Critical Resistance

History

In 1997, a multiracial and intergenerational group of grassroots activists, scholars, students, and former prisoners met in Oakland, California, to generate a movement against mass incarceration and prison construction in the United States. Initially, the organizers decided to host an international conference that would bring together diverse constituencies affected by mass imprisonment, from prisoners and their families, to homeless advocates, sex worker organizations, antiracist, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) activists. This conference, titled “Critical Resistance: Beyond [Page 207]the Prison Industrial Complex,” was held at the University of California, Berkeley, in September 1998 and was attended by more than 3,500 participants. In conjunction with the conference, several thousand high school students staged a walkout to demand “Schools Not Jails.” The Youthforce Coalition, dedicated to opposing criminalization and incarceration of youths of color and calling for funding for schools and youth programs, was an outcome of this event. Critical Resistance East, a Northeast Regional Conference held in New York in Spring 2001, and Critical Resistance South, held in New Orleans in April 2003, continued the work of building a national movement.

Theorizing the Prison Industrial Complex

Both prison intellectuals and academic scholars have contributed to Critical Resistance's theoretical development. A key achievement of the group has been to popularize the concept of the “prison industrial complex.” As Angela Y. Davis argues, the massive growth in imprisonment is linked not to efforts by the state to curb crime, but rather to broader political and economic trends. The rolling back of the welfare state, coupled with the downsizing and relocation of manufacturing, Davis argues, has generated a social crisis in industrialized nations. Aggressive policing and harsh prison sentences have replaced social investment, affirmative action, and welfare as the primary response to the social problems generated by desperate socioeconomic conditions. At the same time, the function of the prison has shifted from rehabilitation to incapacitation. A key goal of prisons in industrialized nations appears now to be the removal of large numbers of the poor, disenfranchised, and racially marginalized from the streets. In so doing, prisons reproduce and exacerbate the social problems from drug use to unemployment that plague communities of color and indigenous communities in particular.

The phrase “prison industrial complex” refers also to the profit element in mass incarceration. Critical Resistance has drawn attention to prison corporations such as Wackenhut and Corrections Corporation of America that build and operate private prisons. The private prison industry in the United States alone earns up to $2 billion a year, and subsidiaries in other locations, from South Africa to Britain, also provide immense profits. Whether public or private, prisons are also a source of earnings for a host of companies that supply necessities from food and telephone services to stun guns and razor wire or employ the cheap and disciplined prison labor force. This interdependence between the state and capital has ensured the centrality of prisons to the global economy.

...