Le complexe prison-industriel

De nouvelles peines minimales et de peines minimales doublées, triplées et quadruplées; des nouvelles infractions; de moindres possibilités de sursis et de libération conditionnelle.  Tout cela mène à des taux d'incarcération à la hausse, et le "besoin" de construire de nouvelles prisons.  De "super-prisons" à l'américaine.  On associe le privé, et voilà que un complexe prison-industriel proprement canadien est né...

In the meantime, corporations associated with the punishment industry reap profits from the system that manages prisons and acquire a clear stake in the continued growth of prison populations.  Put simply, this is the era of the prison industrial complex.  The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited.  Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison.  There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy - a process that reached its peak during the 1980s - and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began its spiral in the Reagan-Bush era.  However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms.  More prisons were needed because there was more crime.  Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling.   

                                                                 

                                                                                      Angela Y. Davis
                                                                                      Are prisons obsolete?
                                                                                      Seven Stories Press, New York, 2003