between the ages of 26 and 50. As of 1999 , 14,000 prisoners were in 16 federal prisons in the state of Texas. As of 2010 , almost 8,000 felons in 90 facilities, sentenced under D.C. laws, made up about 6% of
Prison–industrial complex - Misplaced Pages Continue
4410-605: The Department's Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security." Both the GEO Group and CoreCivic donated heavily to the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016 and inaugural committee in 2017, and following his election, their stock prices skyrocketed: CoreCivic by 140% and GEO Group by 98%. Less than a month into the Trump administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded
4515-526: The Evaluation and Inspections Division, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, found the Bureau's programming and policy decisions did not fully consider the needs of female inmates in the areas of trauma treatment programming, pregnancy programming, and feminine hygiene. As of 2010 , juveniles sent into Bureau custody are between 17 and 20 and must have been under 18 at
4620-583: The FBOP are uniformed federal law enforcement officers who are responsible for the care, custody, and control of federal inmates. Primary Law enforcement officers working for the Bureau of Prisons have statutory powers of arrest "18 U.S. Code § 3050 - Bureau of Prisons employees' powers" . per the United States Code, and the ability to carry a firearm off duty. The BOP has a Special Operations Response Team and Disturbance Control Team. As of 2021,
4725-441: The MIC and vice versa. In 1993, the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the fall of communism and a shrinking defense budget. In the third era, defense contractors either consolidated or shifted their focus to civilian innovation. From 1992 to 1997 there was a total of US$ 55 billion worth of mergers in the defense industry, with major defense companies purchasing smaller competitors. The U.S. domestic economy
4830-674: The Obama directive curtailing the Federal Bureau of Prisons' private prison contracts, stating that the Obama administration had "impaired the Bureau's ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system." By the end of 2019, the U.S. incarcerated population had dropped to 2,068,800 people, its lowest level since 2003. The incarceration rate had dropped to the same rate as 1995 (810 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents), with 11% of federal and 7.6% of state prisoners incarcerated in for-profit facilities. The prison-industrial complex
4935-557: The PIC and its evils". In the neoliberal era, she argues, "private and public actors alike respond to market pressures and conduct their business, including correctional business, through a cost/benefit prism". Funding of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is increasing as about a total of $ 4.27 billion was allotted to the INS in the 2000 fiscal budget. This is 8% more than in
5040-756: The Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIE). Intended to allow inmates to contribute to society, offset the cost of their incarceration, reduce idleness, cultivate job skills, and improve the rates of successful transition back into their communities after release, the PIE program created a cheap captive domestic labor market , which set the stage for the adoption and expansion of private-sector labor in public prisons. The PIE program also allowed prisons themselves to be privatized and operated as for-profit entities. Meanwhile, incarceration rates began to soar. After
5145-632: The Trump administration, the BOP carried out 13 executions. Parole was abolished for federal inmates in 1987 and inmates must serve at least 85% of their original sentence before being considered for good-behavior release. The current sentencing guidelines were adopted in response to rising crime rates in the 1980s and early 1990s, especially for drug-related offenses. Some analysts and activists believe that strict federal sentencing guidelines have led to overcrowding and needlessly incarcerated thousands of non-violent drug offenders who would be better served by drug treatment programs. The yearly increases in
5250-821: The U.S. is 11.3 million. Those that argue against the PIC claim that effective immigration policy has failed to pass since private detention centers profit from keeping undocumented immigrants detained. They also claim that despite having the incarceration rate grow "10 times what it was prior to 1970,... it has not made this country any safer." Since the September 11 attacks in 2001, the budget for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have nearly doubled from 2003 to 2008, with CBP's budget increasing from $ 5.8 billion to $ 10.1 billion and ICE from $ 3.2 billion to $ 5 billion and even so there has been no significant decrease in immigrant population. Professor Wayne Cornelius, professor Emeritus of Political Science at UC San Diego , even argued that it
5355-542: The United States federal government intentionally paid a higher price for these innovations to serve as a subsidy for civilian aircraft advancement. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), total world spending on military expenses in 2022 was $ 2,240 billion. 39% of this total, or $ 837 billion, was spent by the United States. China was the second largest spender, with $ 292 billion and 13% of
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#17327986609895460-495: The United States increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53 percent of the trade that year. Last year saw the United States on pace to deliver more than $ 46 billion in foreign arms sales." The military and arms industry also tend to contribute heavily to incumbent members of Congress. The datagraphic represents the 20 largest US defense contractors based on the amount of their defense revenue. Among these corporations, 53.5% of total revenues are derived from defense, and
