å Sunday, March 26th, 2017

In Gilmore’s essay “Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism”, the author leads us from the start of whether the massive incarcerations are reasonable in acting upon or weather the actions taken have “purpose” behind the naked eye in being beneficial.

She uses the State of California as a model of which people of color have been the greatest population to be imprisoned, roughly two thirds of them. With such high numbers as it continues to increment, there is a consideration of being utilized as an economic factor uprising the financial growth of the state. She suggests that some of the reasons for a high percentage of imprisonment has to do with societies way of departing from the normalized behavior conducted within society in which also has to do in relation with the high usage of drugs (Gilmore 172). The people who suffer, these injurious actions are for the most part from poor local populations, as much as these areas are affected, the confinement of out of order persons does provide accomplishment for a safety space.

Yet even with the “presumable” violence going on in society, there still was the fact that racism promoted an inflicting punishment, particularly towards blacks. Not to mention that an operation of production was on its way, a pecuniary gain known as carceral Keynesianism (Gilmore 174). It so happens that statistics show an unidentical treatment from white prisoners to colored ones. When all these components, that are negative, part take in the large-scale community of the state, they become factors that arise financial improvement. Under such indispensable circumstances, forms an extreme organizational system to which clears up serious questions solved.

In spite of prisons having some form of surplus where it hopes to maintain a tendency of economic growth, it does not serve well in being relied as a basis of producing again. This comes to cause an ascent in the number of persons who are unemployed, becoming a deeper agency of elevated levels for people who were engaged in particular fields or activities for themselves and their loved ones (Gilmore 178). It starts influencing more over to specific groups of agricultural businesses whose making of goods diminishes. At the same time that this is happening the area of ground comes into undergoing devaluation. No true method of solving came forth into view where we can say that the government was going to find the solution in dealing with the excessive amounts.

In her essay “Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism”, Ruth Gilmore tackles the complexities of the united states prison system. Specifically, Gilmore addresses why the prison population continues to increase even as crime decreases. She proposes that it is a purposeful, and radical, restructuring of society. When I originally read ‘radical restructuring’, my eye read it as ‘racial restructuring’, which is not far from the truth. For as Gilmore points outs, seventy per cent of those arrested are white, yet seventy per cent of those incarcerated are persons of color (174).  To understand why this is happening, Gilmore turns to economic theory, focusing on the concept of ‘surplus’ and ‘crises’, in California.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, Gilmore carefully explains how a surplus leads to a crisis. In this particular case, a surplus of labor, in the form of those willing to work but unable to find jobs, and land, in the form of unused agricultural land, lead to an economic crisis. This crisis, coupled with the social crises caused by inequality, lead to a government response that was a highly inhumane political, rather than economic response – higher incarceration rates. But how to justify the high incarceration rates? To find the answer to the question posed, Gilmore brings us back to 1968.

1968 was a tumultuous year and may be considered the apex of the social movements of the 60s. One movement in particular Gilmore points to is the Black Power movement, positioned as an alternative to assimilation given white America’s refusal to substantially address racial discrimination and inequality. Alongside the rise of the Black Power movement, Gilmore also examines the rise of urban riots (whereas prior to the 1960s riots had historically been instigated by either whites or police). The radicalization of black and brown Americans lead to fear amongst white America. The answer to both the radicalization of the marginalized and the crisis caused by the surplus of labor and land, lead to the rapid expansion of the prison system.

As we have seen throughout the semester, capitalism and globalism are often the cause of human rights violations. And if not the cause, then either a propelling force or a way to hide true motivations. Although not mentioned in Gilmore’s essay, it is worth noting that in most states, you lose your right to vote if convicted of a felony (a California bill went into effect this year granting the right to vote to felons once they were no longer serving their prison term). The purposeful incarceration and disenfranchisement of people of color serves many purposes for those in power and as Gilmore states in her conclusion, it is time for us to fight mass incarceration and racism before it is too late.

In the article Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism, the author discuss there are racial, social and political issues that are increasing the jail population rather than moral ones. Since the biggest prison construction in California in 1982, the percentage of inmates in prison rose severely with the highest percentages of African Americans and latinos, and even 7% of women of all races formed part of it. In general this people were the poor class. However she argues that this has a lot to do with globalisation and the increament of economy through  prison’s expansions. First, this was created to maintain the social order even though that was not really the issue, other aspects such as unemployment and inflation during the recession were.

