The Prison Industrial Complex (Suckers-R-Us)

Everything in America is an industry.  Food, airlines, clothing, cosmetics, transportation, media, entertainment, sex, tobacco, travel – you name it. Anything that you can produce or acquire, market and sell, can grow into an industry.  It just has to be made appealing to the public, produce jobs and generate revenue.  It’s absolutely what you’d expect from a capitalistic society.  In the last 45 years politicians and lawmakers, along with business and community leaders, have done just that with state prison systems throughout the country.  Care to guess what the main product is?  It’s no big secret.  It’s African Americans.  

While the New York State prison system is the specific focus here, I have it on good statistical authority that what’s said here reflects the nature and operational philosophy of prison systems across America, with only slight variations.  One thing’s for sure: the prison industry, unlike most other American industries, is not one where we are under-represented.  Now why is that?   It’s a far cry from the prison movies I watched as a child where all of the prisoners were white.  Or was I just tuned in to one of the industries (TV/Movies) where we were under-represented?

 Throughout the 60’s and 70’s many communities in New York State staunchly objected to any plans by the state to build new prisons in their areas.  Fears of all kinds abounded – from mass prisoner escapes to the erosion of property values – and prompted what came to be the standard response to any such proposal: “not in my backyard.”  Fast forward to the 80’s and 90’s and you find some of these same communities competing with one another to secure a prison in their town.  Even rural communities, overlooked for lack of infrastructure and resources to support a prison, put together very ambitious proposals to land prisons for their areas.  In fact, rural areas have been more successful than higher populated areas in and around New York City.  The upper areas of eastern, central and western New York are prison bonanzas with no shortage of inmates in sight.

In the last 45 years New York State prisons have grown more than 150% from roughly 27 facilities in 1973 to 70 in 2003 and has since trailed of to 52 prisons in 2021.  What happened during this span of time to quiet those voices of opposition?  Why are all of these prisons overwhelmingly populated by African Americans?  How relevant is it that “not in my backyard” was mostly a rural/suburban outcry or that over 90% of new prisons reside in Republican counties?  These and other sociopolitical questions certainly deserve their fair share of scrutiny.  But the main concern of Forty Million And A Tool is our participation, wittingly and unwittingly, in this madness.

Without African Americans in New York State prisons the state could close more than two thirds of its number of prisons.  Then take away the Hispanic population and the state can scale down to about five or ten prisons.  Now wouldn’t that be a desirable scenario?  Well, that depends on who you ask and how you phrase the question.  For instance, if you were to ask corrections officers would they be happy to be out of work because crime in urban centers has virtually ceased, they probably would say they’d rather be working no matter what the crime rate is in urban centers – and that, only after they finish laughing in your face.  You see, running state prisons has become a family business for rural whites who would otherwise be planting corn and shoveling shit, but the flip side of that coin is that we’ve made crime and hustling our family business.  So they treat us like the animals we act like and, like slavery, provide us with the bare minimum to keep us alive and able to continue being the driving force of their industry.                                                   

Among the many justifications we have for living lives of crime, or dippin’ and dabbin’ in criminal activity, the biggest one is “I gotta feed my family.”  It sounds real noble; after all, who can fault a man or woman for doing what they have to do to feed their family?  Others are: “I can’t find a job,” “this is all I know,” “I gotta get mines,” and, of course, the ever popular “I’m not working for the white man.”  So we go about creating little criminal enterprises in the ‘hood without regard for the larger society’s laws and rules.  It’s fair to acknowledge here the indisputable fact of poverty and how that alone can force one to become very creative and resourceful, even criminal – but not necessarily criminal.  I will also interject here: if African Americans had their birthright of wealth, poverty wouldn’t be wearing the face of African Americans. Consequently, the many ignorant justifications for our criminality would disappear as well.  But for those of us who’ve traveled the criminal route and uttered the above justifications, we need to ask ourselves one question: whose family are we really feeding in the larger scheme of things?

First the media headlines then the blank stares as we pass through the criminal justice system.  Stares from people that fear and abhor us,  yet rely on us for their daily bread.  Many of them can find jobs elsewhere, but most can’t. That’s not the concern of Forty Million And A Tool.  If every one of them found themselves out of a job because African Americans refrained from criminal activity that would be fine with me.  Perhaps many will re-embark upon those lofty career aspirations they put aside to work in the prison industrial complex.  What is of concern to us is the confidence these prison industry workers have in their relative job security based on their belief that we will continue to flood the criminal justice system.  I believe this helps embolden correction officers to treat prisoners any way they please, talk to prisoners in any vile manner and, in many cases, totally disregard one’s very humanity.  Certainly these things can’t happen if we didn’t show up, but then the jobs dry up also.  That’s the reality that doesn’t seem to resonate on both sides of the equation, yet in any other workplace where the ones who create the jobs are treated anywhere near how prisoners are treated, heads would roll.  You don’t dare disrespect those who provide your livelihood, but because we disrespect ourselves in the process of creating these jobs that message is lost.

