- Email: [email protected]
Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis
380
Book reviews / Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2002) 343–384
The part intended to describe Maynard’s life with Lydia Lopokova, after she divorced the bigamous Barocchi, does not escape from the enormous ambiguity perceived by the couple’s family and friends when they got married (chap. 8). The press commented: “Has there ever been a union of beauty and brains like that of Lopokova with Maynard Keynes?” Alfred Marshall’s widow once declared: “It is the best thing Maynard has ever done.” Lytton Strachey wondered, “How can Maynard be engaged to that ‘airhead canary’ that hovers amidst the furniture, singing incessantly? She can’t even understand a word of English!” Vanessa Bell had already warned Maynard in 1922: “Don’t marry her. Once you get married, Lydia will stop dancing. She will start being too expensive to support and you will end up being irretrievably bored with her.” Roger Fry concluded, “I think this will be a terrible tragedy for Maynard,” while Virginia Woolf stated that the wedding was “a horrendous mistake.” Felix’s book, truly alienated from Sir Roy Harrod and Robert Skidelsky’s sympathetic and academically consistent biographical efforts, unveils a key aspect of Keynesian elaboration that Felix seems to share: the biographical intention of objectively portraying the characters he did not find agreeable. With the exception of Thomas Robert Malthus, Bernard Shaw, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, the characters described in Keynes’s Biographical Essays, from the Council of the Four and the Versailles Conference to Winston Churchill and Alfred Marshall, were harshly and even terribly criticized by Maynard, whether it be due to the obligations imposed on Germany after World War I or to the fact that the British economy was thrown back to the gold standard. Nevertheless, when it comes to writing biographies, Keynes, just like Felix, displayed an understanding objectivity that, along with the quality of the essays, honors these outstanding critical biographers. Felix opens a new door for the observation of Keynes without the perversion of the bastard Keynesians denounced by Joan Robinson; without the prejudice of the neo-Keynesians, who, according to Hyman P. Minsky, ended up thinking that in Keynes’s elaboration “what is good is not new”; and without the benevolence of those who write biographies of flawless and lofty beings. In the end, Felix offers his reading of the double life (both public and private) of a human being whose importance is still being analyzed in the light of his undeniable greatness, which was determined by his perennial qualities and occasional failures. U. Federico Novelo Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Calzada del Hueso Col. Villa Quietud, Xochimilco C.P. 04960 Coyoacan, D.F., Mexico Tel.: +52-5483-7497; fax: +52-5483-7235 E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0486-6134(02)00152-3
Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis Christian Parenti; London and New York, NY: Verso, October, 2000, 320 pp., $15 pbk A powerful consensus is emerging among the many excellent books now being released on prison in America, such as the texts by Miller (1996), Donziger (1996), Rosenblatt (1997),
Book reviews / Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2002) 343–384
381
Currie (1998), Burton-Rose, Pens, and Wright (1998), and Dyer (2000). These books are all delving into the same basic themes: the bizarre relationship between falling crime rates coupled with rising public fear of crime, the massive costs of incarceration, the racism and brutality running rampant through law enforcement and corrections, and the effects of all this on society as a whole. Christian Parenti’s Lockdown America is a valuable addition to this literature that is concerned with a dark side of American social life: crime, poverty, police brutality, the violent culture of prisons, and the economic, social, and political conditions that make prison “work” (that is, work for a few at the expense of the many, particularly the poor and people of color). The book chronicles the rise of what is now called the prison-industrial complex, a massive establishment that has grown from 200,000 inmates in 1970 to two million today. This is an astonishing increase that has effects on society that are extremely far-reaching. Parenti makes use of the scholarship of URPE members such as Bluestone and Harrison (1982), Bowles, Gordon, and Weisskopf (1990), and Schor (1992), to show the relationship between the economic crises and development of the United States and how these processes shaped the rise of the prison industrial complex. This is a fascinating story, and Parenti does a fine job telling it. The rhetoric that has supported the prison buildup is that of war: the war on crime, the war on drugs, zero tolerance. The war metaphors manifest in urban communities as a form of siege, with helicopters and heavily-armed SWAT teams increasingly used to “neutralize” and “contain” the “enemy.” Some of Parenti’s best on-the-ground investigative reporting is revealed here amidst the details of police procedures and attitudes, the language and equipment used, and how easily this turns to brutality. In fact, this reporting is probably what Parenti is best known for, with several articles in The Nation on the rise of paramilitary-style policing in California and elsewhere. Another valuable contribution is the insightful analysis of the power relationships in prison. Synthesizing material as diverse as articles from criminology, political science, and psychology, to correctional manuals and biographies of wardens and inmates, Parenti weaves a complex and disturbing tale of domination. This is not a story merely of the control that prison authorities exercise over inmates (although of course this control is maintained), but also of the power inmates have, shown in prison riots, where it becomes clear that the inmates, provided they act in cooperation, can control nearly any prison. To avoid this situation, correctional authorities seek to undermine the ability of inmates to cooperate with each other, in other words, divide and conquer, perhaps a microcosm of society. In Pelican Bay prison, California, there is a special high-security part of the prison that is more or less on permanent lockdown, subjecting those inmates caged there to extreme isolation and sensory deprivation. There are only three ways out of this unit, which some have called “a living death”: an inmate can “snitch” (that is, provide information about criminal activity among the other inmates), be paroled, or die. Since all the inmates know this, anyone who is released back into the general population is assumed to be a snitch and is immediately attacked. If inmates are fighting each other, they are unable to cooperate; the threat that their numbers represent is effectively undermined. One of the most powerful sections of the book explains the social functions of rape in prison. Parenti argues that the sexual assault endemic to prisons is more about establishing
382
Book reviews / Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2002) 343–384
an oppressive, gendered regime among the inmates than it is about sex per se. When people learn the hidden truth about the prevalence of sexual assault in prison, they invariably ask why the guards permit it; the answer is, what better way to give dangerous men a release for the anger and frustration they must feel at the daily humiliations, the infantilization, the oppression and alienation of being caged, then to reverse and reproduce the power dynamic by savagely abusing the weaker inmates? Of course, it is not as if guards actually create the conditions for rape, but by looking the other way, by refusing to do anything about it or even acknowledge it, they do much to allow it to flourish and become an established facet of prison life. In fact, the prevalence of rape in prison serves the interests of the guards, because it keeps inmates divided along the artificially created gender lines that define the inmate who rapes as the “man” and the inmate who is raped as the “woman” (or, in the misogynistic parlance of prisons, the “bitch”). This book reveals many important details of the emerging police state in America, and more importantly provides a powerful theory in which to contain these details, but do not look here for solutions to the prison crisis. In an all-too-brief conclusion, Parenti sketches a few ideas and policies that would bring about change, but the focus is broad, the recommendations sweeping. It almost seems added as an afterthought. Of course, there are no simple solutions to the incarceration frenzy, but a bit more detail may be helpful to those seeking to end the racism, exploitation, and oppression that are so clearly manifest in American prisons. Asatar Bair Department of Economics University of Massachusetts at Amherst 828 Thompson Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Tel.: +1-909-341-8067 E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0486-6134(02)00153-5 References Bluestone, B., & Harrison, B. (1982). The deindustrialization of America. New York: Basic Books. Bowles, S., Gordon, D., & Weisskopf, T. (1990). After the wasteland: A democratic economics for the year 2000. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Burton-Rose, D., Pens, D., & Wright, P. (1998). The celling of America: An inside look at the U.S. prison industry. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. Currie, E. (1998). Crime and punishment in America. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Donziger, S. (1996). The real war on crime. New York: Harper Perennial. Dyer, J. (2000). The perpetual prisoner machine: How America profits from crime. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Miller, J. G. (1996). Search & destroy: African–Americans in the criminal justice system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenblatt, E. (1997). Criminal injustice. Boston: South End Press. Schor, J. B. (1992). The overworked American. New York: Basic Books.
