Chapter 1

The Origin of Complexes

The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is the collection of social
structures, systems, and policies-including institutional racism,
the War on Drugs, and mass incarceration-that work together
to confine and imprison more than 2 million American citizens.
The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other
"developed" nation in the world.
The PIC is a partnership that was nicknamed the "iron triangle"
in the 1996 Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission. 3 It
is a complicated and sometimes conspiratorial relationship between
the government, private industries, lobbyists, and politicians that
has been operating since the 1970s. Although reform efforts are
starting to gain ground, the effects and consequences of the Prison
Industrial Complex will be felt for many generations to come.

13
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History
The U.S. penal system wasn't always this way. From the beginning of
the nation's history (setting aside chattel slavery for the moment),
and through much of the 18th century, jails in America were 4
used
for individuals who were in debt and/ or awaiting trial. For the
most part, crime was deterred through debtor's jail, public lashings,
bondage, and capital punishment; the death penalty was doled
out for burglary and theft as well as murder. In the early days of
the republic, the threat of being banished from the country or
of being abandoned in the American wilderness was thought to
be effective enough at deterring the nation's crime. Throughout could be reformed or rehabilitated took central stage in the American
the 18th century as well, jails and punishment were strategically discourse on criminal justice. The nation's first prison systems
employed to manage criminal behavior. As the nation grew in size, were the structural results of that discourse-public conversations
demographics, and scope, however, the challenge of controlling that wrestled with ways that society might rehabilitate criminals,
crime became a central feature of public and political discourse. So viewed at the time as citizens who lacked discipline and had lost
much so, that political thinkers began to ponder if an open and free their way. The reliance on capital punishment and absence of many
society, like the fledgling United States, might in some ways facilitate other alternatives for managing serious criminal behavior in a civil
criminal behavior as opposed to curtailing it. manner created a broad consensus on the need for new methods and
In the early 19th century, therefore, the notion that criminals
new structures for the express purpose of housing and reforming
criminals.
The flurry of public debates, pamphlets, and newspaper
editorials soon focused on what kind of institution should be the
model for America's prison system. The earliest debates revolved
around two fairly similar prison systems planned for construction
in the 1820s-one in New York according to the "Auburn" model,
and the other in Philadelphia based on the "Pennsylvania" model. 5
The "Auburn" system versus the "Pennsylvania" system was one of
the most intensely debated political and social issues of the 19th-
century in America. "If the literature on Auburn versus Pennsylvania
never quite matched the outpouring of material on the pros and
cons of slavery," historians Norval Morris and David Rothman have
Written, "it came remarkably close." 6

Prison Models

The Auburn model, which originated at upstate Auburn State

Prison and then at Sing Sing along the Hudson River near New
York City, was based on the "congregate" system of incarceration. 7
The congregate system, unlike the Pennsylvania system, allowed
for some contact between prisoners. Because it did not require the
15
14
 ,..
isolation of all prisoners Although most criminal justice scholars think of the Prison
in a given institution, the Industrial Complex as a modern phenomenon, dating to the 1970s,
congregate (Auburn) system the birth of the penitentiary system sowed seeds of the PIC a
was more practical than century and a half before. The Eastern State Penitentiary was a
the Pennsylvania system. It state-of-the-art facility at the time of its opening. Its proponents
was also more affordable asserted the viability of the Pennsylvania system of incarceration
and, for the most part, even as the Auburn system continued to attract its own political
more manageable for the and ideological supporters. Although both systems relied on
institution. confinement, silence, and hard labor, the Pennsylvania system was
For these reasons, the based on solitary confinement as an exclusive form of incarceration
Auburn/congregate system and rehabilitation. 11 The Auburn system focused on unpaid (i.e.,
became a pervasive model slave) labor by groups of prisoners, but it did allow inmates to come
for prisons across the into contact with each other at certain times and locations, such as
United States. In the 1820s, gathering for meals. But in the Pennsylvanian prison, according to
Connecticut, Maryland, and theorist and prison historian Michel Foucault, "the only operations
Massachusetts built and ran of correction were the conscience and the silent architecture that
state prisons; Ohio, New confronted it." 12
Jersey, and Michigan added state prisons of their own in the 1830s;
and in the 1840s, Minnesota, Indiana, and Wisconsin also followed
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suit. 8 Nearly all of these facilities employed the Auburn model. .-,1:~
Despite the dominance of congregate incarceration, it raised ~-i,;,.\
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a number of logistical concerns for the early American carceral

