The penal state in an age of crisis

Monthly Review

Volumn 61, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 1-17

  Holleman, Hannah ^a   McChesney, Robert W ^b   Foster, John Bellamy ^a   Jonna, R Jamil ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 68149162233     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-02-2009-06_1     Document Type: Review

References (32)

1. We have taken the term "penal state" from Loïc Wacquant, "Ordering Insecurity: Social Polarization and the Punitive Upsurge," Radical Philosophy Review 11, no. 1 (2008), 9-27. Unlike Wacquant, however, our object here is not to present an all-encompassing theory of the penal state as representing a stage in the development of the state as a whole. Rather, we use the term in this article in a more limited way as a parallel concept to that of the welfare state. Thus "penal state spending," as we employ it, is conceptually equivalent to "public safety spending" and is to be juxtaposed to "public welfare spending."
2. John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, "A New New Deal Under Obama?" Monthly Review 60, no. 9 (February 2009): 1-11.
3. In 1934 and 1975 temporary peaks in civilian government spending as a percentage of GDP of around 15 percent resulted from the fact that private production and consumption as percentages of GDP contracted faster than the civilian government share. This was followed in both cases by a reversion to the mean in the share of civilian government spending. With civilian governments spending as a percentage of GDP in 2008 at 15 percent a similar dynamic may well be at work.
4. John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, "The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending," Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 1-19.
5. Roy Walmsley, International Centre for Prison Studies. "World Prison Population List, (8th edition)," January 2009, http://www.prison-studies. org. For a historical view on incarceration in the United States since its founding see John Bellamy Foster, Harry Magdoff, and Robert W. McChesney, "Prisons and Executions - the U.S. Model," Monthly Review 53, no. 3 (July-August 2001): 1-18.
6. Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Prisoners in 2007," Tables 8 and 10 (version revised February 12, 2009).
7. Michael K. Fauntroy, "Toward Reform of Criminal Justice," Washington Times, April 28, 2009.
8. Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Prisoners in 2007," Appendix Tables 11 and 12 (version revised February 12, 2009).
9. Interview with David Simon, Bill Moyers' Journal, PBS broadcast, April 17, 2009.
10. Quoted in Christopher Hayes, "Webb's Prison Crusade," The Nation, May 4, 2009.
11. Quoted in Ibid.
12. For a chart on imprisonment and inequality of various countries see http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/imprisonment.
13. Bruce Western, Meredith Kleykamp, Jake Rosenfeld. "Did Falling Wages and Employment Increase U.S. Imprisonment?" Social Forces 84, no. 4 (2006): 2306.
14. On the jobless rate see "Notes from the Editors," Monthly Review 60, no. 11 (April 2009).
15. Loïc Wacquant in Glenn C. Loury, Race, Incarceration and American Values (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 60.
16. Loury, Race, Incarceration and American Values, 11: Gerald Shargel, "No Mercy," Slate, June 14, 2004.
17. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 16 (New York International Publishers, 1975), 489.
18. James Q. Wilson, Thinking About Crime (New York Basic Books, 1975, 172.
19. Bureau of Justice Assistance, "Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons," February 2001, http://www.nqrs.gov/pdfBlesl/bja/181249.pdf.
20. Vicky Pelaez, "The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?" Global Research, March 10, 2008, http://www.globalresearch.ca.
21. Quoted in Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (New York Harper Collins, 2003), 515.
22. Bureau of Justice Statistics. "Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994," June 2002.
23. Legal Action Center. "After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry," 2004, http://www.lac.org/roadblocks.html.
24. See http://webb.senate.gov/emaitycriminaljusticereform.html.
25. "A Nation of Jailbirds," The Economist, April 2, 2009.
26. On the horrendous conditions in U.S. prisons see John J. Gibbons and Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, co-chairs, Confronting Confinement: A Report of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2006), http://www.prisoncommision.org/mission.asp; Michael Santos, Inside: Life Behind Bare in America (New York St. Martin's Press, 2006).
27. "A Nation of Jailbirds," The Economist, April 2, 2009.
28. Becky Pettit and Bruce Western, "Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration," American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 151-69, 164.
29. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1978 and 2007; José Luis Morína, "Latinos/as and U.S. Prisons," Latino Studies, 6 (2008), 11-34.
30. David V. Baker, "American Indian Executions in Historical Context," Criminal Justice Studies 20, no. 4 (2007): 351.
31. Amnesty International, "Migrants Languish in Detention in US," March 26, 2009.
32. Pamela S. Karlan in Loury, Race, Incarceration and American Values, 48-49; "A Nation of Jailbirds," The Economist, April 2, 2009; "Felony Disenfranchisement," The Sentencing Project, http://www.sentencingproject.org/IssueArea-Home.aspx?IssueID-4.