Profit from Punishment? The politics of prisons, poverty and neoliberal restructuring in the rural American Northwest

摘要

Despite the consistent downtrend in crime rates, escalating incarceration rates and a burgeoning prison population within the US are facilitating a remarkable expansion of the prison industry, thereby creating a potential economic "opportunity" for rural communities. In fact, many rural communities have taken to actively recruiting prisons—public, private, or both—in order to stimulate local economic growth and to counter the intensifying poverty, employment and income effects of neoliberal restructuring, deregulation, and state disinvestment. Underscoring the interconnections between the dynamics of poverty and prison expansion, corrections expenditures are growing at a more rapid rate than all spending for Medicaid, higher education, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (Rojas 1998). Together with the influx of public and private funds related to the punishment industry, the growing demand for prison space and the seeming persistence of crime, prisons now stand as a "recession-proof" strategy for rural community development and renewal. Indeed, there are currently more prisoners than there are farmers in the United States (Huling 2002).