Gilmore – Crisis and Surplus
In Gilmore’s article, she writes about an existent crisis and surplus regarding prison population and the reconstruction of the state. The crisis, being of social matter, is the actuality of imprisonment, who is being imprisoned, and historical content relating to potential reasons correlating with their imprisonment. Prison, masking as a solution for social crises among a population, has caused and continues to cause a new state, a state that she refers to as a “prison industrial complex,” (p. 178). This solution, un-coincidentally, and simultaneously rids problems associated with minorities, domestic enemies, minorities, and anyone causing civil disorder, making the state feel out of control.
“Objectively, crises are neither bad nor good, but crises do indicate inevitable change, the outcome of which is determined through struggle. Struggle, like crisis, is a politically neutral word: in this scenario, everyone struggles because they have no alternative,” (p. 178). The significance within this text, relating to prison population, is this idea that struggle is inevitable due to inexistence of an alternative. This idea, however, seems inaccurate, considering that historical events that have contributed to many particular people’s struggles, and some people’s advantages. For example, after the Great Depression, there was a heavy diminishing of work for a lot of employees, and yet, the hierarchy of the structured society still held up. This means, people in power and wealth, considerably higher classes, remained in superior classes, while the lower classes, continued to struggle within that status. Another example, emphasizing on the class issue in a hierarchy, African Americans and Latinos, who, still today, make up the majority of lower class statuses, make up the majority percentage and surplus of people in prison.
Now, without ignoring the racial factors, referring to Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” it is stated that there are more African Americans recorded in prison in the U.S, than there have been slaves. There’s obvious controversy that this is a race issue, and it very well might be, but it goes deeper than that when the actual structure of a society is coercing Social Darwinism. The need for survival, especially considering the economic instability that ultimately limits the access and opportunity for some to educate themselves, progress, and better themselves, contributes to illegal ways of earning compensation. To assume that everyone struggles because there are no alternatives, neutrally, is an understatement.
Prison, which is a huge contributor to Capitalist economies, is a way to continue a flow of currency when other markets and contributors fall or downsize. “Alternatively, all prisoners might well be required to work in the public sector, both to pay their own costs and to make profit for the state, as was the case in prisons of the US South starting at the turn of the twentieth century,” (p. 186). Referring to publicly owned prisons and reconstructions, prisoners forced to work can be one solution to society’s tax struggle. This surplus labor tax, as Gilmore calls it, or new way of industrialization to preserve the economy, can be well connected to former slavery, forcing predominantly colored, caged people to work for little to nothing. The very foundation of prisons depict a strong aligning with racism and exploitation – and is clearly being used as an alternative plan for restricting and improving the state’s political and economic standing, as opposed to being concerned of the welfare of citizens due to actual crime and danger.