state-such as disciplinary techniques, prison garb, and the mobility
of prisoners. All of these issues presented systemic challenges to
the nation's emerging prison system. 9 Although chain gangs and
guillotines were certainly cheaper than the huge superstructures that
were becoming features of modern American society, the leadership
class of the United States believed that the Auburn/congregation
system was an altruistic advance in the human project. Prison
reformers, by contrast, believed that efforts to construct a system
of penitentiaries across the nation not only would address problems "'
inside the institutions but could also solve problems outside the
penal system, in the society at large. "With no ironies intended,"
write Morris and Rothman, "they talked about the penitentiary as
serving as a model for the family and the school." 10 e,i \;

Dawn of the Penitentiary f "

And so, in 1829, Quakers and other reformers in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania, followed a new and different philosophy in opening
the Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP), occupying a full city block in .,
the heart of the city.

16 17
 .. 1111 ■ illi■ i!i..- ..
The architects of the world's first institutional prisons believed
in solitary confinement as a form of penitence. Isolation, they
In the early to mid -19th
century, the emphasis on
f .. -,-,~ i
r
contended, provided the space and time to reflect and consider God's solitary confinement and
judgment. Each cell in the ESP thus required prisoners to bow when
entering and exiting; each cell was equipped with a small window
sometimes referred to as "The Eye of God."
moral redemption embodied
in the Pennsylvania system
became a national and 1i
The Pennsylvania camp saw itself as purist, taking the idea of
reform through isolation to its logical conclusion. It separated
then global model for
incarceration. Hundreds of
prisons around the world 11 11111 ..
inmates from each other-to the point of placing hoods over
the heads of newcomers so that as they walked to their cells
came to be modeled after the
Eastern State Penitentiary.
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they would not see or be seen by anyone.13 This phenomenon-
the influence of the
In a contemporary context, with horror stories like that of Kalief Pennsylvania philosophy ... 111
Browder-the New York 16-year-old who was arrested on robbery on the development of
charges in 2010, held in solitary confinement for years without a
trial, and eventually committed suicide-the idea of inmate isolation
prisons around the world-
foreshadowed a sort of
"'I-II.I
as a viable form of state-sanctioned imprisonment has come under complex within the Prison
severe criticism. But more on that later. Industrial Complex itself. That is, political leaders, partnerships
between public and private enterprises, and the powerful influence
of the burgeoning institutional model on the development of
prisons, globally signaled a capacity to determine society's sense of
what prisons should do and be. The American prison model would
ultimately occupy a powerful space in the global social contract.
According to one critic of the prison/crime industry, Nils Christie,
contemporary "American criminology rules much of the world, their
theories rule much of the world, their theories on crime and crime
control exert enormous influence." 14
The central idea of the Pennsylvania system was that reforming
criminals in isolation was both possible and more useful to the
greater societal good than simply punishing and/or killing them.
The fact that this debate, with its deep philosophical questions
regarding the purpose of prisons, was situated in the very origins of
the American penal institution hints at some of the complexities of
the current system.
The Eastern State Penitentiary operated from 1829 until 1971.
Although the solitary penitent model failed by 1913, primarily
because of capacity limitations, the reputation of the United States
as a global leader in what Nils Christie defines as the "crime control
industry" was already firmly established. The United States has
remained a global leader in the building of prisons for nearly 200
years.

18 19
 ~

One of the most striking aspects of the American penitentiary

system, present in both the Auburn and Pennsylvania models but
most pronounced in the latter, was the pervasive and almost absolute
silence of the institutions. Inspired by the reflective nature of Quaker
meeting practices, the architects of the ESP believed in quiet as one
way to reform society's wrongdoers. For them, silence was golden.

