Historically Prison Reform, which is to mean advocacies by persons and groups towards the purpose of achieving a reform of imprisonment and the way it is used in the United States has floundered and hasn't achieved its objectives. If some of it's objectives were realized it was concessional ploys by government. Firstly as a means of co-opting reforms evolutionary direction and secondly tactical maneuvering that strengthens the governmental position all the more firmly. A classic example of this is the Anti-Death Penalty position and advocacy, with the way government, maneuvered by strengthening that weakness of the governmental position and then enforcing it even more draconic ally after the revision and correction of that which made Capital Punishment susceptible to attack by it's foes.
Prison, as used in the U.S. is a means of controlling elements of society who because of their economical oppression are politically and socially marginalized. What this means in the broad sense is, those members of society who because of their manner of interaction with the economy are without the political and social basis to demand substantial access and positive recognition from society are the one's laws and imprisonment are designed for. It doesn't take much to realize that if an element of society lacks the means to stably interact with it, decisions made and the resulting behavior will run counter to society's laws and as such will result in imprisonment. Elements in society who for the most part meet this controlling imperative have been Black people (descendants of enslaved Africans) and the poor blue collar worker or the ubiquitous "working poor".
U.S. society and government does not view its Black elements and blue collar working poor as productive beings in the Political-Economical sense. But it views the population in question first and foremost as a group to be controlled. This antebellum mindset dates back to it's feudalistic and royalist origins when common people were to be controlled and rigidly tied to the land by their so-called betters, in a statist undertaking of Political-Economy. Even with the advent of industrial technology and it's socialist production, those societies of which the United States is a historical offspring simply carried over the feudalistic mindset to socialist industrial production. Of Which even if the so-called commoners, "working poor" of the United States society, Black people and the poor blue collar working Whites are not in practice feudalistically tied to the land they are in principle just as much tied to it due to their lacking of that substantial means of removing themselves from that imperative of control.
The issue of Prison Reform is also the question of what is the structure and development of the materialist-dialectic of American Political-Economy. In other words, if the issue is what is to be done with the predominant imprisonment of Black people and the poor White people, the answer lies with the radical reputation of the American Labor narrative and the speculative-value antagonism. It also lies with a heightened political grasp of the "working poor", to clearly and starkly contrast the divergence of interest within Political-Economy dynamic of their condition. This means not allowing the status-quo and it's support functionaries to describe and define facts as they see fit.
Historically Prison reform holds the position that "open political action" is a specific intellectual activity with the final arbiter the very cause for it's practice and as the Barack Obama Presidency and Senator Jim Webb's initiatives outline the question it preempts organic Prison Reform.
Written by William Imprisoned In Solitary Confinement at Red Onion State Prison Since 1998
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