The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus

Evidence

In the post-Civil War era, emancipated black men and women comprised an enormous reservoir of labor at a time when planters—and industrialists—could no longer rely on slavery, as they had done in the past. This labor became increasingly available for use by private agents precisely through the convict lease system, discussed earlier, and related systems such as debt peonage. Recall that in the aftermath of slavery, the penal population drastically shifted, so that in the South it rapidly became disproportionately black. This transition set the historical stage for the easy acceptance of disproportionately black prison populations today. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

The notion of a prison industrial complex insists on understandings of the punishment process that take into account economic and political structures and ideologies, rather than focusing myopically on individual criminal conduct and efforts to “curb crime.” The fact, for example, that many corporations with global markets now rely on prisons as an important source of profit helps us to understand the rapidity with which prisons began to proliferate precisely at a time when official studies indicated that the crime rate was falling. The notion of a prison industrial complex also insists that the racialization of prison populations—and this is not only true of the United States, but of Europe, South America, and Australia as well—is not an incidental feature. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 227 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mass incarceration did not lower crime but bred more prisons; The prison disciplined convicts into an industrial labor force; Neoliberal economic shifts of the 1980s drove the surge in women’s imprisonment. (+11 more)

Related

• California’s prison boom absorbed surpluses of capital, land, and labor (similarity 0.95)
• The prison disciplined convicts into an industrial labor force (similarity 0.92)
• Mass incarceration functions as a management system for surplus labor. (similarity 0.88)
• Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers (similarity 0.87)
• Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system (similarity 0.87)
• Prison is an ordinary life dimension in poor communities of color (similarity 0.87)
• California prison expansion responded to surpluses of capital, land, labor, and state capacity (similarity 0.86)
• Private prisons require a steady supply of prisoners as raw material. (similarity 0.85)
• Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit (similarity 0.85)
• Alabama’s prison population flipped from ninety-nine percent white to majority black after emancipation (similarity 0.84)
• Prison growth began when crime rates were already falling (similarity 0.83)
• Prison abolition has a long history but remains culturally unthinkable (similarity 0.83)
• Prisons preserve racist and misogynist practices society has nominally abandoned (similarity 0.83)
• Nearly one in three young black men were under correctional supervision by 1995 (similarity 0.82)
• Prison reform rhetoric reinforces the prison’s permanence. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• California’s prison boom absorbed surpluses of capital, land, and labor #expands (0.85)
• Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system #exemplifies (0.85) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253
• Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers #corroborates (0.70) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 227