Policing Black Liberation: The American Prison Industry

Prison is a billion dollar industry and the current state of policing which patrols looking for arrests treats citizens like criminals waiting to happen in order to feed a for-profit system that capitalizes off of violence and poverty instead of reducing either. 

It’s not about whether individual police are bad or good. That’s not what we are discussing here. And no one is encouraging violence against police or that you resist arrest which can cost you your life. It’s not about being anti-police, it’s about the history of the system of law enforcement and whether the institution is currently working.

The current system of mass incarceration is random at best when it comes to targeting people to “prevent” crimes and that makes it oppressive for some communities more than others because some people have prejudices and harass those communities. 

Marginalized communities have far greater police presence and that increases the likelihood of arrests while wealthy neighborhoods live hassle free and enjoy low arrest rates. But that doesn’t mean there’s less crime happening, especially when it comes to drug use.

We often live in informally racially segregated neighborhoods and many black communities have a higher presence of police which leads to disproportionate arrests in those communities. For example, White and black people use cannabis at similar rates yet black people are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for the drug. This demonstrates how targeting and highly policing particular people or a particular area leads to more arrests even when crime rates are the same as other demographics and areas.

“We know that resources are the largest predictor of whether an area will have low or high crime.”

This is why the true key to enjoying low crime rates is resources and our current system does nothing to try to provide better resources to areas with less resources so our current system does nothing to actually prevent crime or get to the root of it. The areas that are the safest are the areas that have the most resources not the most police.

We know that resources are the largest predictor of whether an area will have low or high crime. In addition to this inability to address the true root of crime disparity in communities, the current system of policing has structural issues in how it is designed to operate. The traditional bureaucracy that shapes systems of policing makes it such that accountability for officers who are violent to marginalized community members is rare since police answer to an internal body that reviews accusations of brutality rather than answer to a community run council of elected local officials.

Policing also currently erodes democratic norms rather than protecting them and while these rights are being given up not much is being accomplished in terms of community protection since most serious crimes, like murder, still go unsolved at high rates. The right of habeas corpus and due process for example are often taken away from citizens who are killed in police custody. This is one example of an erosion of democratic norms.

The officer is able to act alone on their decision to incarcerate someone, and people may be incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. This gives individual police a lot of power over the average citizen, the power to take away their freedom because they decide to. If a citizen resists this incarceration, they may lose their life, even if the offense is as minor as a traffic violation. 

Giving police the authority to arrest for such offenses increases the amount of arrests which increases the amount of life endangering encounters for both police and citizens. This is why armed policing should be a last resort, warrants should have to be issued for arrests giving people an opportunity to turn themselves in, and no one should be incarcerated who is not a danger to the community. This is the minimum solution.

“While a small portion of Americans are getting filthy rich off of the 74 billion dollar generating penal system, the black people being targeted to fill up prisons are footing the real bill”

Our prison system is already very overcrowded with members of  marginalized communities being overrepresented. The current system of mass incarceration places millions of people behind bars and the turnover of cash coming through this industry is enough to cover the entire gross domestic production of cash in 133 nations. This is the power of the American economy when it creates a public industry, an important point which I’ll return to tomorrow when it comes to providing resources to low resource communities. 

While a small portion of Americans are getting filthy rich off of the 74 billion dollar generating penal system, the black people being targeted to fill up prisons are footing the real bill of a culture where stereotyping and demonization of black people as violent or criminal runs rampant as a result of attempting to justify the over incarceration of black and brown people as the main modality of justice. 

American citizens who largely still have a problem with implicit anti-black bias and a smaller portion who still have a problem with deep rooted anti-black hate exist in our society. There is currently nothing stopping these people from becoming police. Policing remains disproportionately white as well as very hierarchical and bureaucratic.

Such formations of public institutions are breeding grounds for white supremacist activity in a culture where white men have traditionally held the power which means it is easier for them to be promoted due to having the previous experience. This makes it easier for those who may be racists to attain unchecked power in a bureaucratic system where officers and their leaders are not elected but chosen and promoted from within.

This is not about “all white men” but if you have a problem of anti-black bias amongst citizens plus white men overwhelmingly dominating the representation in positions of great power other white men will likely be promoted and diversity is easily stifled in bureaucratic systems where the white men who hold most of the power make the decisions to favor other white men and people.

“In this case, where white men dominate law enforcement this means the historically dominant social group basically has policing power over other marginalized groups”

This compulsively reproduces white supremacist patriarchy and upholds the current social hierarchy by maintaining white men’s dominance of positions of power within U.S. society. Where there is bureaucracy, privilege will follow, this results in an already dominant social group maintaining power. 

In this case, where white men dominate law enforcement this means the historically dominant social group basically has policing power over other marginalized groups which are then placed in vulnerable positions as at the mercy of another group which has historically oppressed them.

The continued dominance of white men across positions of power within policing is held in place by systems that are not a product of democracy at their foundations. Nothing about the history of policing is democratic. Everything is about rule of a dominant group over a marginalized group.