Capital flight into prisons followed deindustrialization and welfare dismantling in the 1980s.

Evidence

However, it was not until the 1980s and the increasing globalization of capitalism that the massive surge of capital into the punishment economy began. The deindustrialization processes that resulted in plant shutdowns throughout the country created a huge pool of vulnerable human beings, a pool of people for whom no further jobs were available. This also brought more people into contact with social services, such as AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and other welfare agencies. It is not accidental that “welfare, as we have known it”—to use former President Clinton’s words—came under severe attack and was eventually disestablished. This was known as “welfare reform.” — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 243

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on carceral state and welfare reform — Wacquant’s ‘Punishing the Poor’ and Michelle Alexander’s mass incarceration narrative. — connects to: Neoliberal economic shifts of the 1980s drove the surge in women’s imprisonment.; The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus; Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit (+1 more)
• QUESTION: What exactly linked Hospital Corporation of America’s board to Corrections Corporation of America’s founding in 1983? Worth tracing the personnel overlap.

Related

• The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus (similarity 0.80)
• Women are the fastest-growing sector of the US prison population (similarity 0.79)
• Mass incarceration functions as a management system for surplus labor. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• California’s prison boom absorbed surpluses of capital, land, and labor #expands (0.80)
• The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus #corroborates (0.75)
• Neoliberal economic shifts of the 1980s drove the surge in women’s imprisonment. #expands (0.60)
• Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit #corroborates (0.60)