Prison Industrial Complex

The term “prison industrial complex” has been used in recent years to describe the modern prison system from a new and more critical perspective. Traditionally, prisons have been viewed as serving such well-known functions as deterrence, incapacitation, treatment and rehabilitation, punishment, revenge, and so on. An alternative view sees them as engaging in the quite different role of social control of the poor and “dangerous classes.” Simultaneously, prisons fill what may be called an unanticipated or latent function of providing jobs. They are sources of revenue and make profits for various state and private interests.

Some critics have suggested that the prison system is part of a much larger “crime control industry,” in which the entire criminal justice system, plus a growing private security industry, provide a steady supply of jobs and profits. This system is large and very expensive. Expenditures are at least $150 billion annually, up from around $10 billion in the early 1970s. There are more than 50,000 different governmental agencies in this system, employing close to 2 million people, who share a more than $5 billion per month payroll.

Some critics have suggested that the “prison industrial complex” is similar to the “military industrial complex” (the term used by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960), since it consists of patterns of interrelationships known variously as “policy networks,” “subgovernment,” or the “iron triangle.” Within the military subgovernment, there is an “iron triangle” of the Pentagon, private defense contractors, and various members of congressional committees (e.g., armed services committees, defense [Page 726]appropriations committees). The decision making within any given policy arena “rests within a closed circle or elite of government bureaucrats, agency heads, interest groups, and private interests that gain from the allocation of public resources” (Lilly & Knepper, 1993, p. 152).

The crime control industry includes much more than merely the criminal justice system itself. It includes a number of businesses that profit either directly or indirectly from the existence of crime and attempts to control it. Indeed, the control of crime—often expressed as a “war on crime” or a “war on drugs” or the “war on gangs”—has become a booming business, with literally hundreds of companies, large and small, competing for profits. Employment in this industry offers careers for thousands of young men and women, many with college degrees in criminal justice programs from more than 3,000 colleges and universities. The criminal justice system provides a steady supply of career possibilities (police officers, correctional officers, and so on), with good starting pay and benefits, along with job security. Many have formed powerful unions.