Under Lock & Key

Based on my perspective as a current captive in Texas State Prison, the purpose behind the renewed urge for expansion is different than when prison populations were in a high degree of political discontent.

It appears at this moment in time that the government apparatus’s principal reason for wanting to expand is to accommodate the influx of illegal immigrants. The premise of this political theory denotes that when waves of new lumpen enter a highly automated economy, crime rates drastically spike resulting in demands for prison beds.

An antithesis to this may argue that department of corrections across America are “alarmingly” short of prison staff and thus don’t have aims to build new prisons and/or re-open those that had been partially or completely shut down due to staff shortages. Moreover, the proponents argue against the likelihood of expansion because state prison systems have already been outsourcing their prisoners that are overflowing in county jails to other states for housing.

However, there are a number of factors indicating prison expansion is feasible. One is that fewer and fewer prison staff are needed to operate these concentration camps. For instance, prisoncrats have honed their use of humanism, programmatics, and diversification to make prisoners more content.

Specifically, The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has been steadily implementing a caste system among the prison general population. Wherein there are a variety of unique prisoner groups (religious field ministers, life coaches, self help prevention squad, peer health educators, etc) some of which have been provided their own private office space and computers whose software is designed to exclusively handle program curricula. This is in addition to narcotics sedating large segments of captives, thus requiring minimal staff supervision and leading to prisons being more easily manageable.

The final point illustrating that prison expansion is on the horizon is Texas has begun a vigorous campaign advertising employment to high school students. Additionally, Texas deployed a strategy luring a surplus of employment to their prisons located around inner cities. These correctional officers are then transported to work in prison units in rural areas that have staff shortages.

TDCJ staff predominately consists of Africans who literally sleep constantly on the job and more than likely during the approximately four hour road trip. Therefore, Texas appears to be on the cutting edge, serving as an example to other states, on the feasibility of expanding and effectively operating prisons.

Humanization

Coinciding with prison expansion is honing the use of humanizing prisoners, as Tip of The Spear has pointed out. One example of contemporary forms of humanizing is the state of Florida designating entire prison units to be so-called incentivized living conditions. Texas has begun to follow this example but has only yet limited incentivized living to sections within prison units. At this stage Texas has exclusively accommodated captives that have been sentenced to life without parole and others sentenced to a long time. [Editor: California also rolled out its new “California Model” focused on rehabilitation in 2023.] Overall, the humanization of prisoners through incentivized living conditions works hand-in-hand with the goal of expanding prison systems as it makes prison populations far more compliant with their conditions.

Diversification

Compared to California and mid-western state prisons, Texas has traditionally maintained a more diversified prison population. This degree of diversification has helped TDCJ to operate more smoothly because its prisoners don’t get killed if housed in general population for certain crimes such as rape. Due in part to federal implementation of the Safe Prison Act, its parallel states’ anti-extortion department, and more compliant prisons, the protective custody class has gradually merged into the general prison population.

Accordingly, I surmised that the purpose for diversification in Texas is to economize prison space, rather than to undermine potential political disunity and unrest amongst the broader prisoner class.

In regards to implementing state sanctioned programs such as Bridges-To-Life, Cognitive Intervention, Life Skills, etc, not surprisingly their curriculum consists of bland content. The general theme focuses exclusively on the criminal actions of captives rather than the role general society played in creating conditions of criminality. These programs are made attractive because TDCJ requires prisoners to “voluntarily” acquire certificates allegedly to increase parole chances, in a blatantly obvious arbitrary parole system.

Solutions

One solution to counter prisoners being lulled with humanization as a pretense for prison expansion is to teach fellow captives the sinister aims of the government apparatus. During this effort the counter replies I have gotten from captives were “Texas budget will not allow for prison expansion.”

At present time of this document, NPR is scheduled to cover discussions on the pros and cons of reintroducing private prisons to address county jail and prison overcrowding. In the current de-incarceration era, I am not aware of any prisoner advocates that don’t want a drastic reduction in prison populations. Therefore, another solution to counter prisoner expansion is I suggest that the foregoing political theory be widely publicized, including on social media.

