- This week I researched how the neoliberal state incentivizes increases in mass incarceration, privatized prisons, and worsens prison conditions. Specifically I found two resources which offered insight onto this topic.1.
Aviram, Hadar. Are Private Prisons to Blame for Mass Incarceration and its Evils? Prison Conditions, Neoliberalism, and Public Choice. (2016)
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2562&context=ulj
Aviram argues that the profit incentives that brought private incarceration into existence are to blame for the Prison industrial complex and its evil conditions, rather than private incarceration itself. Aviram’s article was published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal, and therefor has high credibility as a source. The article likewise seems to be well written and researched, and relates closely to my topic, as it discusses in depth how economic incentives drive the mass incarceration of individuals in the US. Building on last week’s research, which was about how privatized prisons came into existence, this week looks more specifically at why the economic incentives of neoliberalism drive the prison industrial complex. The audience for this article appears to be an academic readership. Aviram argues that individual actors in the US today are not responsible for the prison industrial complex but rather the economy that we live in drives the injustices carried out by private prisons. Aviram also argues that public prisons are just as bad as private prisons because so many of their internal functions have been privatized that they essentially are the same as private prisons. Aviram references Brown v. Plata,
an important supreme court case that sets precedent on the minimum standards for prisons which I plan to research further.
Richardson, Aviva. Neoliberalism Perpetuates Prison Re-entry. (2015)
https://dailycollegian.com/2015/09/neoliberalism-perpetuates-prison-re-entry/
Richardson writes about how neoliberal policies encourage private prisons to retain prisoners for as long as possible in a neoliberal economic context. She also describes how in this neoliberal context social services, including re-entry support, have been underfunded, so people are getting released from prison into the poverty that resulted in their original incarceration, leading to high recidivism rates. This is an article published be the University of Massachusetts daily news source. It is most likely written by a student, and therefor likely has less credibility as a source, and is based on less in depth research. I will use this article more as a jumping off point to find more information about recidivism in the neoliberal context, because this article provides a good starting point to this topic. The audience appears to be the general public, because it is published by a news source, and uses non-academic sounding language. The article shows how ex-prisoners will likely return to prison because of housing and employment discrimination, parole officers who now act as police on formerly incarcerated people, and voter discrimination.
Together, these sources provide a look into the economic and political reasons for the privatization of prisons.
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Comments:
These are good sources. It is great that you found a source that blurs the distinction between public and private prisons.
You should also start thinking about how you want to discuss “neoliberalism” in your project. There are at least two ways in which you can use this concept in your project: one is that you can show how neoliberal policies (e,g. cutbacks in welfare programs and services) created the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to mass incarceration. And you can discuss how neoliberal incentives (e.g. creating new markets) have reinforced mass incarceration ( e.g. the privatization of prisons). You can of course combine these two.
Also, you do not have to discuss this in detail in your paper but we see the growing importance of the privatization of security in the case of privately-run detention centers that lock up immigrants as well.