[Image by Keith Negley via NY Times]
By Holly Barrow
Following the tragic murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on 25th May, the world has erupted into protest to demand an end to the vicious racism which continues to infiltrate society. At the forefront of this crucial public discourse on race lies the criminal justice system as it has disproportionately targeted and traumatized BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) communities for decades.
Systemic racism and inequality is intrinsic to law enforcement in the US, with mass incarceration riddled with racial disparities. From the thirteenth amendment loophole to the War on Drugs, Black communities have suffered exponentially under this facade of ‘justice’, with families torn apart as a result. The War on Drugs is in fact one of the plainest and most brazen examples of heavily racialized laws borne out of a desire to incriminate Black communities. When looking at initial federal sentences for crack cocaine offenses, such inequalities within law enforcement become strikingly clear: conviction for crack selling - more heavily sold and used by people of color — resulted in a sentence 100 times more severe than selling the same amount of powder cocaine — more heavily sold and used by white people.
This is no coincidence and just one example of a system patently stacked against low-income, Black communities. We need only look at some key statistics to recognize how deeply this goes: African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested, are more likely to be convicted and are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences. Beyond this, African American adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated as white adults.
In light of such disproportionate arrest and convictions of Black people in the US, dismantling the current prison system - particularly the prison-industrial complex - is key in the fight against racism. The prison-industrial complex describes the overlapping interests of government and industry; essentially, it refers to the corruption at the heart of the criminal justice system in the use of prisons as a mechanism for profit.
This is a system that abolitionists and activists have been attempting to eradicate for decades as it has become increasingly clear over the years that there is a very real and dangerous incentive to incarcerate human beings. With the rise of for-profit prison systems has come further exploitation of predominantly African-American men and other ethnic minorities. With regards to class, this system additionally hurts low-income citizens at a significantly higher rate, with many recognizing the harrowing reality that, in the US, poverty is often treated as a crime.
Poor and minority defendants are typically unable to access the same level of protection and defense as their wealthier counterparts. Similarly, the state recognizes the likelihood of their inability to afford bail, with over 10 million Americans in prison as they await trial on low-level misdemeanors or violations simply because they cannot afford the bail set for them. This keeps prisons filled; a key proponent of the prison-industrial complex.
With police officers incentivized to make arrests as they are aware that police departments will not be funded adequately if there is no motive to do so, and billion-dollar corporations having stakes in the private prison system - from technology such as tagging to hospitality for inmates - incarceration has become a means to generate wealth and boost local economies. This comes at the expense of the most marginalized groups, namely poor people of color.
Regrettably, this line between ‘justice’, ‘protection’ and corporate interest is becoming comparably distorted across immigration removal centers. And again, it is BIPOC who largely fall victim to this. Detention, surveillance and border wall construction have all become big business, with approximately two-thirds of all detainees being held in for-profit facilities. Tech companies have thrived off of tracking migrants, with software company Palantir holding a $38 million contract with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
To provide further insight into just how money-oriented the detention of predominantly vulnerable individuals - such as asylum seekers - has become, we can observe the distressing rise in shares in the largest prison company in the world. Shares in CoreCivic — which runs both private prison facilities and detention centers — spiralled by 40% when Trump was elected as president. This came following his promises to deport thousands and demonstrates a clear recognition that this would see private, for-profit immigration detention facilities boom.
To deny the concerning correlation between incarceration - both within prisons and detention facilities - and investment suggests willful ignorance. The treatment of prisons and detention facilities as money-making machines is of detriment to democracy and makes a mockery of those who hail America as the ‘land of the free.’
In fighting systemic racism, we cannot neglect to tackle the prison-industrial complex. Its roots and very mechanisms are rooted in the oppression of the most marginalized.
Holly Barrow is a political correspondent for the Immigration Advice Service; an organization of immigration lawyers based in the UK and the US