MIM(Prisons) adds: The idea that the United $tates is a “highly automated economy” certainly has some merit, but we do not want to cover up the fact that the real reason people here work so little is because the whole country lives on the exploitation of the Third World where most of the things we consume are produced. In addition, migrant labor here in U.$. borders is harvesting and processing our food. It is interesting to watch what Texas has been doing by utilizing migrant labor to run its prisons. In many states, the prison system is part of the greater criminal injustice system that pays Amerikans nice wages to play the role of oppressor. While hiring mercenaries to do its dirty work abroad has many benefits to the U.$. imperialists, it does eliminate the role of nationalism in building loyalty among their soldiers. One benefit is hiring locals who know the terrain to do the work. In the TDCJ, hiring Africans to run their prisons seems likely to only create more contradictions.

In recent years we saw a leveling and then a dip in the prison population in the United $tates. This has been partially motivated by a decrease in pro cop and pro law and order public opinion among Amerikans.(1) Which direction things will go next is hard to say. A Virginia comrade recently wrote in on their tactics for reducing prisons by utilizing building and fire codes. As we’ve stated repeatedly though, getting the state to police itself leads to temporary reforms at best. If we are not engaging in actual power struggle by building an anti-imperialist prison movement that is independent of the state, then we have no real say in what the future of mass incarceration looks like.

^{Note: 1. see The Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons, The Political Economy of U.$. Mass Incarceration, p. 44-45.}

I am a prisoner of the Cañon City Complex, a “campus” with seven prisons holding up to 10,000 victims of Colorado’s giant injustice system. A few weeks ago I went out for a day trip to a doctor in the town next to the complex, Cañon City. Much of the town is new, businesses like motels, fast food joints, etc. line the main drag.

When sitting in the doctor’s office I asked the prison guard who was there, “who or what financially supports all the people and businesses in this town?” He replied, “The Cañon City Complex”. Yup, a whole town that survives (mostly) because of mass imprisonment. Shut down the prisons and the town would quickly become a ghost town.

We think about all the people that suck at the teat of The System, from cops to lawyers, to all jail/prison personnel, to parole officers. But few consider all the people/businesses that have a symbiotic relationship with the teat suckers. Providers of all the goods and services that they use from food, to clothing, to auto repair. A great mass of people around the United $tates who will always cry “law and order,” and who will oppose any reform efforts to reduce the number of people arrested every year (10 million plus per Law Prof. Dan Canon), the number of people imprisoned, or the length of the sentences.

My thesis is: If you are an activist/reformer who wants to change The System, then you need to know exactly what you are up against. You cannot have any real success unless you do.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We agree with that thesis. And this comrade’s report aligns with our past research on the U.$. prison economy and what is driving it. It has become chic to talk about the “Prison Industrial Complex” as if there are a bunch of big corporations whose profits are driving mass incarceration in this country, like the ones that drive military production and war (militarism). As this comrade describes, the prison system is more like the New Deal. But instead of funding jobs to build roads to improve transport for commerce, they are funding jobs to build prisons for population control. In this way a goal of the state is accomplished, while shuffling superprofits from the Third World to the Amerikans in these prison towns doing unproductive labor whether as prison guards, salespeople, cashiers, or insurance agents.

This facility here is one of the most over controlled I’ve been in. You can receive no books, magazines, newspapers or periodicals from the outside. There is no educational material available. There is no mail allowed that has xeroxes, printed by ink jet, internet copies, pictures downloaded from the internet, laser-printer photographs, newspaper or magazine clippings, postcards, envelopes with XOXO, S.W.A.K. (sealed with a kiss) or write back soon, perfume smell or lipstick markings.

There is no access to a law library or legal materials here. I have had legal mail opened not in my presence and have even had legal mail taken because it contained information about how to fight the system a case law about the constitutional rights of prisoners from the Center for Constitutional Rights - a law firm out of New York. It also contained a book called “The Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook”. When the contents were seen, the envelope was resealed and sent back.

I have saved and documented everything. I have written up a civil rights complaint against the jail, Aramark (a prison industry complex member) and 3 officers, but I am unable to file because they refuse to let me make the required copies or get a 6 month copy of my trust account which is required to file In Forma Papuperis.

Also I was helping and advising several other prisoners on how to file suit. I had them file grievances to exhaust the administrative remedies as required by the prison litigation reform act. The administration has caught on to what I’m doing and has refused to answer any of the grievances that match the three issues I am trying to take to court. They refuse to answer them because without proof of exhausting the administrative remedies process, they can not take issues to court.