The Breaking Point of Minorities: Following the Prison Industrial Complex and How Minorities Fight for Their Lives Back

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The Breaking Point of Minorities: Following the Prison Industrial Complex and how Minorities fight for their Lives Back Kayla Clarin University of California, Riverside Abstract The Prison Industrial Complex is a term used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The signing of the Rockefeller drug laws in May 1973 by New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller is considered to be the beginning of the Prison Industrial Complex. Angela Davis coined the concept by titling her speech “The Prison Industrial Complex.” The Community Education Centers are a chain of prisons and halfway houses that offer privileges to inmates. The PIC is viewed by the conflict paradigm as the inequalities of people of color. Its origin is the unequal distribution of wealth, power and values amongst the poor minorities and rich whites. The solution to this social problem is the Prison Abolition movement. Key Words: Prison Industrial Complex, Rockefeller, Davis, Community Education Centers, Halfway houses, Conflict theory, Inequalities of race, Unequal distribution of wealth, Prison Abolition Movement "Prison Industrial Complex" (PIC) is a term used to describe the fast growth of the United States inmate population to the political effects of independent prison corporations and companies that provide goods and services to government prison agencies and the Industries. Activists have described PIC as perpetuating a belief that is used to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, imprisonment is a quick fix to underlying political, economic and social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and

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