The prison industry and the marketplace

Abstract

It is not surprising that an industry has arisen regarding reentry. The US penal system spawns industry. For nearly two decades, when the New York Times published its list of the fastest-growing job titles, justice-related positions justice related positions, typically some sort of corrections worker, were regularly featured. It is inconceivable, in the American context, that economic interests would not be closely tied to the growth of the prison industrial complex. At its core are prison jobs themselves, including business in the short term with its construction and development, and long-term employment created through staffing, such an efficient engine of job creation that it was inevitable a reentry enterprise would follow suit.That is, prison growth produced reentry growth, which in turn created the foundation for a prisoner reentry industry. For it to have been otherwise would have been very odd. What's so bad about that? It means jobs, after all; usually good-paying jobs with job security and benefits?often with union protection. What's to complain about? There are three layers of problems. The first is technical and has to do with opportunity costs. The prison industrial complex has created jobs, yes; and the pay these jobs provide leads to expenditures in the marketplace, boosting the economy. That is a plus. But what value, really, do these jobs create? One might argue that the jobs fall within an industry that produces community safety and in that way they represent "value added." But with all the recent research on the limited crime prevention capacity of the prison, combined with the now powerfully persuasive research about the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, it is no longer possible to say, credibly, that the prison industry is a major component of public safety. The technical problem is, we receive get far less from the investment in the prison sector than we might have, compared to an investment made elsewhere.. This is the point the advocates of "justice reinvestment" make: we ought to use the