Modern Slavery and Indentured Servitude of Minorities in Today's Industrial Prison Complexes

"Modern Slavery and Indentured Servitude of Minorities in Today's Industrial Prison Complexes"

While modern prisons in the United States have been reformed as depositories/prison industrial complexes for criminals, they are in fact a modern form of legalized, segregated slavery and indentured servitude. Prisons or Correctional Facilities as many are now referred to house a large portion of the minority populous. There are about two million people currently in the prison system/detention centers and more than 70 percent of them are of color.

Prisons were originally called penitentiaries named by the Quakers because they were to provide holy penitence for those housed there. The penitentiaries were created with the thought that they would provide crime free surroundings and a crime free environment. It was thought that if criminals were placed in an environment that was crime free then they would no longer commit crimes. This is the mindset that changed history and the way crimes were dealt with. Instead of physically punishing criminals they were now going to be separated and removed from the environment that caused them to commit crimes and thus introduced imprisonment. But not everyone agreed with this new form of handling criminals as J. P. Brissot De Warville stated after visiting prisons in the US in 1788 "Prisons are destructive of the health, liberty and goodness of man." (Edge 15) The first American Penitentiary was an old jail named Walnut Street Jail. The jail's transformation was completed in 1790 in the city of Philadelphia and composed of outdoor cell blocks with a central corridor. This penitentiary was three stories high and surrounded by a twenty foot wall. Here minor criminals were allowed into the general population and serious criminals were placed in isolation. Walnut Street Jail allowed the criminals that committed minor crimes to perform daily tasks and chores. Walnut Street jail extended the prisoner's privileges by opening an educational facility in 1798. A businessman by the name of Thomas Eddy from New York visited Walnut Street Jail and returned to New York to assist in creating the New York Penal Code and establishment of the Newgate Prison. This institution did not allow corporal punishment, had fifty-four rooms which held eight prisoners to a room and two to a bed. This living situation cause many a riot and Thomas decided to build new prison in upper New York State in which he named Auburn Prison that was completed in 1821.

Auburn Prison was created on a silent, separated, and hard labor system. In this system corporal punishment was reinforced when rules were broken. The prisoners were isolated at night and placed in total solitude if they caused trouble. The state of Pennsylvania decided to enact a penal system in their state as well creating the Eastern State Penitentiary which was opened in 1829. This establishment had thirty-foot stone walls that surrounded seven cell blocks that branched out from a central building. This penitentiary defined the concept of separate and solitary. The prisoners had individual cells with private courtyards for exercise and when venturing outside their cell walls. Their cells were large enough for them to work with-in; therefore, there was no need for the prisoners to ever leave their cell areas.

During this time women prisoners became a large discussion and the fact that they were housed with the men. So, in1873 the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls opened. This was the first penitentiary opened exclusively for women and run by women. The women here were taught domestic skills. Massachusetts and New York soon followed suit with women only institutions. Even with the development of the penitentiaries crime continued to rise and prisons became overcrowded.

In 1876 Elmira the first Reformatory in the state of New York was opened. This was the first facility created to attempt at reforming criminals instead of punishing them. Elmira also became the first at innovation of the modern prison system. Prisoners here held classes (the lower the class the more privileged the inmate), and were housed together according to their classification. The administrators that ran Elmira integrated a steps program allowing the prisoners to gain privileges after completing each classification. They could also be demoted and have to start all over again. The prisoners were able to earn their way out of prison by completing each class successfully. This new program paved the way for the classification of the modern prison such as the minimum, maximum and super maximum prisons.

The first parole system was introduced into the American penal system at Elmira. Within Elmira's walls the prisoners were educated, taught a trade and freely (indentured servitude) produced profitable goods that were sold to the public. The educating of trade to the prisoner's was banned in 1888. They could only hand make products since using machinery and industrial labor brought unjust competition with the outside world. This ban was lifted in 1979 by the US Congress allowing prisoners to once again provide goods to be sold off for prison profits. Crime continued to climb and the number of prisons increased as well both due to the economic hardships many Americans felt. Angela Davis suggests that "Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category of "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color."(Rothenberg 643)

The definition that Angela Davis gives in her book, "Are Prisons Obsolete?" of the prison industrial complex is "The exploitation of prison labor by private corporations is one aspect among an array of relationships linking corporations, government, correctional communities, and media. These relationships constitute what we now call a prison industrial complex." (Davis 84)

The definition that is provided throughout literature is that a prison-industrial complex is the entire entity that allows a prison/correctional facility to function and operate. The prison-industrial complex encompasses the construction, operations, organizations and businesses as well as the services that they offer and provide. These groups are not motivated by the prisoners they provide services for but the profits the prisoners produce for them. Their interests do not lie in reducing crime, nor does it interest them to reform and rehabilitate criminals. Because these groups rely heavily on the profit that prisons produce for them they desire to create more prisons and therefore continue to see crime escalate.

The prison system has