Punishment and Inequality in America

"The most compelling documentation of the character and consequences of the cataclysmic rise of mass imprisonment in the USA over the past three decades. Western spells out its adverse effects for black and Hispanic communities in particular – four decades ago, they were 30 per cent of the prison population, now they constitute 70 per cent. ‘The basic brute fact of incarceration in the new era of mass imprisonment is that African-Americans are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than whites… The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that in 2004 over 12 per cent of black men aged 25-29 were behind bars, in prison or jail.’ (p3) Over 2.3 million US citizens, mostly male, are in prison on any one day, a figure so huge it conceals substantial levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment by taking them out of the frame. In reality it deepens inequality by further diminishing the life chances of the most disadvantaged. Another study, by Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen (‘Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy’, 2006), documents the disenfranchisement of several million prisoners and ex-prisoners, a factor of increasing importance electorally. George Bush could hardly have become President in 2000 without the impact of felon disenfranchisement laws in Florida which, even on the most conservative estimates, took thousands more votes from Democratic than from Republican candidates. Former prisoners are not allowed to vote for five years after their release. This is not the case in most of Europe and Britain is under enormous pressure to comply. All this means that the whole of international politics is influenced by America’s penal policy – that is, Bush got in, Gore didn’t. I think people were horrified by the chaotic response to the flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But McCain probably would have got in if the financial collapse hadn’t happened before the election. Obama is now picking up the flak for a situation he, in fact, inherited. In the US the impact of mass incarceration on black communities is in effect to roll back many of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1960s on. Supermax prisons now hold over 20,000 prisoners in conditions of inhumane isolation. Guard labour is an increasing factor in electoral terms to maintain mass imprisonment levels. The prison-industrial complex is now a significant factor in political economy in that the prison staff unions lobby to keep the numbers incarcerated high. The costs of prison have bitten deeply into education, health and welfare budgets. Nor is there a ‘happy ending’ in terms of crime reduction, which Western estimates accounts for only ten per cent of the fall in crime rates since the early 1990s. The experience of Canada bears this out – Canadian prison numbers have remained stable for two decades, but trends in lethal violence closely mirror those of the USA, though at a much lower rate. The awesome inference is that US falls in crime could have been achieved without hyper-incarceration and the damage it has wreaked on democracy in America. In Britain our prison population is a 17th as high as in the US and we are at the upper end of the European standard."