The Prison Industrial Complex in the Evolution of Slavery

Bernell Wesley

Professor C. Presley

AAS/ANTH 3120

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December 16, 2013

“Many think we abolished slavery,

but it survived in grotesque forms.

Antebellum slavery first relapsed into

brutal convict leasing system and much

later into what we have today: state

slavery through mass incarceration.”

John Dewar Gleissner

Introduction

Shortly after the first African slaves became a reality in the

United States of America Euro-American stakeholders began working

diligently to protect their human property through creating laws which

became known as “slave codes”1 to their advantage in order to insure

that Chattel Slavery would not only survive but would continually

evolve as an industry, whether expressed or not. Slavery is alive and

well. Crime is the connection that makes modern slavery legal but

infinitely more profitable. Evidence will confirm that slavery is in a

constant state of evolution and is inextricably linked to the ideology

of Free Enterprise. The Free Market Economic System, the Private

Enterprise model or Free Enterprise, it can be argued, is founded on

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the slave industry model which was founded on maximizing profits with

least expenditures and overhead.

The 13th. Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865 which

symbolically abolished slavery on paper but allowed a glowing

exception encoded in these words: “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, nor

any place subject to their jurisdiction”. The implication of these

words is clear, a duly convicted criminal forfeits all legal rights

and is essentially a slave.2 Was this wording intentional? Did the

framers of this grand document express it in such a way as to leave it

open to diverse interpretations? Consensual racism was a part of the

reality of most Euro-Americans of that era

and Abraham Lincoln was no exception.3 It is extremely interesting how

religion, historically, is tied to human bondage. The Romans made

Christianity the state religion, it can be argued because of its

benefits in controlling political unrest in its sprawling empire.

The teachings of Jesus on humility, obeying the authorities, giving

unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar and loving one’s enemies was an

asset to the Roman authorities plagued by constant revolts in its

empire, especially from the Jews.4 The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was

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successful in part because of the missionary religious pretext of

Christianity. Religion set the moral basis for the masses of everyday

Europeans who were made to believe that they were “superior” and took

upon themselves the burden of civilizing Africans.

The principal components of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

were free trade and Christianity. Slavery, it can be argued, was the

world’s first free enterprise economic system. The supply and demand

of European goods and African bodies was central to the partnership

cultivated between European enslavers and African monarchs.

Christianity was not only used to justify slavery but later it was

used as a weapon of fear and intimidation in order to maintain control

of the enslaved. Missionaries as well as slave owners relied heavily

on special scriptures that referenced the relationship between master

and slave.5 Today these two main components of previous chattel

enslavement are assisted by a zero tolerance educational system,

commonly called the School to Prison Pipeline, marketing, popular

culture

especially Hip-Hop music and film, professional sports and a political

machine that ties crime to business through special interests.

The world can thank the Quakers for popularizing the concept

of “penitentiary”.6 The prison as a permanent place of punishment did

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not exist until the eighteenth century and when it did appear it was

ensconced in as much Biblical morality as was slavery. Even now “new

age” slavery has broken itself off and like the mythological creature

the Hydra it has grown two distinct yet related heads commonly

referred to as “human trafficking”7 and the Prison Industrial Complex

both of which are entrapped in religious morality, race, and

ambiguous laws that make it hard to protect those who become victims

or criminals.

Components of Modern Slavery

The components of modern slavery like its predecessor the

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade serves a twofold purpose, to stimulate

trade within the free market economic system and maximize profits at

all costs for its investors. However, today’s slavery is infinitely

more sinister and sophisticated than its predecessor. The first

component is the public education system that operates within a

modified “zero-tolerance” policies War on Drugs matrix or three

strikes laws. Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th. President of the

United States took his cue of using crime as a political tool from a

senator from Arizona named Barry Goldwater, the first to use “crime

as a presidential campaign issue in 1964”.8 In a 1968 poll the mostly

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white respondents overwhelmingly rallied to Nixon’s war against

“communists” and “Negroes who start riots”.9

In order to make the connection between the “political

economy of crime” and its insidious relationship to the School-to-

Prison-Pipeline, the Prison Industrial Complex and the constant

evolution of slavery requires being able to see and understand that

the foundation of slavery, free enterprise is still very much intact.

