Abolitionism And The Criminal Justice System
Submitted by sidhzz on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
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Abolitionism And The Criminal Justice System
In his book, Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags Western Style (1993;1995), Nils
Christie provides the reader with a warning against the current trend in penal justice toward
industrialization. This paper will critical examine the grounds of this warning, as well as
look at Little Rock Reed and Ivan Denisovich's (1995, JPP, 6:2) arguments on the
relationship of prisons to the bureaucratization and industrialization of the delivery of pain.
Finally this paper will comment on Paul Wright's (1995, JPP, 6:2) warnings about criminals
as commodities, and Jon- Marc Taylor's (1995, JPP, 6:2) discussion of the surplus
population.
Christie argues that crime control has become an industry on the basis that is a major
market, its very profitable with a great deal of private money invested, it is driven by
technology and it has growth factor built into the system. Christie's warning becomes
serious when one realizes that this growth factor involves turning people into prison
commodities, and that there are no natural limits to the expansion of this system.
To fully understand Christie's argument it is best to explore each element. The need
for crime control is major market, whether one is examining the public or private industries.
The public, or state operated institution is major stimulant to the economy as it will usually
hire private companies to build the prisons and supply the equipment for the prisons.
(Christie 95-98) Private money is even found in the running of the public prisons, such as in
the health care and food service industries.
Needless to say that the public prison system means a great deal of money to a many
private companies. Perhaps vested private interest is best shown through the trend in the
expansion of the private prison system. This is the most...
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