5565-408: The United States went from around one percent of annual GDP to 40 percent of GDP. Various U.S. companies, such as Boeing and General Motors , maintained and expanded their defense divisions. These companies have gone on to develop various technologies that have improved civilian life as well, such as night-vision goggles and GPS . The second era is identified as beginning with the coining of
5670-432: The United States' major cities. The War on Drugs has disproportionately impacted African Americans . Although African Americans use drugs at similar rates to Americans from other demographic groups, they are prosecuted at much higher rates. In the decades following World War II, the American domestic economy was characterized by growth, but also by deindustrialization , the decline of the labor movement , austerity and
5775-470: The aim of realizing profit, growth, and other imperatives. According to Steven Best , all these systems interrelate and reinforce one another. The concept of the military–industrial complex has been also expanded to include the entertainment and creative industries as well. For an example in practice, Matthew Brummer describes Japan's Manga Military and how the Ministry of Defense uses popular culture and
5880-512: The civilian market and sold off their defense departments. According to the military subsidy theory, the Cold War–era mass production of aircraft benefited the civilian aircraft industry . The theory asserts that the technologies developed during the Cold War along with the financial backing of the military led to the dominance of U.S. aviation companies . There is also strong evidence that
5985-485: The company had signed more contracts, with Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky, establishing the legal precedent for other startups and established corporations to enter into the industry, not only operating prisons but also immigrant detention facilities for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service . As of 2012, the multibillion-dollar corporation, now known as CoreCivic , manages over 65 correctional facilities and boasts an annual revenue exceeding $ 1.7 billion. In 1988,
6090-484: The concept in their criticism of U.S. foreign policy, while other academics and policymakers found it to be a useful analytical framework. Although the MIC was bound up in its origins with the bipolar international environment of the Cold War, some contended that the MIC might endure under different geopolitical conditions (for example, George F. Kennan wrote in 1987 that "were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under
6195-478: The corporate state. Hadar Aviram, Professor of Law at UC Hastings , suggests that critics of the prison-industrial complex focus too much on private prisons. While Aviram shares their concerns that "private enterprises designed to directly benefit from human confinement and misery is profoundly unethical and problematic," she contends that "the profit incentives that brought private incarceration into existence, rather than private incarceration itself, are to blame for
6300-445: The disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together. [emphasis added] The phrase
6405-485: The farewell address of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961. Conceptually, it is closely related to the ideas of the iron triangle (the three-sided relationship between Congress , the executive branch bureaucracy, and interest groups ) and the defense industrial base (the network of organizations, facilities, and resources that supplies governments with defense-related goods and services). U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower originally coined
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#17327986609896510-590: The federal death penalty. On July 19, 1993, the federal government designated the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Indiana as the site of execution for both males and females sentenced to execution. The Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Texas holds the female inmates who have been sentenced to death. Some male death row inmates are instead held at ADX Florence . As of January 16, 2020, 49 federal inmates are on death row. Under
6615-543: The federal government established Federal Prison Industries , a prison labor program to produce goods and services for the public sector. Many scholars and activists argue that the contemporary prison-industrial complex has its origins in the War on Drugs , a legislative campaign orchestrated by the U.S. federal government since the early 1970s aimed at criminalizing and punishing drug trafficking and use. Following tougher anti-drug legislation and harsher sentencing standards under
6720-410: The federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex . The potential for
6825-401: The federal inmate population doubled in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. The population increase decelerated in the early 2000s, but the population continued to increase until 2014. The National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997 transferred responsibility for adult felons convicted of violating District of Columbia laws to the BOP. The current director of
6930-479: The federal inmate population have raised concerns from criminal justice experts and even among DOJ officials themselves. Michael Horowitz, the DOJ Inspector General, wrote a memorandum concerning this issue: First, despite a slight decrease in the total number of federal inmates in fiscal year (FY) 2014, the Department projects that the costs of the federal prison system will continue to increase in
7035-474: The federal minimum wage and divert the difference to constructing facilities for further prison labor. By the end of 1999, the U.S. had a total incarcerated population of 2,026,596. This included 71,206 prisoners held in privately operated facilities, accounting for 5.5% of state and 2.8% of federal prisoners. In 1999, nearly 43% of all sentenced inmates were African-American men, and an estimated 9% of African-American men in their late 20s were in prison. Through
