Is Private Prisons the Gateway to Capitalism?

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The prison industrial complex has atrophied in the way that it has, argues Ruthie Meacham. There's also a more narrow popular reading of the term which emphasizes private prisons and corporate greed for profits," she says. "Private prisons are a particular thing, a particular form of parasite capitalism" But they don't drive the system, the cause of the system, writes Meachum.

What role does mass incarceration play in American political economy? What does that reveal about what sort of politics are required to overcome it? Ruth Wilson Gilmore with Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bhandar, who edited the new collection Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives by Donna Murch haymarketbooks.org/books/1650-assata-taught-me