# 3.1 The prison industrial complex

Criminologists, politicians and media commentators interested in the role of prisons have tended to focus on how far prison ‘works’, and its role in the treatment and/or punishment of convicted criminals or those on remand. However, some criminologists have been involved in research and debates about the legitimacy of prisons, exploring their purported purposes, their ideological functions, and claims that they cause pain and suffering. This then suggests that a social harm approach to prisons could also be useful. A key debate relates to the idea that prisons are part of a wider industry of crime control and punishment, with a complex and wide-reaching network of organisations involved, including the state, private (for profit) companies, and charities and not-for-profit organisations. Angela Y. Davis (2003) refers to this as the ‘prison industrial complex’, as an industry consisting not just of prisons, but of a host of surveillance, crime control, punishment, and ‘correctional’ activities, organisations, and institutions. Figure 7 illustrates these activities and institutions within the prison industrial complex.

Figure 7 The complex relationships within the prison industrial complex.

The diagram of the prison industrial complex shows crime, the state and issues of harm as intimately connected. For example, the treatment by the state of convicted criminals in prisons can have a negative effect on the mental health of prisoners. The diagram also suggests that inequalities play a crucial role in the prison industrial complex, for example in relation to the way that poor education, unemployment, debt and racial profiling increase the chances of being incarcerated. Inequalities in power are also evident in this diagram for example in terms of the way that exclusion from politics limits the influence of marginalised groups who are more likely to be imprisoned.

However, what also stands out from the diagram, is the role of powerful non-state actors, such as those involved in the running of private prisons (or state-run prisons that outsource some of their work), the media, prison construction companies, investment banks and think tanks.

Multinational corporations and other non-state powerful actors have also had (and continue to have) roles in the New Orleans context (the site of the analysis of Hurricane Katrina), but in this section you will use concept of the prison industrial complex for further consideration of the relationship and debates about crime and harm, and the connections with inequality and power. However, in this section you will focus particularly on the role of powerful private corporations in relation to these, and to highlight the role of ‘the global’ in what might appear to be ‘local’ issues.

OpenLearn - Questioning crime: social harms and global issues
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