State-of-the-Art Prisons

It's important to note here that ESP was considered state of the art
for its time-not just in terms of its awesome physical dimensions
(30-foot walls, 27-foot oak doors, and an 80-foot bell tower)-
but because it was an architectural and engineering wonder. The
construction of ESP began in 1821 and
was completed in 1829. It had running
water some four years before the
White House, considered essential to
preserving the solitude and silence of
each prisoner. The facility also featured
a basic heating system, an amenity
that many American citizens outside of
prison could not afford.
Such advances presaged some of
the ways that structural design and
technological enhancements would
continue to be a feature of the Prison
Industrial Complex. In other words,
20
 -,--1,~
the faith that early American citizens placed ( or misplaced, as
it were) in the prison or penitentiary system was reflected in the
nation's ideological, political, social, and financial investments in
the institution itself. These investments often obscured Americans'
-~
-~
ability to see just how horrific the prison system was in the 19th
century, much as our current investments in the crime-control
industry may be preventing us from seeing how horrific the
prison system continues to be in the 21st century. Put another
way, the amazing structure that the ESP became represented a
socioeconomic and political symbol of the national commitment to
using punishment as a means of reform and of making our wayward
citizens penitent.
Prison design has become a permanently valuable aspect of the
ongoing movement to construct prisons. According to journalist
David Kidd,

the design feature [of the ESP] that got the most
attention was the eel/blocks. Seven wings radiated
out from a central open rotunda, allowing one guard
to oversee the entire prison from a single spot. Today
more than 300 prisons worldwide have a similar design,

1.I
......
directly attributable to Eastern State's influence. 15

Michel Foucault famously referred to this type of institutional

__ 1111
building a panopticon. A structure that allowed just one guard to
keep watch over hundreds of prisoner, the panopticon was an early
__

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liiii
form of surveillance that anticipated the role that technological
surveillance plays in society today.

What is a Complex?
~
The phrase "industrial complex" was coined in a different context and
some years before the rise of the PIC. It was first used in reference
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to the unchecked growth of the national defense budget and the ~
concomitant privatization (and outsourcing) of military contracts. ~
President Dwight Eisenhower, the great military leader of World
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War II, urged caution against the "military-industrial complex" in
his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961. "We have I ~ :::; ; ;. . ...:
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been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast / • -.
proportions," Eisenhower warned. "In the councils of government,"
he went on,

22
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we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted

influ ence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let
the weig ht of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic processes.

For President Eisenhower, the military-industrial complex loomed

large in the political, economic, and social future of America. The
growing interface between privatization, militarization, and the
prospect of permanent warfare was a serious concern.
* * *
The term "prison industrial complex" entered the public
discourse byway of Mike Davis's article in The Nation on February 20,
1995, titled "Hell Factories in the Field: A Prison-Industrial Complex."
The "hell factories" referred to in that groundbreaking article were
the 16 prisons built over the course of the previous decade in the
state of California. The term "field" refers both to the rural regions of
the state that were ideal locations for the development of California's
PIC and to Davis's recognition of the extraordinary growth-and
capacity for continued growth-of the complex itself.
That expansion of the PIC, according to activist-scholar Angela
Davis (no relation to Mike), had "already begun in the 1990s to

24
 The Uncontrollable Monster

In order to understand how this uncontrollable monster came into

prominence during the latter half of the 20th century, we need to
look at several of the PI C's fundamental driving forces. Some of these
will be briefly detailed here, while others, warranting more time and
attention, will be taken up in subsequent chapters.
The fear of crime, especially violent crime, has tremendous
political and economic capital in the United States. Even though
violent crime has dropped precipitously and consistently since the
1990s-the same decade that expanded the modern-day Prison
Industrial Complex-media reporting of violent crime has continued
to increase, by some estimates five-fold or 500 percent since the
1990s. More importantly, surveys showed, the American people
believed that crime was still a major problem even as criminal
activity continued to decline in the last days of the millennium. 18
This suggests a critical phenomenon from a political perspective.
If citizens' concerns about crime can be stoked by the media, and
if those concerns persist despite falling crime rates, then political
leaders will always find incentives for being "tough on crime."
Beyond the political efficacy of exploiting constituents' fears for the
purpose of eliciting votes, an inordinate public fear of crime creates
an environment that forecloses progress and cultivates a political
system vulnerable to corruption. Since "politicians in both parties
rival agribusiness and land development as a major economic and and all levels of government have used fear of crime to generate
political force." 16 If the PIC in a state as large as California-often votes," how can we be sure that the peoples' political interests are
regarded as a bellwether of social change for the rest of the nation- being served by decisions (or deals) made by political leaders when
was showing signs of the kind of influence over the political economy it comes to addressing the problems of crime in our society? 19
that agriculture or "agribusiness" had already established, then in
many ways the writing was on the wall. \II
Like the military-industrial complex and agribusiness,
multibillion-dollar industries subsidized by the U.S. government, the
PIC soon had its own lobbyists, direct connections to the captains of
industry, and elected political leaders at every level of government
with interests across multiple private industries. As Mike Davis
wrote in "Hell Factories;' the PIC

has become a monster that threatens to overpower and

devour its creators, and its uncontrollable growth ought
to rattle a national consciousness now complacent at the
thought of a permanent prison class.17

