Incarceration in the United States, a practice becoming expansive and critical, has denied the rights and ideals of constitutional American democracy to some of its population and still continues to do so in modern practices. Unfortunately, certain subgroups are targeted by this U.S. institution and are, thereby, stripped of their rights through both systematic means and hidden practices of marginalization. The United States’ incarceration and judicial systems consequentially foster the “premature death” of incarcerated people’s physical, social, and civic lives through both state-sanctioned and extralegal practices of racism. Premature death and a refusal to acknowledge such descriptively racist behaviors are exemplified by the legal justification of prison labor, which is merely a …show more content…
The prison industrial complex is defined as the “overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems” (Lecture 9). This complex forms the basis behind the Prison Industries Enhancement Program, allowing private sector industries to supply prisons with their services as well as use prison labor to produce goods, a clear example of continued oppression. The practice of [“making] the convicts’ labor more profitable” by leasing them to businesses stems back to the first prison systems. In fact, Texas put its prisoners to work making cabinets and working various trade jobs (Perkinson 77). However, this system has evolved slightly and the National Corrections Industry Association now monitors “PIE” programs, though it is not very effective because its members are biased and invested in the program. The association ignores that prison labor is an extension of racism, shown by the lack of unbiased panel members (Lecture