One explanation for the growing number of people in jail was the drug epidemic. Primary, the common use of drugs in the late 1970s and 1980s influenced this expansion where people of color were more decimated. Not only drug dealing but also gang violence which go hand and hand connected provoked the imprisonment of several people even though according to the BJS illegal drugs were used by all kinds of people and had actually declined in the mid 1970s. Another factor was unemployment which pushed people to commit property crimes when looking for new sources of income. Furthermore the percentage of people in prison for this reason doubled significantly since 1982 even though property crime had declined and pushed down crime rate as well. The change in new kind of sentences making them longer and adding more punishable behavior were the causes of the growth in prison.

Anti-black racism and profit generating were the major causes of prison explanations the second one tied to the restructuring of the state. In the mid-sixties radical activism began to appear, including all kinds of people. A prominent one was  The Black Power Movement since African Americans were the ones facing racism.  They fought for equality. However, Los Angeles Watts riots and black or other people protested in the street to condemn economic exploitation, police brutality and social injustice. Different people joined together against Us capitalism and Euro-American racism.

There was not only a social crisis but also a capital disorder or profit crisis, and the population in prison are supposed to fix. The global recession was so detrimental for US, first because the dollar devaluated impeding capitalists the power of buying, it affected everybody specially big corporations and factories that eliminated jobs leaving many people unemployed. There were no strategic plans to employ the state’s capacities and absorb the national surpluses of finance capital, land or labour  (179).

Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s From Military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism argues that after the shift from military Keynesianism – an economic policy that relied on the production of war-related goods to boost the economy – came another shift that resulted in what Gilmore (and others) refer to as the carceral state.

There is a “common sense” notion that has been propagated by the media and political elites, as Gilmore discusses, which assumes that the exponential growth of the US prison population was tied to an increase in crime. But, Gilmore demonstrates that this massive expansion (from some 600,000 people to nearly 2 million in less than 20 years) is due, in reality, to a political imperative rather than anything having to do with a rise in seemingly collective “bad behavior.” Indeed, she shows that the expansion of the carceral state was initiated as crime rates were on the decline.

It’s necessary, then, for Gilmore to take readers back to the social and economic crises that came to a head in one of the most infamous years in social struggle history: 1968. It was the height of the Black Power movement, a time of mass upheaval (1968 was the year that MLK, jr. was assassinated sparking an explosion of street rebellions in hundreds of cities across the country. As Gilmore points out, before this era, riots were generally started by white people) that political elites were able to utilize to paint a picture of a black community out of control. Gilmore explains that this social crisis was compounded by an economic crisis of capitalist profitability – largely a response to earlier Keynesian economic policies.

While it may seem counterintuitive, Gilmore points to a marxist understanding of crisis to explain how crisis and surplus are actually linked up. Once the productive forces of society are stalled, a transformation of some kind is forced to resolve this crisis. Gilmore posits that the surplus was in the form of human labor – i.e. all those cut off from legitimate wage-labor as a result of racist marginalization – as well as in the form of land – i.e. agriculture lands that were no longer being utilized for productive purposes.

Essentially, the solution to these crises was to utilize the surplus that derived from it to, as in all cases, the benefit of capitalism. It is here where Gilmore, using the State of California as her example, demonstrates that this land and labor was used to physically construct the carceral state – both the land used to build extraordinarily large prisons and a population to then fill the prisons with.

In the article “Globalization and US prison growth: From Military and Keynesianism to post- Keynesian Militarism” by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, she writes about the expansion of prison that connects to socio-economic problems. She also writes about the existent crises and surplus of prison population and reconstructing the state.
From my understanding the crisis Gilmore is analyzing is the social lack and economic panic, which resulted as a huge capital disorder. The problem is the number of crises accumulated throughout three decades. This means that it would take an extremely longer time to get it fix or this problem won’t get fix. The change of getting it fix was very low. I wasn’t sure, but from my point of view she said that one way to get out of the social-economic crisis is by domestic abuse; which eventually turns out to be a behavior that seeks to take the victim’s liberty and freedom away, violent elimination of foreign and domestic enemies. Crises do indicate a small percent of change specially when those who responsible didn’t attend to result it as soon as they saw a mini crisis approaching. Another problem is that since there huge number of crises happening at the same time it actually means that a lot of people will be suffering, not physically, but economically. In other words, everyone struggles because there is not alternative. Surplus is when something meets it’s requirements and it’s left alone, which means future problems turning into crises. I think that was what happened and this is what Gilmore is trying to explain us. Maybe at some point before all of this happened, those in control and with power had the opportunity to make the right choice and didn’t. In life, everything has a cause and effect and unfortunately the minority and people of color suffered the most.
Surplus labor increased the prison population because there was more unemployment people and less jobs. The result was to look for an illegal job and eventually get caught and go to jail. May people of color and poor saw themselves in this position. In other words, during the mid-1970s there was a job crisis and no way to support themselves and families, one option was to do something illegal. In my opinion the government/police/prison principals only focused on crimes instead of helping increase the economics of the state. Crises and surplus in this cases are the same thing because they influence society.