7140-565: The first three federal penitentiaries: USP Leavenworth , USP Atlanta , and USP McNeil Island with limited supervision by the Department of Justice. Until 1907, prison matters were handled by the Justice Department General Agent , with responsibility for Justice Department accounts, oversight of internal operations, certain criminal investigations as well as prison operations. In 1907, the General Agent
7245-473: The global share. The privatization of the production and invention of military technology also leads to a complicated relationship with significant research and development of many technologies. In 2011, the United States spent more (in absolute numbers) on its military than the next 13 countries combined. The military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was $ 515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings
7350-519: The growth and expansion of the prison-industrial complex since the 1970s has its roots in the War on Drugs , which, rather than suppressing the illegal drug trade , has produced a perpetual cycle of drug dealing and imprisonment. This he attributes to a structural feature of the drug trade, a market with perpetually high demand and lucrative potential profits. Mauer describes the "replacement effect", in which no matter how many drug suppliers are incarcerated, other sellers simply take their place; since there
7455-622: The increasing surveillance, policing, and imprisonment of the American public since approximately 1980. Early American jails were largely privately managed, holding both criminals awaiting trial and debtors awaiting repayment, and charging holding fees to local governments and creditors. After the first publicly-run prison was established in 1790 in Pennsylvania, private business involvement in corrections largely diminished to providing contracted services, such as food preparation, medical care, and transportation. The major 19th-century exception to
7560-449: The influential lobbying group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court case Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union restricted prisoners’ First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly, and prohibited them from organizing labor unions. In 1979, inspired by legislation proposed by ALEC, the U.S. Congress overturned the New Deal–era legislation against for-profit prison labor by establishing
7665-501: The jurisdiction of private security officers who have no affiliation to the government, often denying them telephones or fresh air, and there are some cases where detainees have been shackled and sexually abused according to Guttengag. Similar conditions arose in the ESMOR detention center at Elizabeth, New Jersey where complaints arose in less than a year, despite having a "state-of-the-art" facility. The number of unauthorized immigrants in
7770-592: The median proportion is 63.4%; 6 firms derive over 75% of their revenue from defense. According to the Misplaced Pages entries for the companies, the headquarters of 11 of these corporations are located in the Washington metropolitan area , of which 5 are in Reston, Virginia . A thesis similar to the military–industrial complex was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin , in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business , about
7875-451: The military industry, but the word "congressional" was dropped from the final version to appease the then-currently elected officials. James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence; likewise a claim by Douglas Brinkley that it was originally "military–industrial–scientific complex". Additionally, Henry Giroux claims that it was originally "military–industrial–academic complex". The actual authors of
7980-530: The minimum wage, not the prevailing wage, and legal loopholes allow some companies to pay even less. Moreover, prisoners' wages are subject to [...] many deductions [...] capped at a whopping 80 percent of their gross earnings. Moreover, some states have mandatory savings programs that take away another chunk of their wages. Thus, for many incarcerated workers, even free-world wages in private-sector jobs are reduced so much that they begin to resemble prison-world wages. Advocates of prison labor argue that rehabilitation
8085-500: The now-second-largest for-profit private prison corporation, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) was established as a subsidiary of The Wackenhut Corporation . The WCC is now known as GEO Group , and as of 2017, their U.S. Corrections and Detention division manages 70 correctional and detention facilities. Between 1980 and 1989, the total U.S. prison population increased by 115%, from 329,821 to 710,054 people. In 1992, William Barr , then United States Attorney General , authored
8190-489: The number of private federal prison contracts, and the United States Justice Department began developing a plan to phase out its use of private prisons. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates rationalized this decision: "Private prisons simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by
8295-515: The pandemic that reportedly did not adhere to physical distancing rules, leading to criticism that the BOP was facilitating "superspreader" events. Staff reportedly refused to wear face masks, a violation of court orders, and knowingly withheld information about confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses from people who had interacted with infected individuals along with hindering contact tracing efforts and allowing staff members who had been exposed to COVID-19 to refuse testing and work. Public health experts called for
