Prisons Under Capitalism are Concentration Camps for the Poor

The brutalities of capitalism make the lives of the working class difficult to live.

Marxists have come to understand that the impoverished community is often the most crime stricken, because conditions are more difficult for working people. So much so that workers act desperately to live. Criminal acts include robbing stores, selling drugs, getting involved with or forming gangs to protect drug dealing and murder. Thus, as conditions get worse for the poor, crime also rises. Because of these unchanging conditions, working people under capitalist society often remain poor.

Because the working poor fight to live, and because crime is so dominant in impoverished communities, prisons have been filled poor people for the most part. This however does not exclude the fact that two thirds of the prison population is black. As a matter of fact, it adds to the evidence that the prison in the USA is an extension of slavery. Ever since slavery, the black community in America has been left with nothing, and stuck in a constant chain of poverty, due to the over 200+ years of slavery and segregation. Black people have been excluded from both high wage paying jobs, and/or jobs in general. Today this is common with employment discrimination, where black people can go without work for weeks at a time. Plus given the fact that America’s police force, has been raised in a racist culture, targeting impoverished communities that are predominantly Black.

Given this subject of class repression, instead of changing the conditions to end poverty, the root of the issue of crime rates, we fight the crime itself, and put millions of impoverished people behind bars. Thus, prisons under capitalism are concentration camps for the poor.

American prisons are pure hell for the inmates. Not only are men and women subjected to “the hole” if they “misbehave,” but they are placed in small cells, often made of solid block, with no air conditioning. This can make it difficult to live if the prison is in a tropical or desert region, Adelanto, California for example. During summer, when the temperature is close to 100 degrees or higher outside, it is much hotter inside the prison walls. Worse still is the fact that most prisons operated in the United States are operated under contract with the private security companies like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Inmates are assigned to hard labor with little to no pay, almost mirroring conditions under slavery. This makes sense only because there is an exception in the 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States that allows conditions of slavery if it is punishment for a crime.

The 13th amendment says as follows:

“Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

When it comes to the prison industrial complex, the terminology we Marxists use to describe lockup, it has been like a golden ticket for the Wall Street bankers.

“They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All their workers are full-time, and are never late or absent because of family problems. Moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.”

“The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”

-www.globalresearch.ca

Not only does inmates produce profit for the greedy vultures of Wall Street, but moreover the best way to profit off those desperate to leave prison, bail bonds. Bail bonds are a severe form of profiteering from incarceration. Desperate people who can bail themselves out of jail, do so because of the conditions of incarceration are so extreme. It takes the desperate and exploits money out of them.

The poor have been filling the prisons while the rich and members of the state apparatus have avoided jail for crimes they have committed. Our own President, Donald Trump is the best example, but there are others. Remember the rich kid, Ethan Couch? He killed 4 innocent people while driving drunk. He got rehab instead of prison. However, impoverished people who get caught driving drunk, are arrested and put in jail. And if they end up killing someone during their drunken driving spree, they get charged with manslaughter, and rightly so. Remember the rich kid from Stanford, Brock Turner, who raped an unconscious woman on campus? He got 6 months jail time, He was released after 3 months for “good behavior.” The usual time convicted rapists serve ranges from 3 to 8 years and a lifetime listing on the sex offender registry, which affects future employment and housing.

The rich have dodged prison and jail with ease while poor people are left to rot, just like the “patriotic” Americans George Bush, Dick Cheney and others who purchased their way out of serving in the armed forces, while telling poor people to go and die for their nation. Prisons under capitalism are concentration camps for the poor, and it is our job as Marxists to fight for abolishing these bastard institutions, that have been utilized to oppress workers; and put in place prisons for the reactionary capitalists, and their reactionary lapdogs. Like the USSR did with gulags, we must build institutions that can be used to secure the dictatorship of the proletariat, by suppressing the bourgeoisie, and their reactionary forces (fascism, white nationalism, monarchists, etc.)