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Title: The Function of Prison Author: Peter Gelderloos Date: 2003 Language: en Topics: prison Source: Personal communication with the author, August 9, 2009 Notes: The Link (Montreal), 2003
In modern republics, the function of prison is said to be correction.
When individuals break laws that uphold the common good, the
conventional wisdom goes, they need to be punished or otherwise taught
to be more socially cooperative and generous. In my experience with
incarceration, however, the only thing that prison teaches is obedience.
A “corrected” citizen is one who internalizes prison bars even on the
streets.
Prison serves as a constant threat against all who would oppose what
governments and corporations do with our collective resources. A critic
might point out that prison is only a threat to dissidents who break the
law, but what it comes down to is that there are no legal means to
fundamentally change the government. Elections are simply a Darwinian
means of weeding out representatives (of the elite) whose populist
rhetoric is less convincing. If all you want from your government is
some new gun law or corporate accountability standard, you may find your
democracy fulfilling (provided you can muster about a hundred thousand
person-hours of volunteer work, two hundred thousand dollars of
donations, and provided the corporations or resident religious
fundamentalists in the government don’t put up too much of a fight, and
also provided you don’t mind that these new rules will be bent
occasionally for the rich and powerful). But if what you want is a
society that values human and environmental interests over Machiavellian
state and corporate interests, and most people do at some level, then
you’re out of luck; your government will not represent you. There is no
consent of the governed; we were all born subjects, whereas the
government is not born out of our initiative or participation. In fact,
it functions best without us. If the only option you have is to consent,
that’s not consensus: it’s submission.
Our hypothetical critic might also mention that we have freedom of
speech, and that is all we need to ensure we can make an impact on our
society. Leaving aside the particulars of the fact that respect for free
speech in this country is arbitrary and subject to restriction, I would
prefer to relate an observation I made while incarcerated. Locked away
in a maximum security cell, I had more “freedom of speech” than I did
while in minimum security prison, and I could certainly criticize, even
cuss at, my guards more than I could get away with against police or
other officials on the outside. What it comes down to is that words
cannot bring down the walls of power; in “the hole” you can yell all you
want. It is most instructive that as inmates descend the security levels
as they get closer to release, they are trained increasingly not to
speak out. On the outside, “super-minimum security” as it should be
known, people are trained not to resist, and they are trusted to remain
outside of prison so long as they demonstrate they are not a threat to
the established order.
Of course, suppression of dissent isn’t the only function of a prison,
and in the U.S. it’s actually a minor function because so few Americans
engage in dissent. At least in the middle class, there is almost no
concern for such intangibles as freedom, as long as gas is cheap and
luxurious cars plentiful. Being the most consumerist, U.S. citizens are
more inclined towards fascism and totalitarianism than any other people
I know. Americans will buy anything, whether it’s the latest
politician’s lie or the newest bit of cheap plastic crap from Wal-Mart.
One lie that has been bought for much too long is that prisons perform a
service for society, when in reality they serve to disempower black,
latino, and indigenous communities by locking away what often amounts to
a majority of certain age groups from these communities, and generally
for offenses as harmless as drug possession (which in the U.S. has the
potential to bring a life sentence). Prisons also provide cheap, coerced
labour; for less than a dollar an hour (often not enough to cover the
expenses of prison life), prisoners work making products for government
agencies and the military. In fact, the Constitutional amendment that
outlawed slavery specifically and intentionally opened a loophole that
allowed forced labour in the event of incarceration.
In the time it takes the world’s “civilized peoples” to relearn how to
live and interact at a level higher than that of trained dogs,
responding only to immediate reward and punishment, I hope we can all
extend a greater degree of solidarity and support to the millions of
people whose lives are being incrementally eaten by the world’s prisons.