Book reviews / Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2002) 343–384
The part intended to describe Maynard’s life with Lydia Lopokova, after she divorced the bigamous Barocchi, does not escape from the enormous ambiguity perceived by the couple’s family and friends when they got married (chap. 8). The press commented: “Has there ever been a union of beauty and brains like that of Lopokova with Maynard Keynes?” Alfred Marshall’s widow once declared: “It is the best thing Maynard has ever done.” Lytton Strachey wondered, “How can Maynard be engaged to that ‘airhead canary’ that hovers amidst the furniture, singing incessantly? She can’t even understand a word of English!” Vanessa Bell had already warned Maynard in 1922: “Don’t marry her. Once you get married, Lydia will stop dancing. She will start being too expensive to support and you will end up being irretrievably bored with her.” Roger Fry concluded, “I think this will be a terrible tragedy for Maynard,” while Virginia Woolf stated that the wedding was “a horrendous mistake.” Felix’s book, truly alienated from Sir Roy Harrod and Robert Skidelsky’s sympathetic and academically consistent biographical efforts, unveils a key aspect of Keynesian elaboration that Felix seems to share: the biographical intention of objectively portraying the characters he did not find agreeable. With the exception of Thomas Robert Malthus, Bernard Shaw, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, the characters described in Keynes’s Biographical Essays, from the Council of the Four and the Versailles Conference to Winston Churchill and Alfred Marshall, were harshly and even terribly criticized by Maynard, whether it be due to the obligations imposed on Germany after World War I or to the fact that the British economy was thrown back to the gold standard. Nevertheless, when it comes to writing biographies, Keynes, just like Felix, displayed an understanding objectivity that, along with the quality of the essays, honors these outstanding critical biographers. Felix opens a new door for the observation of Keynes without the perversion of the bastard Keynesians denounced by Joan Robinson; without the prejudice of the neo-Keynesians, who, according to Hyman P. Minsky, ended up thinking that in Keynes’s elaboration “what is good is not new”; and without the benevolence of those who write biographies of flawless and lofty beings. In the end, Felix offers his reading of the double life (both public and private) of a human being whose importance is still being analyzed in the light of his undeniable greatness, which was determined by his perennial qualities and occasional failures. U. Federico Novelo Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Calzada del Hueso Col. Villa Quietud, Xochimilco C.P. 04960 Coyoacan, D.F., Mexico Tel.: +52-5483-7497; fax: +52-5483-7235 E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0486-6134(02)00152-3
Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis Christian Parenti; London and New York, NY: Verso, October, 2000, 320 pp., $15 pbk A powerful consensus is emerging among the many excellent books now being released on prison in America, such as the texts by Miller (1996), Donziger (1996), Rosenblatt (1997),
Book reviews / Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2002) 343–384
381
Currie (1998), Burton-Rose, Pens, and Wright (1998), and Dyer (2000). These books are all delving into the same basic themes: the bizarre relationship between falling crime rates coupled with rising public fear of crime, the massive costs of incarceration, the racism and brutality running rampant through law enforcement and corrections, and the effects of all this on society as a whole. Christian Parenti’s Lockdown America is a valuable addition to this literature that is concerned with a dark side of American social life: crime, poverty, police brutality, the violent culture of prisons, and the economic, social, and political conditions that make prison “work” (that is, work for a few at the expense of the many, particularly the poor and people of color). The book chronicles the rise of what is now called the prison-industrial complex, a massive establishment that has grown from 200,000 inmates in 1970 to two million today. This is an astonishing increase that has effects on society that are extremely far-reaching. Parenti makes use of the scholarship of URPE members such as Bluestone and Harrison (1982), Bowles, Gordon, and Weisskopf (1990), and Schor (1992), to show the relationship between the economic crises and development of the United States and how these processes shaped the rise of the prison industrial complex. This is a fascinating story, and Parenti does a fine job telling it. The rhetoric that has supported the prison buildup is that of war: the war on crime, the war on drugs, zero tolerance. The war metaphors manifest in urban communities as a form of siege, with helicopters and heavily-armed SWAT teams increasingly used to “neutralize” and “contain” the “enemy.” Some of Parenti’s best on-the-ground