- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
This week I researched the history of incarceration in America, the beginnings of for profit prisons, and the incarceration boom in the 1980’s. By looking at the history of U.S. prisons I hoped to learn about how for profit prisons are economically and politically constructed, and in what ways they are connected to neoliberal economic and political ideals. Specifically I found three resources which offered insight onto this topic.
1.
Clark, Kelsey. Prisons for Profit: Neoliberal Rationality’s Transformation of America’s Prisons.(2016)
Clark offers a history of America’s incarceration system, in her larger article about how neoliberal ideals create for profit prisons in the United States. The author is a graduate student at the college of Wooster, it is likely one of the first articles she has written, and therefore might have lower levels of credibility, but the topic as a whole is very related to my own research. Additionally, it appears to be strongly written and researched. The audience appears to be an interested academic audience. She provides a strong history of incarceration in America, and points me towards other useful authors. Briefly, Clark describes how the end of slavery represented a major shift in America’s incarceration system. The outlaw of slavery, which specifically noted that convicted criminals may perform involuntary labor, left a hole in the economy, and business owners filled this hole by forcing imprisoned people, a majority of whom were Black, to work for them. This practice was called “convict leasing”. Convict leasing ended in the 1920’s due to economic concerns, but for profit prisons re-emerged in the 70’s and 80’s when neoliberalism, small government and the privatization of business, along with the war on drugs, led to the privatization of prisons, resulting in the prison industrial complex.
2.
Hartnett, Stephan. The Annihilating Public Policies of the Prison-Industrial Complex; or, Crime, Violence, and Punishment in an Age of Neoliberalism. (2008)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/254921/pdf
Hartnett’s article is a review of several books published recently on the prison industrial complex seen through a neoliberal lens. Published by Johns Hopkins University, this source seems to be highly credible. I found this to be a useful source because Hartnett highlights, and summarizes, several books that I may not look further into, based on my findings here. The intended audience again seems to be an academic audience interested in learning more about the neoliberal rationality behind the prison industrial complex. The review points the reader to two books: Ruthie Gilmore’s Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing Californiaand Erica Meiners’s Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies. Overall Hartnett describes the way that the restructuring of the economy, moving away from government social services towards privatization, along with the war on drugs, has lead to a prison boom, and specifically a sharp increase in men of color being incarcerated on non-violent drug offenses. This source dives into the 70’s and 80’s specifically, which builds on Clark’s overarching look at the history of incarceration in the U.S.
Together, these sources provide a look into the economic and political reasons for the privatization of prisons.
COMMENTS:
This is a good reflection, Natalie. But it would even be stronger if you mentioned what your next steps are.
Your sources look great. I think you are on the right track with your research.