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The Nation -- "Black men born in the US and fortunate enough to live past the age of eighteen are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of humiliations. Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortunes that lead so many blackmen to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison. It required only minor psychic adjustments."

Soledad Brother --George Jackson

A study released last week by the Pew Center detailed just how many Americans are currently incarcerated. According to the study, 1 in 100 Americans are behind bars. Via NYT. The prison industrial complex refers to the imprisonment of certain sectors of society to maintain economic and social order. However, state budget problems in Texas and California, to name but a few, have caused some to turn their attention to the amount of spending that goes into maintaining the prison industrial complex . I also like to think that the ground-breaking HBO series, The Wire, has helped spur consciousness but that is probably wishful thinking.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

The statistics are even more staggering when you factor in race.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men ages 20 to 34.

George Jackson's words are even more relevant 30 years later. The inevitability of prison for many of our youth of color is at an all-time high and with legislation such as Proposition 21 in California (that passed 8 years ago last week, but is still held up in the courts so we have yet to see its longterm consequences), that tries juveniles (14-17) as adults, we see that the war against youth continues.

The time for prison reform is right now. A recent editorial in the New York Times explained why there is no direct relationship between an increase in incarceration and a decrease in crime. However, most reform efforts have been unsuccessful. Politicians are maneuvering between mismanaged deficits and showing that they're tough on crime, with little room for a productive conversation about reform, justice or abolition.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990's actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group.

Furthermore, incarceration doesn't work to rehabilitate our youth, it instead demands a cycle of criminal behavior that leads to a lifetime of being in and out of the system. Given the tenuous relationship between crime rates and incarceration and the documented proof that prison does not successfully rehabilitate it's occupants, the question must be asked, why prison expansion?

A couple of reasons. The people that are most directly affected by the problem are the same ones that are least engaged with the decision making process. You can't vote if you are in jail, or if you have been to jail for a felony. Yes, that's right, if you have a non-violent drug charge that is a felony, you lose your franchise as a citizen.

But another reason why the prison industrial complex thrives is because it is an industry. There are key players that have serious stakes involved in the money made off prisons. Jill at Feministe details some of the ways that people benefit economically from high incarceration rates.

Prisons are a great way for big corporations to make money -- and it's your tax dollars that are paying them. The increasing privatization of the prison system further enables companies to feed off of the prison "market," with little public oversight. Someone has to build the new prisons that are going up every year, provide prison food, make prison clothing, and create an ever-growing list of incarceration "tools" to better control inmates -- and our government is happy to pay private corporations to do it, even if those corporations routinely cut corners to the detriment of prisoners, prison employees and American taxpayers. Billions of tax dollars every year go to prison corporations, churches, investment banks, defense industry giants and other groups that exploit the prison population for economic gain. All of those groups have good reason to want to maintain our insanely high incarceration rates.

Corporations are also funding politicians to the tune of millions -- $33 million in 44 states in the 2002 and 2004 election cycles. In other words, there are a lot of extremely wealthy and influential people who have a vested economic interest in maintaining a bloated, racist prison system.

It is no wonder that Presidential hopefuls have made barely a peep about the state of prisons, with the exception of Obama admitting his favorite show is the Wire. That is hardly a position. Oh and let's not forget statements made early on by Mitt Romney to "double the size of Guantanamo" to get a nice picture of the conservative agenda with regard to prison expansions.

The Pew study confirms what some prison justice organizing groups figured out a while ago. The prison industrial complex does not work. The only solution is to completely transform the prison system. National prison abolition organizing group Critical Resistance defines its stance as,

Critical Resistance's vision is the creation of genuinely safe, healthy communities that do not rely on prisons and policing to respond to harm. We call our vision "abolition". We take the name "abolitionists" purposefully from those who called for the abolition of slavery in the 1800's. Abolitionists believed that slavery could not be fixed or reformed - it needed to abolished. We believe that prison is not an answer to drug addiction, poverty, or the harms our communities suffer. This system of locking people in cages cannot be fixed or reformed; it must be abolished.

The United States has higher incarceration rates than most of the European countries combined. Why would we need to imprison so many more of our citizens than our neighbors in Europe (and Canada)?

For more information on the prison abolition movement check out Justice Now and Critical Resistance. If you know of other organizations, please put them in comments.

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