Imprisonment converts bodies of color into profit sources that drain public welfare funding

Evidence

But an analysis of the relationship between the military and prison industrial complex is not only concerned with the transference of technologies from the military to the law enforcement industry. What may be even more important to our discussion is the extent to which both share important structural features. Both systems generate huge profits from processes of social destruction. Precisely that which is advantageous to those coiporations, elected officials, and government agents who have obvious stakes in the expansion of these systems begets grief and devastation for poor and racially dominated communities in the United States and throughout the world. The transformation of imprisoned bodies—and they are in their majority bodies of color—into sources of profit who consume and also often produce all kinds of commodities, devours public funds, which might otherwise be available for social programs such as education, housing, childcare, recreation, and drug programs. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 234

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Black Marxism’s account of racialized labor extraction sustaining capitalism. — connects to: Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 227; Prison expansion undermines democracy and normalizes incarceration for people of color — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 274; Racism and profit, not crime, drive prison expansion (+4 more)

Related

• Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers (similarity 0.90)
• Corporate profit motives entrench a prison system that would otherwise be obsolete. (similarity 0.87)
• Prison expansion undermines democracy and normalizes incarceration for people of color (similarity 0.87)
• Public prisons now function as profit sources nearly as much as private ones do (similarity 0.86)
• Prison is an ordinary life dimension in poor communities of color (similarity 0.83)
• Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself (similarity 0.82)
• Private prisons require a steady supply of prisoners as raw material. (similarity 0.81)
• Racism and profit, not crime, drive prison expansion (similarity 0.81)
• The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus (similarity 0.81)
• Prisons preserve racist and misogynist practices society has nominally abandoned (similarity 0.81)
• Prison reform rhetoric reinforces the prison’s permanence. (similarity 0.80)
• Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit (similarity 0.80)
• Prison imagery in media makes incarceration seem natural and permanent (similarity 0.80)
• The prison system is racism’s most reliable institutional refuge. (similarity 0.79)
• Prison growth began when crime rates were already falling (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Racism and profit, not crime, drive prison expansion #corroborates (0.70)
• Prison expansion undermines democracy and normalizes incarceration for people of color #corroborates (0.60) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 274
• Corporate profit motives entrench a prison system that would otherwise be obsolete. #corroborates (0.50) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 235
• Public prisons now function as profit sources nearly as much as private ones do #corroborates (0.50) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 265
• Public prisons are as profit-saturated as private ones. #corroborates (0.45)