Assignment 07
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.