Also, understanding the language of corporate violence, bi-

partisanship, and deregulation in controlling supply and demand at all

costs in order to maximize profits is essential. Evidence compiled by

the American Civil Liberties Union, Dignity in Schools Campaign, UCLA

Civil Rights Project, the Vera Institute of Justice and many others

all attest to the relationship between failing schools, juvenile

justice and “test based accountability” in the School to Prison

Pipeline as being essential to a healthy private prison industry.

Recently two former federal juvenile judges were

convicted for their part in a School-to-Prison-Pipeline scam that took

place in Scranton, Pa. in 2009. These two criminals were found

guilty of wire and income tax fraud “for taking more than $2.6 million

in kickbacks” for sending juveniles to private prisons. In six years

the two had sentenced more than 5,000 youth in this School-to- Prison

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Pipeline scheme.10 This type of business is happening all over the

country in an effort to keep private youth detention centers , jails,

and prisons at full capacity so that investors will receive the most

for their investments. The paper trail begins in elementary schools

and follows students throughout their lives. Minor infractions like

talking or talking back to a teacher often leads to children being

labeled as having behavior problems. The results are quite

predictable, most children who are unfortunate to get tagged in school

fail to graduate and end up slaves to the criminal justice system.

Dr. James Dobson founder of Focus on The Family, a non-profit

multi-media family ministry and a trained clinical psychologist

offered an analogy of children and stem cells in explaining the

effects of a negative environment. Dr. Dobson said stem cells in the

beginning are “undifferentiated” meaning they can develop into any

cell depending on the environment “that it’s in”. Dr. Dobson said

“children are stem cells for the culture”, a very profound analogy in

light of evidence that sentencing juveniles especially first time

offenders would most likely lead to an increase in “future criminal

behavior rather than as a deterrent to crime or as a means to

reform”.11 The problem with any idea of deterrent to crime, reform, or

rehabilitation is no longer in the best interest of a for profit penal

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system. Actually, the word “rehabilitation” was dropped from

California’s penal code mission statement in 1976 in order to reflect

the move to harsher punishment. James Samuel Logan, author of Good

Punishment? Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment has

identified four main components or reasons that interrelate to form

the Prison Industrial Complex, they are; 1) 1970’s legislation that

required long term mandatory long term sentencing in support of public

policy, 2) the nationwide declaration of the War on Drugs

since the 80s, 3) social policy commitment to containing and

controlling frustrated Blacks and other minorities in their struggles

to achieve a better life and 4) the economic profit generated by

increased imprisonment.12

The next and perhaps the most important component of the

Prison Industrial Complex in modern slavery is marketing. It is

through marketing and its related fields of mass communication and

entertainment that all the other components are integrated. David

Kupelian in The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-

Experts Sell Us Corruption as Freedom exposes the fundamental

intricacies of those components that are necessary for selling an

undereducated public the reality they need to experience in order to

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be controlled. The dumbing-down of America has become a metaphor for a

too trusting public still trapped in the nightmare of the American

Dream. Author Joel Dyer in his monograph, The Perpetual Prisoner

Machine: How America Profits from Crime presents a solid case against

modern slavery in the form of controlled crime through the

manipulations of the media, marketing and censorship.

Private Prisons are not new to America. The slave codes

transitioned in the early 20th. century to include loitering and

“vagrancy” laws. These laws were the forerunners to modern laws of

racial profiling that support private prisons.13

One of the best examples to illustrate how the media works to

invent realities is the Matrix, a 1999 science fiction film about a

computer generated world of illusion where ignorance really is bliss

except for a remnant of believers whose reality is the total opposite

of what most others accept as normal and who therefore are resistant

to this new form of enslavement, known as the “Matrix”. In explaining

to Neo, the antagonist of the movie what the Matrix is, Morpheus, the

leader of the resistance says – “… you are a slave. Like everyone else

you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot

smell, taste or touch, a prison for your mind”.14 It is in the minds of

people that there is a war raging and this war is determined through

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the manipulation of media. William Hammett, former president of the

conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute explained how “social