8400-414: The presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan , incarceration increasingly became the standard punishment for non-violent offenses. As the overall incarcerated population dramatically increased, new correctional facilities needed to be built, staffed, and maintained, and private-sector prisons began to emerge as cost-effective solutions. Also during this period private-sector wage labor
8505-559: The prison industrial complex is taking the space once filled by the military industrial complex, the aftermath of the War on Terror shows how the links between the military, corporations, and government are growing even stronger. The relationship between these complexes, Davis suggests, shows they are symbiotic, because they mutually support and promote each other, even sharing some technologies. Further, they also share important structural features, both generating immense profits from processes of "social destruction" In essence, Davis argues that
8610-656: The prison population continued to grow steeply throughout the 1990s, the profit margins of private prison corporations such as CCA and GeoGroup continued to increase. Throughout the 1990s, the CCA and GeoGroup were both significant donors to the American Legislative Exchange Council . In 1995, Congress passed another piece of ALEC-influenced legislation, the Prison Industries Act, allowing corporations to pay prison laborers less than
8715-472: The public sector, and since the 1979 Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program, for the private sector too. Sociologist Erin Hatton defines four types of prison labor: are the highest-paid prison jobs by far, because private-sector companies are legally obligated to pay prisoners “prevailing wages” in order to avoid undercutting non-prison labor. However, reports suggest that prisoners are typically paid
8820-722: The relationship between the military and prison industrial complex can be understood like this: the exact things which are advantageous to corporations, elected officials, and governmental agents, those who have evident stakes in expanding these systems, leads to the devastation of poor and racialized communities as it has throughout American history. The U.S. criminal justice system has a high rate of recidivism. A 2021 Bureau of Justice Statistics investigation reported that about 66% of prisoners released across 24 states in 2008 were rearrested within 3 years, and 82% were rearrested within 10 years. Statistics show that incarceration and unemployment are correlated, although unevenly. Nevertheless, such
8925-566: The relative separation between public punishment and private industry was the convict lease system in the American South, in which private parties paid public prisons for forced prisoner labor. During the mass unemployment of the Great Depression , business leaders and unions successfully pressured the federal government to prohibit private corporations from contracting cheap prison labor and undercutting competition. In 1930,
9030-402: The speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos . Attempts to conceptualize something similar to a modern "military–industrial complex" did exist before 1961, as the underlying phenomenon described by the term is generally agreed to have emerged during or shortly after World War II . For example, a similar phrase was used in a 1947 Foreign Affairs article in
9135-457: The stigma imposed by their previous criminal records." Scholars and critics describe the existence of a " school-to-prison pipeline ", a system in which public school policies contribute to funneling urban students of color into the prison-industrial complex. Students at urban schools and other schools with high percentages of minority students are more likely to experience out-of-school suspensions and academic failure, which have been correlated to
9240-535: The sum to $ 651.2 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department's budget. Overall, the U.S. federal government is spending about $ 1 trillion annually on military-related purposes. President Joe Biden signed a record $ 886 billion defense spending bill into law on December 22, 2023. In a 2012 story, Salon reported, "Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures,
9345-433: The system tough-on-crime politicians and district attorneys seeking office, conservative political lobbies and legislatures passing punitive laws, and investment banks and rural economic developers leveraging public debt into private profit through prison construction and employment contracts. The widest definitions of the prison-industrial complex include even larger and more abstract institutions and processes, such as
9450-598: The system as inmates while pregnant. The Bureau pays for abortion only if it is life-threatening for the woman, but it may allow for abortions in non-life-threatening cases if non-BOP funds are used. In 2017, four Democratic Senators, including Kamala Harris , introduced a bill explicitly requiring tampons and pads to be free for female prisoners. In August 2017, the Bureau introduced a memorandum requiring free tampons and pads. The previous 1996 memorandum stated "products for female hygiene needs shall be available" without requiring them to be free of charge. A 2018 review by
9555-424: The term "prison-industrial complex" to refer strictly to private prisons in the United States, an industry that generates approximately $ 4 billion in profit a year. Others note that fewer than 10% of U.S. inmates are incarcerated in for-profit facilities, and use the term to diagnose a larger confluence of interests between the U.S. government, at the federal and state levels, and the private businesses that profit from
9660-522: The term by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. This era continued through the Cold War period, up to the end of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union . A 1965 article written by Marc Pilisuk and Thomas Hayden says benefits of the military–industrial complex of the United States include the advancement of the civilian technology market as civilian companies benefit from innovations from
