disturbed by the number of times i've seen the idea that calling gaza an open-air prison is not okay because "that implies that gazans have done something wrong", the subtext being unlike those criminals who deserve to be in prison. i'm sorry but we HAVE to understand criminalization and incarceration as an intrinsic part of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, because settler states make laws that actively are designed to suppress indigenous and racialized resistance, and then enforce those laws in even more racist and discriminatory ways so that who is considered "criminal" is indelibly tied up with who is considered a "threat" to the settler state. that's how law, policing, and incarceration function worlwide, and how they have always functioned in israel as part of the zionist project.
talking about prison abolition in this context is not a distraction from what's happening to palestinians; it's a key tool of israel's apartheid and genocide. why do you think a major hamas demand has been for israel to release the palestinians in israeli prisons? why do you think israel nearly doubled the number of palestinians incarcerated in their prison in just the first two weeks after october 7? why do they systematically racially profile palestinians (particularly afro-palestinians, since anti-blackness is baked into israel's carceral system as well, like it is in much of the world) and arrest and charge 20% of palestinians, an astonishingly high rate that goes up even higher to 40% for palestinian men? why are there two different systems of law for palestinians and israelis, where palestinians are charged and tried under military law, leading to a conviction rate of almost 100%? why do they torture children and incarcerate them for up to 20 years just for throwing rocks? why can palestinians be imprisoned by israel without even being charged or tried? why do they keep the bodies of palestinians who have died in prison (often due to torture, execution, or medical neglect) for the rest of their sentences instead of returning them to their families?
this is not to say that no palestinians imprisoned by israel have ever done harm. but incarceration worldwide has never been about accountability for those who have done harm, nor about real justice for those have experienced harm, nor about deterring future harm. incarceration is about controlling, suppressing, and exterminating oppressed people. sometimes people from privileged classes get caught up in carceral systems as well, but it is a side effect, because the settler colonialist state will happily sacrifice some of its settlers for its larger goal.
so yes, gaza is an open-air prison. that doesn't means gazans deserve to be there. it means that no one deserves to be in prison, because prisons themselves are inherently oppressive.
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Greedflation, but for prisoners
I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
Today in "Capitalists Hate Capitalism" news: The Appeal has published the first-ever survey of national prison commissary prices, revealing just how badly the prison profiteer system gouges American's all-time, world-record-beating prison population:
https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-commissary-prices/
Like every aspect of the prison contracting system, prison commissaries – the stores where prisoners are able to buy food, sundries, toiletries and other items – are dominated by private equity funds that have bought out all the smaller players. Private equity deals always involve gigantic amounts of debt (typically, the first thing PE companies do after acquiring a company is to borrow heavily against it and then pay themselves a hefty dividend).
The need to service this debt drives PE companies to cut quality, squeeze suppliers, and raise prices. That's why PE loves to buy up the kinds of businesses you must spend your money at: dialysis clinics, long-term care facilities, funeral homes, and prison services.
Prisoners, after all, are a literal captive market. Unlike capitalist ventures, which involve the risk that a customer will take their business elsewhere, prison commissary providers have the most airtight of monopolies over prisoners' shopping.
Not that prisoners have a lot of money to spend. The 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of convicted criminals, and so even though many prisoners are subject to forced labor, they aren't necessarily paid for it:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch
Six states ban paying prisoners anything. North Carolina caps prisoners' pay at one dollar per day. Nationally, prisoners earn $0.52/hour, while producing $11b/year in goods and services:
https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html
So there's a double cruelty to prison commissary price-gouging. Prisoners earn far less than any other kind of worker, and they pay vastly inflated prices for the necessities of life. There's also a triple cruelty: prisoners' families – deprived of an incarcerated breadwinner's earnings – are called upon to make up the difference for jacked up commissary prices out of their own strained finances.