In the article “Globalisation and US prison growth: From military and Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, she explains to us how the expansion of prison populations has increased because of the “law and order” where this involves the handling and control of cases such as robbery, any kind of violence or disturbance of peace.

This type of bad behavior was treated as a punishment with the fulfillment of people in prisons.But not all the time the penalty was fair since, as Gilmore explains, there existed many racial, economic and political factors.The most common population in a California’s prison was African Americans and latinos and some women of all race.

What was causing this expanding in prison? I will call crisis to the circumstances to let more people go to prison. One of the reasons is the “drug epidemic and the threat to public safety posed by the unrestrained use and trade of illegal substances”(172). Because of the unemployment illegal sale of drugs became one of the ways people used to survive. Unemployment was notable and many people opted for easy money and this came from the illegal drug trade.

The lack of employment was another reason for prison expansion in California. When people were not having employs opportunities they were forced to commit property crimes and drugs traffic. The number of prisoner increase “the percentage of people in prison for property offenses more than doubled since 1982” (Pg. 173)

Gilmore also tells us that the function of prisons was to “fix” social problems. For example, she mentions that there was a civil disorder where people of color were out of control and there was some group of people who wanted to organize big movements. All this crisis, a prison was supposed to resolve to have more prisoners and to fix these social problems. Prisoners had to fight for their rights because most of the time they had a long sentence that not always were correct. They were trying to fight in federal courts to get new reforms to help themselves. The author also mentions that people of color and Latinos compromised a big part of the prison population.

In conclusion, we can say that the “surplus labor” incremented the prison population in the U.S was the excedent of unemploy people because there were more people that employments at that time. The mid-1970s recession produced that big corporation eliminated jobs and workers were suffering from unemployment. There were a lot of people who could not get jobs and also there were more people coming as an immigrant looking for jobs.

Gilmore describes both the US prison system and the surpluses as resulting from globalization and the “uneven development”(page 174) it causes. Though the prison system is also described as an economic and political response to both the uneven development and to moral panic.

The surpluses cross over many different aspects of our society – capital, labor, land, and the power of the state but what she is primarily pointing to is a surplus of production, it’s really the natural ebb and flow of an economy – at least a capitalistic one (I truly can’t speak on any other economies, having no experience or understanding of them).

One way the expanding prison system relates to the restructuring of the state, is the power grab by the Right in 1968, when the Right criminalized activists and activist groups individually in order to show control and progress towards order by making specific arrests. Gilmore describes this as “domestic war-making” on the part of the state (page 176) and literally means creating a racial and class war between state run police and militant activist groups, in fact militarizing the state against these groups.

These events had been set in motion earlier, at the end of WWII with the growth of the Department of War and the popularization of military Keynesianism, which meant in the most common terms that war made the country rich. The way rights were distributed at this time further entrenched the rights of the white male, particularly those in cities, while denying rights to workers, particularly agricultural workers, people of color, and women. In short, it reinforced capitalism. In the mean time and updated Keynesianism was working to decreases taxes on wealthy corporations and criminalize the welfare state.

The crisis Gilmore is describing is actually a culmination of several crises. The moral panic, the civil unrest revolving around civil rights, students and activists, racial tensions, criminalizing black communities, panic about single women and single mothers, power structures within the activism world, and economic panic on both the individual and corporate level. The new state that comes from this crises is the prison state – a surplus of defense against crime.

It really is striking that in a state as liberal as California the prison system has a budget close to that of the state university systems. Gilmore relates the prison system to a “big stick” used by the state to keep labor movements in check, and as operating behind a “wall of racism” (page 186). Demolishing the prison industrial complex is put foremost in her view, as a means of restructuring the state in a way that would be amenable to human rights activists.