policy on crime and welfare in the 1980s and 1990s was formulated”; he

said, “Marketing is fun and we’re marketing ideas”. What Hammett was

talking about was the black magic performed by a former Harvard

management professor, James Q. Wilson in joining “justice policy” to

supply and demand economics by cross-cutting and undermining the work

of sociologists chasing the “root causes” of crime.15 Wilson’s approach

of being hard on crime, advocating stricter sentences, instead of

rehabilitation and training programs opened the door for him to hire

himself out as a political consultant to both the political left and

the right. Playing on the sensibilities of uneducated Euro-Americans

politicians created “moral panics” through race baiting based on

crime.16

In addressing how public opinion was manipulated by the media

Maxwell E. McCombs, a former University of Texas communications

professor noted that crime as an issue was dependent on whether or not

the media would remain interested in “crime stories” since in reality

crime had not risen in the late 80s and throughout the 90s in over 20

years. Do most teenagers like rap music? And even if they did what

portion can be said to like “gangsta rap”, that hard core violent

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anti-everything genre that generates billions by direct marketing to

mostly affluent Euro-American teens. Todays’ Euro-American youth have

“co-opted inner-city black street style as authentic”. African

American teens are revered by Euro-American youth because they are

“strong, confrontational” and a little “scary” and Euro-American youth

like that.17 Today’s television producers and assignment editors are

now expected to be skilled in creating “crime waves”.18 Youth culture is

essential to defining the parameters that link the School-to-Jail

Pipeline to the ultimate cash cow, the Prison Industrial Complex.

Like the Pied Piper of yester-year’s fantasy today’s youth are

being led by the sounds of BET and MTV, but it is not just about them

being led but how they are being led. American youth culture, a $150

billion a year enterprise is controlled by five massive companies and

four entertainment/music companies. Teens are the latest

anthropological subjects that are studied like “laboratory rats” and

instead of teens inventing their own types of rebellion as in years

past today there is a whole cadre of marketing gurus that entice, and

entrap with decadence disguised as “culture”. So, while the TV

networks are cranking out violence in the form of entertainment

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followed by the nightly news with the latest body-bag count the

“merchants of cool” are busy baiting traps for America’s teens.19

The title of William C. Rhoden book $40 Million Slaves: The

Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete was inspired by a

comment hurled at former New York Knicks player Larry Johnson:

“Johnson, you’re nothing but a $40 million slave”.20 Rhoden discovered

a very important “dynamic” a parallel between the slave plantation and

ownership of modern slaves. All, until very recently “owners” of

professional sports teams as well as the coaches and managing staff

were “white”. Arguing the “plantation-to-plantation metaphor” in a

later interview with the author the player had a hard time seeing how

a man earning $12 million a year could be compared to a slave, if that

was slavery he conceded he knew tons of people who wouldn’t mind being

on that plantation.21 Herein lie the contradiction in perception of

those faced with modern slavery; if they are unfree but successful

then why does it matter? Back to the happy slave conundrum.

Rhoden relates how plantation owners in some areas instituted

“harvest festivals” where slaves could compete not as a recreational

outlet but as a controlled competition aimed to dull the

“revolutionary inclination” of enslaved men. Frederick Douglass was

not fooled by this tactic and

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accurately identified those slave owner supported “holidays” as

“safety valves and conductors” of pent up anger, aggression and

hostility”.22

The sheer dominance of the African American presence though

enslaved never ceased to amaze. President Theodore Roosevelt observed

that, “the Negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not

dwindle in the presence of the white man. He holds his own, indeed,

under the condition of American slavery he increased faster than the

whites threatening to supplant him”.23 It is because of this Black

dominance even under the greatest social and economic pressure

imaginable that Euro-American men fearful of losing control are

mandated to preserve slavery in all its modern forms.

The sports industry a “major component” of the U.S. economy

revolves around acquiring and owning under contract, mostly African

American talent through a “sophisticated recruiting apparatus” known

as the “Conveyor Belt”.24 Social integration opened a recruiting

feeding frenzy for Euro-American colleges and universities who armed

with unlimited resources quickly consolidated their economic control

over this industry through political affiliations. Alumni associations

are the links between economics and politics in this component of the

Prison Industrial Complex. Rhoden explores the psychology of this

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conveyor belt recruiting system. The belt Rhoden says “ undermines

