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Lockdown America – Some background

1950s and 1960s (before the binge started)

Prisons were “an ugly little corner of American society”

Affected few and did little long term damage - poor young males accused of serious crimesCheap to operate – guards major expense ***Released prisoners aged out and could get jobsPrisons mostly operated “under the radar”Some inclination to get rid of prisons completely

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How and why did this change?

How did the “land of the free” become the worlds leading jailer? From IR 100 +/- to 700+ today and the worlds leading torturer? Guantanamo, renditions, SHUs, etc.

(a recent ACLU report on LA County jails – routine

abuse of inmates!)

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Superficial view – conservative turn and “get tough” politics

Warped political response to rising crime rates in the 1960s (which had already ended – baby boomers

aged in then aged out) and the “failure of liberalism” in the

1960s

Conservative criminologist James Q. Wilson – the only thing left is to lock “them” up – “zero tolerance”

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Parenti offers a diff view – a radical/critical analysis --there was a bigger set of political and economic crises driving the changes over several decades

Polit: backlash against Civil Rights Movement,anti-war movement, women’s

movement,counterculture (hippies, drugs, etc.)

Econ: rising competition from Europe & Asiaplus huge cost of the Vietnam Warled to economic crisis – dropping profits

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Parenti focuses on changes in the Crim Just System -- but as part of the larger crisis and changes

Early changes were political (mostly racist)Later changes were economic (whole working class)Long term – development of an oppressive racist

militarized police state in the US

Sort of a modern version of the bloody code?Savage repression directed at surplus pops!

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Some earlier background:

Amer Civil War –beginning of end of British Empire

Germany and US catching up in indus prod

Development of industrial capitalism

Two European capitalist world wars with a massive global depression in between led to decline of Europe and a major crisis of capitalism

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Focusing on the US:

1870s – 1920s modern- urban- industrial- ization

1930s The Great Depression

1940s World War 2 and aftermath

1950s – 1960s post war US economic boom based on socialist policies!

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The Great Depression (1930s)

Increasing productivity, flat wages

Led to over-production and collapse

Surplus goods and surplus people

Nothing worked until WW2 ended the crisis(no surplus goods, no surplus people)(US played relatively minor role in the war)

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Post War US new depression? (1946-47)

Increased productivity + surplus of workers

Instead massive govt socialist reforms – designed to“rationalize” productivity and absorb the surplus pops

Some of the socialist changes:

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Social Security + beginnings of retirement systems

- Unions for workers plus benefits required by govt:- minimum wage laws, overtime rules, etc.- unemployment insurance- workers compensation and disability insurance- regulation of working conditions – safety, etc.- and many more changes benefiting wage workers

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Child labor banned (common before WW2)Universal public education - requiredFree or low cost higher education (e.g. Calif)Public welfare and child protection services

Public health and safety regulation -- product safety, food, water and air safety, research on diseases and health issues, etc.

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Infrastructure

National parks, interstate highway system, building standards (codes), emergency responses, etc.

Govt regulation itself employed huge numbers of workers in good jobs with benefits

and even military spending (cold war) had similar effects

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Meanwhile, the GI Bill and Veterans Admin provided (socialist) subsidies and/or resources for millions of people to buy houses and/or pursue higher education.

All of these changes combined also produced disposable income for American families, which allowed them to afford many services that had been out of reach (doctors, dentists, legal and financial services, entertainment, etc.) and these in turn provided more good jobs for workers, both professional and support staffs.

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These socialist changes are what generated/supported the expanding American middle class - which had

been very small before WW2 – most Americans were either farmers or impoverished factory workers before.

Regulated productivity of capitalism plus government regulation of distribution created American prosperity (and power!) that made the US an almost

unchallenged global empire for two decades – the 1950s and 1960s.

But there were serious problems ahead

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Because of “traditional” American racism and sexism, most of the benefits of the socialist reforms went to white males and their families – union, professional, and govt jobs, housing and higher education benefits (e.g., GI Bill benefits), etc.

Left behind were women and minorities, and also people who continued to live in small towns and rural areas plus millions of men who had been left behind and continued

to work in “unprotected” areas of the economy.

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Another problem was the “split in the service sector”

As professional job markets became “saturated” (slowing relative growth) the balance of new jobs

became “McJobs” - low paying, low benefit, unstable jobs.

