Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits From Crime

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 336 pages
• Published by: Basic Books December 7, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0813338700
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0813338705
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 12 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
This is a disturbing treatise on an Orwellian component of contemporary capitalism: the free-market takeover of the American corrections system. In the 1980s, Dyer argues, we were told that prison spending had to go up because the crime rate was going up. In the '90s, we've been told we have to spend more on prisons because the crime rate is going down, i.e., spending money works. Those with vested interests, he says, have further told the public that privatized prisons are tax-efficient boons to deindustrialized areas. Dyer provides a plausible argument that violent crime rates over the last twenty years have not fluctuated as dramatically (either up or down) as FBI statistics indicate, and that the bulk of the growth of the prison system is disproportionate to the change in the crime rate. Disproportionately growing numbers of prisoners have been nonviolent criminals, usually caught up in the war on drugs. One of Dyer's innovative observations is the "prisonization" effect: that the extreme brutality of our prison culture virtually guarantees recidivism. This is exacerbated, he argues, by prison privatization: referring to various incidents in the prisons in Colorado, Texas, New Jersey and elsewhere run by Correction Corporation of America and by Wackenhut, Dyer (Harvest of Rage) documents how the cost-cutting drive to please shareholders quickly results in negligence, danger, violence, escapes and a general air of brutalization (he finds particularly heinous the policy of randomly mixing violent and nonviolent offenders). Thus, prison has "hidden costs" to society, which Dyer illuminates. He notes that, because of the growing reliance of the "prison boom" on corporations with a bottom-line mentality, it will soon be too late to turn back the policies of extreme incarceration. Dyer supplements meticulous research with argumentative anger and verve to make a strong case that what has been called the "prison-industrial complex" is preying on largely minority and underclass segments of our society. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews
An indictment of our decision to incarcerate an ever-increasing number of our citizens. According to journalist Dyer (Harvest of Rage, 1997), the lock em up mentality loose in the land is attributable to the prison industrial complex, which he identifies as law-enforcement bureaucrats and private enterprises that profit from our recent prison-building boom. And what a boom its been: The US now imprisons more of its citizens than China or Russiaquite a feat given our smaller population and penchant for thinking of ourselves as more enlightened in matters of criminal justice than either of our Cold War adversaries. In the face of this trend, Dyer asks a simple question: How can the American public possibly believe that locking up so many people makes sense? His answer is equally simple: capitalism. Those profiting from the criminal-justice business have duped the public in the same way that the military-industrial complex led it to accept that vast public outlays were necessary to win the Cold War. While Americans are less at risk of becoming crime victims than they were twenty years ago, public- opinion polls show theyre convinced its just the opposite. Dyer lays much of the blame for this misconception at the feet of the media. Television programs and the nightly news highlight violent acts with alarming regularity, not to inform the public but to boost advertising revenues. Meanwhile, companies that seek a piece of the ever-increasing public money allocated for prisons lobby politicians, who advance their own careers by catering to voters misplaced fear of crime. In Dyers judgment, this combo of circumstances virtually guarantees the perpetuation of a massive falsehood: that ever more prisons are needed. While many of Dyers views are controversial, he provides an ideal place to begin looking at the issue of why most states spend more money building prisons than schools. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This is one of the most important books in many years that tells the truth about our prison system. We have over 2,000,000 citizens in prison in the land of the free. Most of these citizens are non-violent and about 15% are mentally ill in need medical care. With the tax dollars that we pay we treat some non-violent prisoners in ways that are just horrible. It is done by politicians who want to get reelected and understand a terrible fact that the uninformed citizens vote for politicians who advocate building more prisons and filling them to overcrowded capacity with more prisoners. Only a small percentage of the citizenship understand the terrible cost to our society with this practice. It is a cost in billions of dollars and much more. It is also a cost in respect, common sense, decency and the goodness of the American people. On top of this, studies indicate that about ten -15% of prisoners are completely innocent and had absolutely nothing to do with the crime that they were put in prison for. This is because juries do not understand and respect the bedrock of the system which is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt." The large amount of reasonable doubt that is ignored by juries is shocking to the conscious of any good person.