Prison expansion undermines democracy and normalizes incarceration for people of color

Evidence

South Africa’s participation in the prison industrial complex constitutes a major impediment to the creation of a democratic society. In the United States, we have already felt the insidious and socially damaging effects of prison expansion. The dominant social expectation is that young black, Latino, Native American, and Southeast Asian men— and increasingly women as well—will move naturally from the free world into prison, where, it is assumed, they belong. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 274

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Prison is treated as an inevitable fact of life even in communities it oppresses — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 29; Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 227; Imprisonment converts bodies of color into profit sources that drain public welfare funding — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 234 (+11 more)

Related

• Prison imagery in media makes incarceration seem natural and permanent (similarity 0.91)
• Prison reform rhetoric reinforces the prison’s permanence. (similarity 0.90)
• Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers (similarity 0.88)
• Prison is treated as an inevitable fact of life even in communities it oppresses (similarity 0.87)
• Imprisonment converts bodies of color into profit sources that drain public welfare funding (similarity 0.87)
• Prison is an ordinary life dimension in poor communities of color (similarity 0.85)
• People are imprisoned largely because their communities are criminalized, not for crimes (similarity 0.84)
• Prisons preserve racist and misogynist practices society has nominally abandoned (similarity 0.83)
• The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus (similarity 0.81)
• Racism and profit, not crime, drive prison expansion (similarity 0.81)
• Immigrant detention extends the prison industrial complex’s racial and gendered reach (similarity 0.80)
• Prison growth began when crime rates were already falling (similarity 0.80)
• The prison debate wrongly focuses on correction while normalization mechanisms proliferate unchecked. (similarity 0.79)
• Prisons function as criminal training centers and a just society would not need them (similarity 0.79)
• Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Racism and profit, not crime, drive prison expansion #corroborates (0.80)
• Prison is an ordinary life dimension in poor communities of color #expands (0.70)
• Immigrant detention extends the prison industrial complex’s racial and gendered reach #expands (0.70) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 292
• Mass incarceration did not lower crime but bred more prisons #corroborates (0.60)
• Civil-liberties-versus-security framing normalizes sacrificing minority rights. #expands (0.60)
• Formal equality fails because male prisons define the punishment norm #complicates (0.50)