27
26
 ...
If the fear of crime creates tremendous political capital, then
the industry of crime control engenders tremendous monetary
capital. At the dawn of the PIC, approximately $100 billion was
being spent on law enforcement annually in the United States. 20
According to President Barack Obama in his July 2015 speech on
mass incarceration speech, the nation at that time was spending
$80 billion a year to lead the world in incarceration. This does
not even include the money spent on private security ($65 billion
annually) or the web of corporate tentacles that extend from the PIC
into the economy at large-such as food services, construction, and
telephone/wireless services.

MIC Meets PIC

One of the less visible but more egregious examples of the "industry"
aspect of the PIC is the interface between military technologies and
the crime-control industry itself-where the MIC and PIC meet. This
intersection highlights some of the most compelling arguments for
dismantling or comprehensively overhauling the PIC.
While the American public and its local communities remain
highly interested and heavily invested in public safety, private
industries are mostly concerned with profits and "bottom lines." In
"Fear, Politics, and The Prison Industrial Complex," a section from
the 1996 report of the National Criminal Justice Commission, the
disconnection between public safety and private interests comes into
sharp focus. At national conventions and trade shows, companies
Military technology is not the only industry that profits from the
that produce military technology for U.S. armed forces during times
PIC. Any number of other private-sector concerns provide services
of war now market their products to the PIC. All sorts of surveillance
to the PIC, including but not limited to food services, transportation
technology-listening and viewing devices, lethal and nonlethal
services, medical services, waste management, drug testing/
weapons, and all sorts of innovative gear and equipment-are on
treatment, and one of the most exploitative industries profiting from
display and pitched to the American prison industries.
the system: cell phone service. Prisons in America are big business,
and private industry realized this three decades ago.
Consider also the fact that any economic interaction between the
MIC and the PIC, or between consumer product/service corporations
and the PIC, creates enormous opportunity for employment. In the
early 1990s, the PICemployedmorethan 500,000 correctional officers
and other correctional facility personnel-a significant portion of the
total U.S. workforce. Considered in the context of the wide-ranging
employment opportunities and contract work associated with the
PIC, the economic depth and breadth of the complex becomes clear
and compelling. In many communities, especially rural ones, the

