In a discussion about the Occupy Wall Street movement with Kai Hsu and Professor Drabinski we began to consider the possible similarities that exist between the Occupy Wall Street movement and our investigation of the American Penal system. While the specific issues in question are not identical, both investigations deal with parallel problems in the structure of our society. According to the Occupy Wall Street website the Movement “is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.” In particular the Movement is attempting to “expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future”(www.occupywallstreet.org). Through demonstrations and occupations in different cities around the world Occupy Wall Street is accomplishing just what it is has said it wants to do—expose the possibility that financial corporations have too much influence on the political process and have taken the power out of the hands of the voting citizen. It is well know that corporate America exercises large amounts of resources in order to lobby the government to secure legislation that will benefit business. What this movement illustrates is a growing belief amongst the public that this influence has gone to far. All citizens in a democracy want to believe that the government is organized for the people and to benefit the common good. Occupy Wall Street demonstrates that a significant number of Americans may no longer believe this promise blindly.
How is Occupy Wall Street similar to the American Penal System? Citizens of the United States believe that the justice system operates to protect each individual just as the government is presumably built to serve the common good. What can be discovered through closer investigation is that there are a host of issues that call into question the ability of the American justice and penal systems to protect and punish each individual equally. At its roots the justification for punishing people with imprisonment is based on the belief that as a result of certain actions people should lose the right and freedom to participate in normal society. In her book Golden Gulag Ruth Wilson Gilmore breaks down changes in the political economic landscape of California to find an explanation for the explosion in modern rates of incarceration and find a basis for claims that the justice system operates under a system of racial, political, corporate and socio-economic bias and influence.
It is the common belief, as Gilmore describes, that the dominant explanation for prison growth over in the last few decades is as follows: “crime went up; we cracked down; crime went down” (17). However looking at a few main arguments behind this dominant explanation (for these arguments see Golden Gulag pages 17-20) and their underlying weaknesses, Gilmore questions the relationship between crime and crackdown leading her to suggest that the true order of events is: “crime went up; crime came down; we cracked down” (20). It would then follow that there are a number of ulterior motives or alternative explanations for the rise in the level of incarceration in California and across the United States—Gilmore provides four. The first explanation accuses a form of racial cleansing—a pattern of racially charged lawmaking, policing, and selective prosecution—has resulted in a large spike in the populations of African Americans and other minorities in prison. Two other explanations focus on the pursuit of profits. Private prison corporations lobby the government to be stiffer on crime in order to profit on the higher numbers of inmates and similarly more inmates offer the government “more potential for pulling surplus cash out of (public) prisons” (22). The third view Gilmore offers is prison growth was triggered in order to provide industry and create jobs for struggling rural American communities. Finally a further explanation is the normalization of prison and “its perpetually expanding use as an all-purpose remedy for the thwarted rights of both prisoners and harmed free persons” (23). Gilmore also provides skepticism to these explanations and is critical of over-simplified or logical solutions.
These brief examples I have outlined only scratch the surface of Gilmore’s overall investigation however as she digs deeper she further emphasizes the interconnectedness of the justice system, politics, and the economy which only reveals additional similarities with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The astonishing economic success of the past two decades (80’s & 90’s) led politicians to remove restrictions on business, and expand the reach of booming financial firms that would allow our economy to continue to grow at a powerful and unstable pace. Eventually our economy spiraled out of control, brought on by the burst of a housing price bubble in 2007. Growth and instability of a different era (the late 1960’s) is what Gilmore believes ultimately led to detrimental changes to the justice system. “Today’s political-economy super-structure is grounded in the radical failures and counterrevolutionary success of an earlier era.”; “The instability that characterized the end of the golden age of American Capitalism provides a key” (26).
The recent economic recession is an event that made it very difficult to ignore certain failures of our government in regulating capitalist activity and even exposed areas where corporations can have an inappropriate amount of influence. The unstable economic conditions were not necessarily brought on by current action but instead are borne out of past legislation. This recession has impacted our society to such a degree that movements such as Occupy Wall Street are looking to spread awareness and make a change. Is it possible that in the future we may see a similar event shake the American justice system enough to invoke the same type of awareness? People such as Ruth Gilmore and Michelle Alexander are providing the texts that are beginning to expose possible cracks in the foundation of a system that is integral to our society and we trust to be reliable. The Occupy Wall Street Movement can be used as an example of what might be necessary to create awareness and promote change before an event as significant as the economic recession forces us to act.
