The U.S. Prison State - Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor - Book Review

The central theme of Prison Nation is the economic dynamic and roles of prisons in U.S. capitalism, that is, the prison-industrial complex. This anthology does an excellent job of analyzing and describing how the prison-industrial complex works as an integral part of U.S. capitalism by generating large profits for corporations. Essays and case studies detail how the incorporation of prisons into the system of capital accumulation was accomplished, both through changes in the criminal code and business law and the manipulation of public perceptions and fears. In "The Politics of Prison Labor," Gordon Lafer explains the interplay of political expediency, taxes, and budgets: "When the economy goes into a recession, the supply of decently paid jobs will shrink ... some number of [the laid-off and fired] will engage in nonviolent crimes ... [and end up incarcerated] .... It is important to note that this cycle is not the result of a conscious conspiracy among public officials ... it is, rather, the natural result of each party pursuing its own rational interests under current conditions." (Italics in original.)

While the articles that explain how capital and the law work to create this expanding prison nation, there are few strategies suggested to organize to stop the abuses, to hold the socially-sanctioned criminals accountable, and to challenge more fundamentally the prison-industrial complex. A notable exception is detailed in "Campus Activism Defeats Multinational's Profiteering" by Kevin Pranis. This is a report on campus activism in opposition to a foreign multinational that supplies both universities and prisons--Sodexho Alliance, which " ... in 1994, entered into strategic alliance with the world's largest prison company, Corrections Corporation of America [CCA]." The students forced Sodexho to get rid of its large stock interest in CCA. This essay is also valuable in showing the breadth of industrial capital's involvement in prisons for profit. From razor blades to razor wire, some corporation is profiting from both public and private prisons.

In the essays on rape, the organization Stop Prisoner Rape is mentioned as a source of information on prisoner rape, but there is no article about its history and struggles inside the prisons, which have led to some victories. Its strategic view and social practice would have been valuable to prison activists.

The inclusion of more activist essays would have taken this anthology forward to stimulate further creativity and strategy in a movement to confront corporate/military/state power. It is not enough to shake our heads at a capitalism which has now shed all but a few shreds of its democratic facade. This struggle continues to be critically important as the United States expands its police state and concentration camp empire from Pelican Bay and Florence to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to the detention camps at Guantanamo--the military supermax concentration camp.

Mark Dow's essay, "Secrecy, Power, Indefinite Detention," on the detention and treatment of immigrants, illuminates the role of incarceration as part of foreign and domestic social control policies. In 2002, 115,000 immigrants were deported. Currently, 21,000 immigrants are being detained. Convicted legal residents, even if they have no homeland, are being deported to other countries, or they remain in longterm detention, with little hope of release.