43 quotes
Private prisons are direct sources of profit for the companies that run them, but public prisons have become so thoroughly saturated with the profit-producing products and services of private corporations that the distinction is not as meaningful as one might suspect.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
The prison industrial complex is much more than the sum of all the jails and prisons in this country. It is a set of symbiotic relationships among correctional communities, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, guards' unions, and legislative and court agendas.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
In this country, ... where the special category of political prisoners is not officially acknowledged, the political prisoner inevitably stands trial for a specific criminal offense, not for a political act.
In many ways, she (Fannie Lou Hamer) paved the way for Barack Obama.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle (2015)
Critiques of the prison industrial complex undertaken by abolitionist activists and scholars are very much linked to critiques of the global persistence of racism. Antiracist and other social justice movements are incomplete with attention to the politics of imprisonment.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Racism is still a factor both within the gay movement and in the way the gay movement is publicly perceived.
Interview (1993)
The reason I am a communist is because I believe in a total revolution which is going to overthrow the capitalist control of the economy, which will seize the wealth from all of the giant corporations that exploit and control the lives of all working people.
The notion of a prison industrial complex insists on understandings of the punishment process that take into account economic and political structures and ideologies, rather than focusing myopically on the individual criminal conduct and efforts to "curb crime."
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
As we approach the millennium, we need to demystify the notion that this country is monolingual.
Interview (1993)
The prison has become a black hole inti which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
It was assumed within birth control circles that poor women, Black and immigrant alike, had a 'moral obligation to restrict the size of their families.' What was demanded as a 'right' for the privileged came to be interpreted as a 'duty' for the poor.
Women, Race and Class (1981)
The challenge of the twenty-first century is not to demand equal opportunity to participate in the machinery of oppression. Rather, it is to identify and dismantle those structures in which racism continues to be embedded. This is the only way the promise of freedom can be extended to masses of people.
The call to abolish the prison as the dominant form of punishment cannot ignore the extent to which the institution of the prison has stockpiled ideas and practices that are hopefully approaching obsolescence in the larger society, but that retain their ghastly vitality behind prison walls.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Expediency governed the slave-holders' posture toward female slaves: when it was profitable to exploit them as if they were men, they were regarded, in effect, as genderless, but when they could be exploited, punished and repressed in ways suited only for women, they were locked into their exclusively female roles.
Many people are familiar with the campaign to abolish the death penalty. In fact, it has already been abolished in most countries. Even the staunchest advocates of capital punishment acknowledge the fact that the death penalty faces serious challenges. Few people find life without the death penalty difficult to imagine.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
The transformation of imprisoned bodies - and they are in their majority bodies of color - into sources of profit who consume and also often produce all kinds of commodities, devours public funds, which might otherwise be available for social programs such as education, housing, childcare, recreation, and drug programs.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Although guard-on-prisoner sexual abuse is not sanctioned as such, the widespread leniency with which offending officers are treated suggests that for women, prison is a space in which the threat of sexualized violence that looms in the larger society is effectively sanctioned as a routine aspect of the landscape of punishment behind prison walls.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Paradoxically, demands for parity with men's prisons, instead of creating greater educational, vocational, and health opportunities for women prisoners, often have led to more repressive conditions for women. This is not only a consequence of deploying liberal - that is, formalistic - notions of equality, but of, more dangerous, allowing male prisons to function as the punishment norm.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Repression is the response of an increasingly desperate imperialist ruling clique to contain an otherwise uncontrollable and growing popular disaffection leading ultimately, we think, to the revolutionary transformation of society.
If They Come in The Morning (1971)
When someone like Roger Goodell says “Black lives matter,” even though he did not mention Colin Kaepernick, and even though he may have — he probably did not really mean it, what that means is that the NFL recognizes that it has to begin a new process, that there is a further expansion of popular consciousness.