character” but beyond that it dulls “any racial consciousness” while

eliminating “communal instincts”.25 In describing this diabolical

process the former head of the Black Coaches Association Rudy

Washington juxtaposes the relationship between a drug dealer and a

junkie.25

In 1991 a group of “blue chip” athletes challenged the

Conveyer Belt recruitment process. Known to historians as the Fabulous

Five they decided to resist being split up among competing

universities and remain as a package. They failed in their undertaking

of leveraging power as athletes but succeeded in bringing attention to

slavery in sports.26

Conclusion

The politics underlying the establishment of the modern Prison

Industrial Complex can be traced directly to Richard Milhous Nixon,

the 37th. President of the United States and his War on Drugs. Taking

his cue from Senator Barry Goldwater Richard Nixon infused Goldwater’s

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rhetoric with political value. Richard Nixon said that America had to

face the fact “that the whole problem is really the blacks”. “The

key”, he went on to say, “is to devise a system that recognizes this

while not appearing to”.27 Conservative politicians having already

linked poverty to criminal activity presented Nixon with the perfect

tool for connecting the dots that would empower his war on race, or

his war against the African American community. In order to infuse his

devious scheme with ultimate political power Nixon’s advisors

suggested a strategy whereby they simply redefined “narcotics

trafficking”, removed it from under the jurisdiction of the 1914

Harris Act which limited the policing of illegal drugs and placed it

firmly under the jurisdiction of the Hobbs Interstate Commerce Act.

This switch is how narcotic trafficking allowed unlimited federal

prosecution against offenders in the War on Drugs. Nixon then

announced to the nation the importance of mounting the “war on drugs”

as a concern of national security and called for law makers to

formulate appropriate national policies.28

Preemptive policing or policing in such a way as to reduce

crime, even where a rise in crime cannot be proved is known as Zero

Tolerance. Zero Tolerance or “quality of life “(QOL) policing was

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invented through a $30 million Ford Foundation start-up grant in

1970.29

The bridge to the Prison Industrial Complex the latest

evolution in slavery is deeply embedded in the union between politics

and business. Private Enterprise now controls politicians through

campaign contributions, lobbying, advisory boards and other special

interest groups either as direct investors or consultants.

The information clearinghouse In The Public Interest in its

September 2013 report concluded that private prisons essentially hold

states hostage to a “low-crime tax” and other “lock-up quotas” that

guarantee that investors in private prisons are protected.30

In the book Prison and Slavery: A Surprising Comparison,

author John Dewar Gleissner shares some startling statistical facts;

although the U.S. is only 5% of the world’s population it houses more

than 25% of the world’s prisoners, more than two million to date. The

U.S. had more than 2.4 million slaves in 1840 and in 2009 more than

2.4 million prisoners “of all races” but mainly Blacks. Gleissner also

raises the challenge that there were positive aspects of slavery;

alcohol and drug addictions and crime were all but non-existent and

although his reasons for citing such evidence is tenuous (the positive

aspects of slavery or that some slaves were happy with their condition

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) the evidence nonetheless alludes to another yet unexamined aspect of

enslavement, that the later interaction of African Americans under and

within the American system of government has had and continues to have

a negative effect on African Americans no matter the educational or

social status of individual achievement.

The system that Richard Nixon foresaw has had

predetermined consequences for the Prison Industrial Complex and the

continued enslavement of mostly African American men that continues to

evolve according to market forces. The only solution to modern 13th.

Amendment Enslavement is to re-write the law void of its loophole that

makes a crime punishable by enslavement. To ensure that the law is

not breached in any way a new mechanism of checks and balances must be

created so that the public is assured access to any information that

maybe used to protect investors in human trafficking or enslavement.

The Securities Investor Protection Act of 1970 must also be examined

in order to eliminate any loopholes. And finally those directly

involved in investments in any industry of human enslavement must be

held accountable. Otherwise slavery is likely to continue even if by

another name.

Notes

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1. U.S. History.Org, http://www.ushistory.org/us/27b.asp, Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/939444/slave-code. Slave codes not only determined the relationship between the enslaved and the owners but served as a (History.org n.d.) (Britannica n.d.) (History.org n.d.) (History.org n.d.) (History.org n.d., Lincoln n.d., Wesley 2012)divisive tool to pitdomestics or house slaves against field slaves thereby creating a class structure and point of contention between slaves.http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html

2. The Real Abraham Lincoln, http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/health/racism/news.php?q=1302541225.

“I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social

or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior

position to the white man.” Lincoln in his speech to Charleston, Illinois, 1858. How consensus is reached through public opinion and the role the media plays will

be discussed under the component of marketing.

