Critics view the prison system as a mechanism and an institution that produces and reproduces prison populations that reflect institutional racism in society. Alternatively it is said that democratic societies fail to protect society’s most vulnerable members, and thereby erodes prisoners’ liberty. The only way to ensure the liberty of anyone is to protect it for everyone, and the only way to safeguard the freedom and security of the democratic majority is to also guarantee liberty, equality, and justice to democracy’s minorities. American prisons reify these notions, give them concrete form. Predation and extortion casts in lurid reflection unfair advantages in society outside the prison, such as through white privilege the tyranny of the majority as ethnic gang and by ever-increasing transfers of wealth to the rich — without any subsequent mechanisms of redistribution
References
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Rev. ed. New York: The New Press, 2012. Print.
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus: (Notes towards an Investigation).” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. 85-126. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Print.
Ketcham, Ralph, ed. The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates. New York: Signet, 2003. Print.
Loya, Joe. The Man Who Outgrew his Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber. New York: Rayo, 2004. Print.
Michaels, Walter Benn. The Trouble with Diversity: How we Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. New York: Holt, 2007. Print.
O’Toole, Thomas E. Global Perspectives on the Social Sciences for the TwentyFirst Century. Aurora, CO: The Davies Group, 2004. Print.
Rodriguez, Richard. “Introduction.” The Man Who Outgrew his Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber. By Joe Loya. xi-xiv. New York: Rayo, 2004. Print.
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Rev. ed. New York: The New Press, 2012. Print.
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus: (Notes towards an Investigation).” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. 85-126. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Print.
Ketcham, Ralph, ed. The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates. New York: Signet, 2003. Print.
Loya, Joe. The Man Who Outgrew his Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber. New York: Rayo, 2004. Print.
Michaels, Walter Benn. The Trouble with Diversity: How we Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. New York: Holt, 2007. Print.
O’Toole, Thomas E. Global Perspectives on the Social Sciences for the TwentyFirst Century. Aurora, CO: The Davies Group, 2004. Print.
Rodriguez, Richard. “Introduction.” The Man Who Outgrew his Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber. By Joe Loya. xi-xiv. New York: Rayo, 2004. Print.
García, Michael. “Latino Liberty and the Meaning of Security: On Prison Nations and Liberal States”. Journal of American Studies of Turkey, no. 42, 2015, pp. 227-4.