investigative reporting is revealed here amidst the details of police procedures and attitudes, the language and equipment used, and how easily this turns to brutality. In fact, this reporting is probably what Parenti is best known for, with several articles in The Nation on the rise of paramilitary-style policing in California and elsewhere. Another valuable contribution is the insightful analysis of the power relationships in prison. Synthesizing material as diverse as articles from criminology, political science, and psychology, to correctional manuals and biographies of wardens and inmates, Parenti weaves a complex and disturbing tale of domination. This is not a story merely of the control that prison authorities exercise over inmates (although of course this control is maintained), but also of the power inmates have, shown in prison riots, where it becomes clear that the inmates, provided they act in cooperation, can control nearly any prison. To avoid this situation, correctional authorities seek to undermine the ability of inmates to cooperate with each other, in other words, divide and conquer, perhaps a microcosm of society. In Pelican Bay prison, California, there is a special high-security part of the prison that is more or less on permanent lockdown, subjecting those inmates caged there to extreme isolation and sensory deprivation. There are only three ways out of this unit, which some have called “a living death”: an inmate can “snitch” (that is, provide information about criminal activity among the other inmates), be paroled, or die. Since all the inmates know this, anyone who is released back into the general population is assumed to be a snitch and is immediately attacked. If inmates are fighting each other, they are unable to cooperate; the threat that their numbers represent is effectively undermined. One of the most powerful sections of the book explains the social functions of rape in prison. Parenti argues that the sexual assault endemic to prisons is more about establishing
382
Book reviews / Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2002) 343–384
an oppressive, gendered regime among the inmates than it is about sex per se. When people learn the hidden truth about the prevalence of sexual assault in prison, they invariably ask why the guards permit it; the answer is, what better way to give dangerous men a release for the anger and frustration they must feel at the daily humiliations, the infantilization, the oppression and alienation of being caged, then to reverse and reproduce the power dynamic by savagely abusing the weaker inmates? Of course, it is not as if guards actually create the conditions for rape, but by looking the other way, by refusing to do anything about it or even acknowledge it, they do much to allow it to flourish and become an established facet of prison life. In fact, the prevalence of rape in prison serves the interests of the guards, because it keeps inmates divided along the artificially created gender lines that define the inmate who rapes as the “man” and the inmate who is raped as the “woman” (or, in the misogynistic parlance of prisons, the “bitch”). This book reveals many important details of the emerging police state in America, and more importantly provides a powerful theory in which to contain these details, but do not look here for solutions to the prison crisis. In an all-too-brief conclusion, Parenti sketches a few ideas and policies that would bring about change, but the focus is broad, the recommendations sweeping. It almost seems added as an afterthought. Of course, there are no simple solutions to the incarceration frenzy, but a bit more detail may be helpful to those seeking to end the racism, exploitation, and oppression that are so clearly manifest in American prisons. Asatar Bair Department of Economics University of Massachusetts at Amherst 828 Thompson Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Tel.: +1-909-341-8067 E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0486-6134(02)00153-5 References Bluestone, B., & Harrison, B. (1982). The deindustrialization of America. New York: Basic Books. Bowles, S., Gordon, D., & Weisskopf, T. (1990). After the wasteland: A democratic economics for the year 2000. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Burton-Rose, D., Pens, D., & Wright, P. (1998). The celling of America: An inside look at the U.S. prison industry. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. Currie, E. (1998). Crime and punishment in America. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Donziger, S. (1996). The real war on crime. New York: Harper Perennial. Dyer, J. (2000). The perpetual prisoner machine: How America profits from crime. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Miller, J. G. (1996). Search & destroy: African–Americans in the criminal justice system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenblatt, E. (1997). Criminal injustice. Boston: South End Press. Schor, J. B. (1992). The overworked American. New York: Basic Books.