29
 possibility of building for about 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's
and operating a prison in prison population. At the height of the PIC in 2006, the United States
the region is an economic incarcerated some 2.5 million people-more than the population of
offer that political such major cities as Dallas, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.
leaders cannot refuse.
The entire economy of From School to Prison
certain communities
revolves around a local The slight decline from 2.5 million to 2.2 million incarcerated in
manifestation of the PIC. recent years is not from lack of trying. One feature of the Prison
Industrial Complex is the "school-to-prison pipeline," a phrase
The Specter of Prisons that captured the unfortunate correlations between the social,
educational, and financial erosion of the nation's public education
In the early 21st century, system and the growth of the PIC. What happens when the profit
the PIC is a prominent motives of the PIC work in concert with the persistent, systemic
feature of the world in undervaluation of public education?
which we live. In their Consider the effects of school closings in cities like Chicago,
book Beyond the Prison New York, and Philadelphia. In 2010-2011, nearly 100 public school
Industrial Complex closings in those three cities impacted between 82% and 94% of
(2013), Kevin Wehr and low-income students. In
Elyshia Aseltine warn Philly and Chicago, black
that "[t]he specter of the students were especially
prison is all around: police cars, surveillance cameras, signs warning hard hit-81 % and 88%,
that shoplifters will be prosecuted." 21 The visible and tangible signs respectively. 23 Statistics and
of the Prison Industrial Complex are ubiquitous. For Wehr and news accounts of a public
Aseltine, these signs declare an implied "or else" that threatens school closing cannot begin
incarceration at multiple points and places throughout American to convey the dramatic
society-especially where poor people of color live and move. impact on a neighborhood
Those threats represent a social failing of sorts, given that or community. At their best,
"[w]e have known since the 1830s that prisons do not reduce public school buildings are
crime." 22 Yet our reliance on the Prison Industrial Complex continues institutional outposts of
to defy social science logic and the data that continues to undermine municipal support in urban
the basic premises of incarceration: deterrence and rehabilitation. deserts overwrought by
What the PIC is best at is retribution, sometimes in the form of concentrated poverty.
sentences and diminished quality of life that expose the state as a The closing of public
biased, vengeful actor against humanity. schools, especially in the
The contemporary PIC, then, is very much a consequence of face of increased funding
neoliberalism and global capitalism-that is, a complex designed to for jails and prisons, puts
serve an economic system that must account for expanding income into stark relief the value
inequality and unemployment. In the United States, the PIC accounts judgments of American
for such shifts in the political economy with explicit and implicit society with regard to
biases leveraged against poor people, women, and people of color. education and incarceration.
And the effects have been devastating. The United States accounts While it cost approximately
30
31
 $11,000 a year to educate a young person in the United States today,
it costs about $90,000 to house one of them in the PIC. During the
20-year period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, PIC funding
increased 530% more than educational funding. Data such as these,
and the day-to-day realities that underlie them, reveal the irrational
and discriminatory nature of the "tough on crime" ethos that pro-
prison advocates use to hide or obscure the actual issues that drive
the PIC. The expansion of the prison system occurs over and above
any serious political consideration of the complex's deleterious and
racially disparate consequences on the poor and mentally ill.
The facts do not overstate the profitability of America's $80
billion Prison Industrial Complex. Sadly, profitability in the prison
industries contaminates the American criminal justice system.
In their book Justice While Black (2014), Robbin Shipp and Nick
Chiles point to particularly egregious misuses of the criminal justice
system for profit and discriminatory carceral practices.

In Wilkes-Barre, PA two judges pleaded guilty in 2009 to

accepting 2.6 million in bribes in exchange for sending
juvenile defendants to local, privately run facilities,
regardless of whether they were guilty or innocent or
how severe their supposed crimes were. 24

When judges collude with private facilities to access taxpayer

dollars for their own personal profit, the system's complex nature
and critical consequences become all the more clear. And the Wilkes-
Barre model of the complex is not unique. In municipalities like Meridian, MS, and Ferguson, MO, the organized and sometimes
illegal interface between the government, private industry, and law
enforcement is one of the most effective forms of racial discrimination
since the transatlantic slave trade.
Understanding the long history of prisons and the full definition
of the Prison Industrial Complex should be a required feature of
public education in America. Given the sad correlation between
incarceration and lack of education, teaching about the PIC in public
schools might demonstrate to students both the value of educational
attainment (by any means necessary) and the pitfalls of the criminal
justice system in the 21st century. Equity, equality, and equal justice
under the law are the predicates for U.S. citizenship without which
we cannot become civically engaged in the political system. Given
the ways that public education and criminal justice are linked in our
nation, knowledge about the PIC might actually prevent some of our
citizens from becoming subject to its often arbitrary and confining
forces.
32
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 Chapter 2

Race and the Persistence of

Law-and-Order Ideology
Standing in one of several dungeons in Cape Coast Castle, located on
the GulfofGuinea in Ghana, West Africa, a deeper understanding of the
prehistoric nature of the role ofracism in the world's prison systems
becomes painfully apparent. Race,
racism, and the lives of Africans
and their diasporic descendants
have been features of the earliest
forms of what we refer to as the
Prison Industrial Complex in the
modern era.

Where to Begin?

Our historical concept of slavery

often frames America as the brutal
point of origin of the bondage,
confinement, and forced labor
that characterized the institution
beginning in the 17th century.
Some students, scholars, and
historians situate that point of
origin in the Middle Passage-the
brutal journey across the Atlantic
Ocean that millions of enslaved
Africans, chained, confined, and
tortured in the cramped hulls of
transatlantic slave ships, were
forced to endure. But before
bondage, confinement, and
force labor, before the genocidal ~
journey of the Middle Passage,
native Africans were detained, tortured, branded, and otherwise
"processed" in fantastic colonial complexes-often referred to as
"slave castles" - along the coast of western Africa.
Approximately 40% of all enslaved Africans who were

35