Much antiprison organizing for the past 15 to 20 years has centered around critiquing the ways private prisons produce wealth through the business of captivity. I remember organizing in the 1990s at Cabrillo Community College in Santa Cruz where I was a student because our cafeteria contracted with Sodexho Marriott, which then had stakes in CCA, a private prison firm. That work was and continues to be necessary, but only as a way to open up conversations beyond the private-prisons argument. If we end there, it can seem as if we think prisons run by the state are “better” and that prisons are only troublesome if they produce surplus value. Again, this is where an abolitionist analysis becomes necessary to push us through the private prisons argument and toward a more general critique.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 14:25:51 +0000
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