When we kill each other in the many ways we do and violate others of the society with mayhem and predatory behavior we need to be removed, but we also need healing and wholeness.  Criminal justice systems across the country have tried to strike this balance for years with varying degrees of success and failure.  Influenced by a number of factors, however, this pursuit can be best characterized as a twenty year alternating shift of emphasis from programs to security and vice versa.  What prisoners eventually realize is that their rehabilitation lies solely in their own hands and whatever support system they can muster.  Everything becomes supremely individualized (as it should be on many levels), but leaves prisoners nowadays oblivious to the power they have as a group to eliminate the conditions that impact them unjustly.  They don’t understand their roles as job creators and are simply clueless as to what their very existence in state prisons bring to a given area in jobs, economic activity and federal dollars.  For example, in New York most state prisoners come from the five boroughs, but are on the census count of  several upstate rural counties, resulting in yet another way we feed families other than our own with this criminal bullshit.                                                        

At the current rate prison personnel can easily plan for a 30 year retirement, maybe more.  This is a direct result of the kind of time African Americans are being sentenced to and in many cases pleading out to.  I remember in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s the outcry that black life wasn’t as valued as white life in terms of crime and interfacing with the criminal justice system.  The cases prompting these charges usually were a policeman shooting a black man or child and the meteoric rise in black on black crime.  In one scenario there’d be no prosecution; in the other only half-hearted investigations.  Whenever convictions were secured the average sentence for the murder of someone black was around 7 years.  Perhaps it’s just coincidental, but parallel with the prison building boom of the 80’s so has the value of black life soared, particularly if we were to use the criminal justice system as a barometer.  Today, 25 to life is handed out like health workers hand out condoms, especially to black defendants who murder other black people.  By and large, policeman who kill black men or boys still do not get prosecuted.  What we’re seeing with the trial of Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd is an anomaly.

Every political season for the last 50 years bombarded us with “tough on crime” speeches, producing everything from Rockefeller drug laws to Project Exile, to address criminal behavior.  Never any speeches or pledges to stamp out crime itself.  No politician would dare threaten an industry that has now become vital to so many and at the same time render themselves laughingstocks.  Oh yes, black life has become very valuable; just ask all the yokels who can now afford boats, new pick up trucks and tractors.

We at Forty Million And A Tool are under no illusion that we can dismantle the prison industrial complex in America.  With over 300 million people in the country there are bound to be enough breaking of laws to land many in jail.  We simply wish to extract a mere 40 million of that number from all aspects of incarceration.  Where African Americans are the majority prison population our goal is to shut ’em down.  If this signals to some a threat to their careers so be it.  Shut ’em down from within and without is the strategy we will advocate and support.  To shut ’em down from without simply requires that we stop entering the criminal justice system as defendants, a not so simple task and certainly not an overnight proposition, but doable over time.  I guarantee you, my people, that if we start now to take our birthright of wealth from the American economy, we will be effectively removed from the criminal justice system within 50 years.  All who will remain incarcerated are those currently sentenced to ridiculous amounts of time (provided we can’t get ’em out) and lost causes.

Shuttin’ ’em down from within will vary from state to state, but the basic principles are the same.  In New York State the target can be summed up in one word: CORCRAFT!  Corcraft is the corporate entity that governs prison industry in all the state’s prisons.  Everything from license plates and metal products to furniture and clothing, this is an industry unto itself within the overall prison system driven by prisoner labor at slave wages.  Shuttin’ down Corcraft is the way to force prison officials to abolish inhumane conditions, repressive tactics and predatory practices that prisoners and their families are subject to daily.  With civilized perseverance and coordinated outside support prisons can truly be institutions of learning and redemption.  Forty Million And A Tool will join with existing groups to address prison reform, as African Americans are imprisoned so disproportionately in America.  The acquisition and enjoyment of one’s birthright is not limited to those of us who have our physical liberty.  Many of our people will languish in prisons all across the country for years to come; they might as well do it with dignity, respect and relative comfort as they contemplate the error of their ways and hopefully salvage what they can of their lives.                                                   

With all due respect to victims of crime and their families , once the judge imposes a lawful sentence, that should be their justice as far as defendants are concerned.   They have no right to dictate the manner of treatment a convicted person receives once behind bars, yet that is precisely what lawmakers have caved in to over the last 40 years.  Victims and/or families have gone from a mere statement in open court at sentencing to what a prisoner can and can’t have or what a prisoner can and cannot do – right on up to input at a prisoner’s parole hearing.  This capitulation by state governments and prison officials, coupled with the proliferation of gang warfare, will ultimately lead to another Attica-like situation.  Nonetheless, to allow victims or victim advocate groups to ride shotgun over a prisoners’ day to day incarceration, picking and choosing what activities they would or would not have them participate in, is not closure.  It certainly isn’t healing.  It’s reckless and unbridled bloodthirstiness rammed down the throats of cowardly lawmakers who just want to advance their careers.  It’s a sad thing to see, for as these repressive, revenge-filled and retaliatory measures will not keep most prisoners in prison they will ensure that victims remain victims.  Though it will take a number years to effectively confront the prison industrial complex,  let them now be placed on notice that a change is gonna come.  And that change will start with African Americans recognizing their sucker status in the criminal justice system and beginning the mass exodus out of the prison industrial complex.