This is my super thread on why prison programs & humane conditions were evisxersted, their relation to mass incarceration, How cost,profit, instrumental,economistic nor conspiratorial reasons can account for it, and why I think left vulgar economistic accounts are total horseshit https://twitter.com/yungneocon/status/1300194271983734785

Long and the short of it is that each of these programs are cost saving, crime reducing, safety increasing etc. in addition states did not get cost savings from privatization etc, cost constraints were imposed from w/o & other mass costs & losses tolerated.

It’s very weird something beneficial to the state, capital, profits, taxpayers, government agencies, prisons AND the prisoners, families, communities, victims, & all the rest were evisxerated.

I also show that American attitudes on these issues of punishment etc, are basically decisively simple at the margins—about 20-40% are in favor of bloodthirsty punishment, torture, death penalty either way.

Another group, about 10-30% are the other direction, opposing these things categorically. Then there are two sub groups in the middle. The group closer to the critics who support these things for (false & erroneous) consequentialist reasons, in rare cases.

Then there’s another group that’s driven by false consensus, erroneous beliefs & so on, and retributive concerns, but consequential concerns balance moralistic ones.

More simply there’s basically three groups:
1. Bloodthirsty retributivists & racists who delight in human suffering, especially black suffering, & support it for its own sake, that basically 30-40% of the pop, but well say 1/3rd

2. At the other end are another group that is mostly opposed to violence, torture, racism etc, but some, due to false consensus, erroneous media & political reports etc, will sometimes support thing sfor consequential reasons. This group is 20-40%

3. Between the two are people who we can call the moderately bloodthirsty crowd, but who prefer non bloodthirsty solutions to bloodthirsty ones, but hold varying erroneous, false consensus, racist stereotypes etc beliefs that push them to the support side.

For convenience you say each of these are a third. Elite opinions cluster toward the bloodthirsty & consequentialist side, &, unlike many other issues, mass public opinion,electoral views, ideas & rhetoric actually do shift punishment policy, but primarily in the wrong direction

The other lesson is that while there was some top down manipulation, especially for the War on Drugs and the 90s Omnibus crime bill, most of this was decentralized, and some cases when bottom up—a true blue reactionary democratic mass movement

Furthermore, special interests, CO/Police unions, capitalists, & private prisons explain an incredibly small portion of the story, and their main role is making it hard to *reverse* these pro-punishment changes, rather than creating or driving them

From a purely profit, or cost perspective, the entire issue of mass incarceration, war on drugs etc is not only inexplicable but contradictory—capitalists, crime fighters, and state fiscal agents should want the exact opposite policies!

Race explains who gets targeted and why it’s so easy to steam roll these policies through and race explains public opinion. Class plays a role thru the relative power of unions etc, and the state’s desire to break mass social movements.

Cost plays a role in that rises in violence & unrest, a declining welfare state, moral panic and social control demanded a response & relative costs mattered, BUT these costs were often imposed, and MORE costly & less profitable aspects to balloon.

Thus the vulgar class reductionist Or economistic account totally fails. Even many of those who claim to be endorsing one explicitly state the political & social control one.

I hazard that part of the reason These accounts persist despite their evidentiary failures has to do with the psychology of leftism.

Namely leftists don’t want to admit that *moral* considerations—the desire to enforce the good & police virtue, can be the source of mass bloodthirsty violence & they don’t want to admit that probably a 3rd of, mostly white, Americans are bloodthirsty retributivisrs.

I also suspect many of them share retributivist ideas in theory, are scared of the possibility that states are intrinsically prone to social control & spatialized production of violence & Control, & find the idea of a cabal or corporate special interests to be at fault comforting

I, as usual, included many links to people who disagree with parts of my account, including one that disputes the premise of changes in prison practice until the 90s (their own results contradict this but whatever lol).

And there’s a lot of sources who agree with some parts of my analysis, but prefer a disaggregation approach, to see the variation in the history, policy, & opinion.

I also discuss why prisons don’t reduce crime, but actually increase it, and why it actually makes sense for many sectors to support criminogenic policies, even tho their stated concern is reducing crime, & how their actions contradict that

Finally, my main point & argument is that mass incarceration rose in response to demands for social control, political power, & moral panic, and that, more specifically, the decline and or change in provably cost saving & violence reducing programs had to do with (cont)

(Cont) the ways that these programs undercut the role of prisons in creating & maintaining a monopoly on violence, spatialized social control, pro white redistribution, and the breaking of & control of mass movements & prison demands for rights.

Apart from granting prisoners agency, the ability to organize, and making it easier for them to re enter society, thus undercutting the point of prisons (which again is not to control crime, per se), it also meant prisoners had access to the outside world

This was dangerous bc it meant prisoners were humanized in the eyes of the public, could coordinate with outside social movements, & could report to the outside world on conditions of the prisons.

What’s more, by alleviating the harsh & brutal torturous nature of prison, they were unacceptable, as a substantial portion of people believe that punishing & torturing prisoners is a *moral good* for its own sake.

And that’s my summary 1/6th the length of the thread lol