So what does prison profiteering look like, in dollars and sense? Here's the first-of-its-kind database tracking the costs of food, hygiene items and religious items in 46 states:
https://theappeal.org/commissary-database/
Prisoners rely heavily on commissaries for food. Prisons serve spoiled, inedible food, and often there isn't enough to go around – prisoners who rely on the food provided by their institutions literally starve. This is worst in prisons where private equity funds have taken over the cafeteria, which is inevitable accompanied by swingeing cuts to food quality and portions:
https://theappeal.org/prison-food-virginia-fluvanna-correctional-center/
So you have one private equity fund starving prisoners, and another that's gouging them on food. Or sometimes it's the same company. Keefe Group, owned by HIG Capital, provides commissaries to prisons whose cafeterias are managed by other HIG Capital portfolio companies like Trinity Services Group. HIG also owns the prison health-care company Wellpath – so if they give you food poisoning, they get paid twice.
Wellpath delivers "grossly inadequate healthcare":
https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/
And Trinity serves "meager portions of inedible food":
https://theappeal.org/clayton-county-jail-sheriff-election/
When prison commissaries gouge on food, no part of the inventory is spared, even the cheapest items. In Florida, a packet of ramen costs $1.06, 300% more inside the prison than it does at the Target down the street:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24444312-fl_doc_combined_commissary_lists#document/p6/a2444049
America's prisoners aren't just hungry, they're also hot. The climate emergency is sending temperatures in America's largely un-air-conditioned prisons soaring to dangerous levels. Commissaries capitalize on this, too: an 8" fan costs $40 in Delaware's Sussex Correctional Institution. In Georgia, that fan goes for $32 (but prisoners are not paid for their labor in Georgia pens). And in scorching Texas, the commissary raised the price of water by 50% last summer:
https://www.tpr.org/criminal-justice/2023-07-20/texas-charges-prisoners-50-more-for-water-for-as-heat-wave-continues
Toiletries are also sold at prices that would make an airport gift-shop blush. Need denture adhesive? That's $12.28 in an Idaho pen, triple the retail price. 15% of America's prisoners are over 55. The Keefe Group – sister company to the "grossly inadequate" healthcare company Wellpath – operates that commissary. In Oregon, the commissary charges a 200% markup on hearing-aid batteries. Vermont charges a 500% markup on reading glasses. Imagine spending decades in prison: toothless, blind, and deaf.
Then there's the religious items. Bibles and Christmas cards are surprisingly reasonable, but a Qaran will run you $26 in Vermont, where a Bible is a mere $4.55. Kufi caps – which cost $3 or less in the free world – go for $12 in Indiana prisons. A Virginia prisoner needs to work for 8 hours to earn enough to buy a commissary Ramadan card (you can buy a Christmas card after three hours' labor).
Prison price-gougers are finally facing a comeuppance. California's new BASIC Act caps prison commissary markups at 35% (California commissaries used to charge 63-200% markups):
https://theappeal.org/price-gouging-in-california-prisons-newsom-signature/
Last year, Nevada banned any markup on hygiene items:
https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/10425/Overview
And prison tech monopolist Securus has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to the activism of Worth Rises and its coalition partners:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/
When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Prisons show us how businesses would treat us if they could get away with it.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in
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The jail extracts people from lives-in-motion in order to extract time from them. Why time? Because it is the element, become a commodity, that enables flows of carceral cash (wages, debt service, rent, utility bills, vendor invoices, and so on). It is that commodity that inspires, as any system under racial capitalism always will, persistently innovative strategies to direct the flow toward particular coffers: salaries; agency budgets; politicians’ reelectability; construction companies and raw materials purveyors; consultants; elite landowners; investment bankers; pension fund bondholders; or other resources that, in the abstract, could be used for anything, but in the ideologically charged ongoing material present, consolidate in the carceral fix.
The commodification of an unfree person’s time doesn’t end with them being drained of their non-renewable resource, although that is more horror than anyone should bear. As with all carceral interruptions to life-in-motion, unfree persons’ households and communities also experience the drain. Not only deprived of time and money resources, they are also exposed to life-shortening effects of powerless worry and ambient toxins that, in sum, contribute to group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.
— Ruth Wilson Gilmore
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