Land of the free home to the world's most pervasive and racist prison system

The US is considered throughout the world as pretty barbaric when it comes to its justice and prison system.  The prison industrial complex had mushroomed over the last 25 years.  California's prison  population alone grew at a rate of 500%, between 1982 and 2000.  With the highest incarceration rate in the world at five times the world's average, there are now close to two and a half million people in jail.  Not only does the US, with 5% of the world's population consume 25% of its energy, it also has 25% of the world's prison population.

The prison system is the starkest confirmation of the institutionalized racism of US society as people of color are disproportionally represented. If the figures for white incarceration equaled that of African Americans in particular it would be considered a national disaster.  Black males have a 32% possibility of serving time in prison and while only 12% of the population 42% of the inmates on death row are black.  The same disproportion exists for women; African American women have the highest rate of incarceration among women in the U.S. - four times higher than that of white women. * There is no way to explain this except that it confirms the racist nature of the justice system.  It does not matter whether someone is found guilty or not; if they are all "guilty" that confirms it even more extensively.

As the crisis of the system worsens, this is the only future that capitalism holds for millions of youth and the youth have traditionally played a revolutionary role which makes them all the more threatening.  The greatest US revolutionary of the 20th century, Malcolm X said that "you can't have capitalism without racism", racism, like religious sectarianism and sexism, divides the working class, weakens the working class in our struggle against capital; it is conscious and deliberate on their part.  In that great book by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, The Many Headed Hydra, they describe how black and white, often Irish, plantation slaves often ran away together.  The response of the plantation owners was to make the white escapee responsible for the black.  They institutionalize these divisions, integrate them in to all aspects of society.  It is and has been very successful tool in the capitalist's arsenal aimed at preventing working class unity.

Stats from: Overflowing Prisons Spur Call for Reform  Commission By William Fisher


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