The irrationality of the prison-industrial complex

Abstract

In order to approach the topic of reentry pragmatically, it is necessary to reject ideological arguments regarding not only crime and punishment but also employ? ment; in particular, the argument that viable employment, hard work in exchange for a living wage, is a gift that not everyone is entitled to receive. None of the ex-inmates writing in this volume speak with any sense of entitlement, nor is there a combative or plaintive tone in any of these essays. The authors are stating in various ways that what is expected of them does not make sense, that there is a slim chance of successful reentry without ex-inmates being able to support themselves through legitimate work. This problem requires attention ahead of all others related to reentry. The prison system in the United States has its origins in a mixture of enlightenment thinking and religious fervor. In the eighteenth century, public punishments such as the pillory were replaced with incarceration. The Quakers developed the penitentiary as a place where the criminal could be reformed through isolation and forced labor and obligatory religious instruction?all of which were supposed to cleanse his soul and make him possibly worthy of reentrance into the community. The idea that the community was involved in the punishment and bore some responsibility for the 'treatment' of the prisoner was kept alive until the 1950s. Growing crime rates in the 1960s, coupled with political reaction to urban 'disorder', made this argument appear suddenly impractical and irrelevant. At the same time, social movements specifically tied to criminal justice issues were reenergized in the 1960s. The movement toward deinstitutionalization was most pronounced and had its furthest reaching effects?particularly in juvenile reforma? tories and insane asylums. The argument was that labels had predictable and inadvertent consequences, including with regard to reentry that needed to be balanced against the need to treat mental illness and punish wrongdoing. Nowadays, the argument that labels and prevents people from living productive lives, thus