9765-551: The term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961: A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction... This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of
9870-704: The time of the offense. According to the Bureau, most of the juveniles it receives had committed violent crimes and had "an unfavorable history of responding to interventions and preventive measures in the community." In 2010, most federal juvenile inmates were from Arizona , Montana , South Dakota , Nebraska and the District of Columbia . The Bureau contracts with facilities that house juvenile offenders . Title 18 , U.S.C. 5039 specifies that "No juvenile committed...may be placed or retained in an adult jail or correctional institution in which he has regular contact with adults incarcerated because they have been convicted of
9975-444: The total Bureau population. As of August 2020, 46.2% of inmates were incarcerated for drug offenses. The BOP receives all prisoner transfer treaty inmates sent from foreign countries, even if their crimes would have been tried in state, DC, or territorial courts if committed in the United States. As of 2015, 27 Bureau facilities house women. The Bureau has a Mothers and Infants Nurturing Together (MINT) program for women who enter
10080-709: The true cost of prisons were. Their reports showed that most states had additional costs ranging from one percent to thirty-four percent outside of what their original budget was for that year. John W. Whitehead , constitutional attorney and founder of the Rutherford Institute asserts that "Prison privatization simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism." Whitehead argues that it characterizes an increasingly inverted justice system dependent upon an advancement in power and wealth of
10185-522: The unemployment rate is correlated to the incarceration rate, and American historians such as Heather Ann Thompson and Alex Lichtenstein have argued that mass incarceration has accompanied the public-sector abandonment of former urban-industrial cores, and contributed to the rise of the Sun Belt as an important economic region. In this view, the prison-industrial complex is not simply the cumulative effect of decades of increasingly punitive legislation, but
10290-480: The walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron , make telephone reservations for TWA , raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria's Secret —all at a fraction of the cost of 'free labor.'" Several scholars argue that the practice of "hiring out prisoners", from the Reconstruction-era convict lease system to the contemporary prison-industrial complex,
10395-483: The waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented."). The collapse of the USSR and the resultant decrease in global military spending (the so-called ' peace dividend ') did in fact lead to decreases in defense industrial output and consolidation among major arms producers, although global expenditures rose again following
10500-542: The years ahead, consuming a large share of the Department's budget. Second, federal prisons remain significantly overcrowded and therefore face a number of important safety and security issues. By July 30, 2020, there were 2,910 federal inmates and 500 BOP staff who had confirmed positive test results for COVID-19 during the nationwide COVID-19 pandemic . 7312 inmates and 683 staff have recovered. There have been 99 federal inmate deaths and two BOP staff member deaths attributed to COVID-19. The BOP conducted executions during
10605-765: Was abolished, and its functions were distributed between three new offices: the Division of Accounts (which evolved into the Justice Management Division ); the Office of the Chief Examiner (which evolved in 1908 into the Bureau of Investigation, and in the early 1920s into the Federal Bureau of Investigation ); and the Office of the Superintendent of Prisons and Prisoners, later called the Superintendent of Prisons (which evolved in 1930 into
10710-531: Was actually at war. The government owned their own shipyards and weapons manufacturing facilities which they relied on through World War I . With World War II came a massive shift in the way that the U.S. government armed the military. With the onset of World War II President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board to coordinate civilian industries and shift them into wartime production. Throughout World War II arms production in
10815-414: Was reintroduced into the national prison system. The number of Americans awaiting trial or serving a sentence for a drug conviction in prison or jail increased from about 40,000 in 1980 to about 450,000 in 2004. In May 2021 the Federal Bureau of Prisons listed 46.3 percent of federal inmates as incarcerated because of drug convictions. In 1973, following the lead of President Nixon, New York State passed
10920-480: Was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military" in later drafts of Eisenhower's speech, a claim passed on only by oral history. Geoffrey Perret , in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that, in one draft of the speech, the phrase was "military–industrial–congressional complex", indicating the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of
11025-564: Was unable to generate enough support to dismantle the drug laws, and to keep pace with increasing arrests, was forced to expand the prison system using the Urban Development Corporation , a public state agency, which could issue state bonds without voter support. Despite a general economic retrenchment and avowed state government austerity policies, these events proved that government funds could nevertheless be made available for prison construction. Meanwhile, in 1983,
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