Another potential problem was the high tax rates needed

to support the govt regulation - and the growing size of the govt itself – conflicts with capitalist culture

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Also among the overall outcomes of the changes was a new

class system in America consisting of

Capitalist Class (1% - live off inherited wealth)Business/Professional Class (10% - high salaries/benefits)Stable working class (30% - medium wages/benefits)Unstable working class (40% - low wages/benefits)The poor (20% - low to no wages/benefits)

The class system is reproduced across generations by family access to education, housing segregation, etc.

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Capitalists and the falling rate of profit

As a group (class) capitalists also benefited greatly from

the socialist modifications – for several reasons;

1. Workers could now afford to buy their products2. US capitalists dominated global markets3. Govt projects/programs provided large scale

investment opportunities with low/no risk

Because of these and other factors, profits spiked

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By the end of the 1960s, though, capitalist profits were returning to normal levels as global competition recovered (mainly Europe and Japan), workers wages began to level off along with consumption of goods and services, and profits from govt growth began to level off.

Marx had written a century earlier about a “tendency” of the long term rate of profit to fall and now caps were falling off of a spike (with elevated expectations and more wealth to invest) and moving back toward a “normal” falling rate of profit.

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Further, much wealth had shifted from capitalists to workers – higher wages meant workers got to keep

more of what they produced - and this kept wages high and pressed down on profits

And tax rates were high, which further sapped away profits on investments (and thus inherited wealth).

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So the post world war period – and especially the 1960s –

was the heyday of American wealth and power as both millions of American families and the owners of wealth benefited from the mix of capitalism and socialism

and our political culture set out to eliminate poverty and

even the wild idea of abolishing prisons seemed doable

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Then, in the 1970s, things began to go very wrong

Europe and Japan recovered and became competitors further threatening already-dropping profits

White males (traditional head of family) besieged by rejection of culture and demands for equality and change (women, minorities, young).

And Vietnam – maybe America’s biggest disaster ever

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This is where Parenti begins – with this complex crisis

Crisis then Police then Prisons

Note – Parenti doesn’t discuss the role of the courts in the changes that followed the crisis

From “normal” (doing justice) to the imp binge

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Chapter 1

Page 3-4 -- a very vivid description of the beginnings of the complex crisis – to elites a world coming apart

Police were brutal and repressive, but ineffective

Nixon’s race/drug war based on racism + drug hysteria

First wave of the response - “Nixon’s little war”

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Two parts of the strategy:

LEAA and policing

communication and arms enhancement – paramilitary

+ outreach to communities – propaganda

(this was similar to Vietnam War policy at the time)

Note Foucault’s focus on surveillance!!

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After Nixon’s fall (Watergate, etc.), the failure of policing changes and repression in general

and the failure of “outreach”

Most of Nixon’s strategy was abandoned

“Stalemate” of the Ford and Carter years (1970s)

(note – these strategies failed in Vietnam too)

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Chapter 2 -- the second wave begins with Reagan admin

(the 1980s)

Key response was to the (much bigger!) economic crisis of capitalism – decreasing profits

Focus was “rollback” of post-WW2 socialism and containing further expansion of the middle class

(2011 - focus now is on decreasing the middle class!)

“entitlements”

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In Marxist terms (and in reality) the post war socialist changes had raised the wages of workers (they got to keep more of what they produced) – but as workers became more prosperous two things happened – the rate of profits began to drop (capitalists got a smaller share) and saturation of markets led to over accumulation making it harder to market products which also reduced profits.

So the problem (from a cap point of view) was how to reverse the trends of increasing wages and the falling rate of profit – how to reverse post war socialism.

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Alan Budd quote – how to weaken the working class

A new class warRe-engineering the economyDisciplining the working class

Engineering an economic recession which then becomes

rationale for tax cuts, deregulation, weakening unions, and later, what would become known as outsourcing

P 44. Summary of “Reaganomics”

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Chapter 3 see p 45 summary

Reversing the growth of the middle class has been subtle

- tax cuts, deregulation, destruction of unions, etc.

But the destruction “trickles down” to the unstable wc and the poor

Generates large surplus populations – “social junk” and “social dynamite”

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The problem that this poses for the cjs is what Parenti calls “policing the new rabble”

First through the “war on drugs” (dealers to users)Then the war on petty crime – “zero tolerance”Then a new war on immigrants.

This is all a byproduct of economic changes, and this is what drives the imprisonment binge

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In Part 2, Parenti turns to an analysis of the changes in policing in the 1980s and 1990s as economic

restructuring leads to chronic crime and disorder in the inner cities (urban “second rings” of cities).

“Zero tolerance” and paramilitary policing lead to high levels of arrest even as serious crime rates are

dropping (because of demographics – baby boomers aging out)