3. Christianity: The Official Religion of the Roman Empire, http://www.unrv.com/culture/christianity.php, The True Authorshipof the New Testamenthttp://www.ivantic.net/Ostale_knjiige/TrueAuthorship.pdf

4. The Bible. There are more than 30 verses in both the Old and New Testaments that speak of slavery but the “curse of Ham” in Genesis 9 is perhaps the best known argument for the justification of the European enslavement of Africans.

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5. Andrew Skotnicki, “Religion and the Development of the American Penal System, (University Press of America 2000): 11-47. In 1681 William Penn was given a tract of land by King Charles ll of England. Working closely with his friend, the Quaker founder George Fox Penn was able to develop his “penal philosophy” learned in England. The idea “penitence” was the foundation for the concept of America’s first“penitentiary”. It was believed that sinful criminals could be reformed through religious practices.

6. Wesley (2012) found “that trafficking in persons generates $7 to $10 billion annually for traffickers” and “is the third largest criminal industry in the world outranked only by arms and drug dealing” ( 5). Although this criminal activity like the Prison Industrial Complex affects African American more than any other people it is unlike the Prison Industrial Complex in that “race” is missing in most of the literature so making a connection between the two is extremely difficult. Human Trafficking is tiedto the Prison Industrial Complex through immigration law through victims are sometimes arrested for prostitution and other crimes.

7. Rutter, Kit and Maria Suarez, “Maria Suarez Speaks on Traffickingand the Prison Industrial Complex (California Coalition for WomenPrisoners).

8. Christian Parenti, “Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis” (London, Verso 1999): 6.

9. Parenti, 7.

10. Urbina, Ian and Sean D. Hamill, “Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit”, (The New York Times, and February 13,2009): 1-3.

11. David Kupelian, “The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom” (Nashville, Tennessee, WND Books 2005): 151.

12. James Samuel Logan, “Good Punishment? Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment” ( Cambridge, U.K., William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company): 4.

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13. Douglas A. Blackmon, “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavementof Black Americans from the Civil War to World War ll, (New York,Anchor Books, 2008). African Americans were targeted who couldn’tprove that they had a job, or were looking for work. They were then passed through a court of law where fines were levied against them. When they couldn’t pay more fines were added on forcourt costs and other “legal fees”. Offenders were then sold to private companies who worked them as free slaves. The partnerships between the legal system and these companies allowedthe companies to pay the county back for the fines. These small fines were stretched out for years many times until the modern free slave died in bondage

14. Kupelian, 171-172.

15. Jerome G. Miller, “Search and Destroy: African American Males in the Criminal Justice System” (United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press 1996): 136-140.

16. Miller, 151-153.

17. Kupelian, 63.

18. Miller, 156-158. The mid-nineties witnessed the rise of pulp fiction like journalism in shows like Cops, Inside Edition, A Current Affair and Hard Copy which gave “the inaccurate impression that most police work involved chasing down and catching young men of color”: 157.

19. Kupelian, 61-82.

20. William C. Rhoden, “$40 Million Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete” (New York, Crown Publishers, 2006): ix.

21. Rhoden, x.

22. Rhoden, 46-48.

23. Rhoden, 60.

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24. Rhoden, 177.

25. Rhoden, 178. “How tough is it to buy an inner-city kid? Buy him some shoes, take him to dinner, get him some nice clothes, maybe a car. You become his best friend, and he gets hooked, like a junkie”. “Then you control the product. The secret is controllingthe product early. It’s just like slavery. Modern day slavery is what it is.”

26. Douglas A. Blackmon, “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavementof Black Americans from the Civil War to World War ll, (New York,Anchor Books, 2008). African Americans were targeted who couldn’tprove that they had a job, or were looking for work. They were then passed through a court of law where fines were levied against them. When they couldn’t pay more fines were added on forcourt costs and other “legal fees”. Offenders were then sold to private companies who worked them as free slaves. The partnerships between the legal system and these companies allowedthe companies to pay the county back for the fines. These small fines were stretched out for years many times until the modern free slave died in bondage.

27. Parenti, 3.

28. Parenti, 9.

29. Parenti, 71.

30. Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and “Low-Crime Taxes” Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations” (A Publication of In theSpecial Interest, September 2013).

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Wesley 23

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