bnarchives | The United States is often hailed as the world's largest 'free market'.
But this 'free market' is also the world's largest penal colony. It
holds over seven million adults – roughly five per cent of the labour
force – in jail, in prison, on parole and on probation. Is this an
anomaly, or does the 'free market' require massive state punishment? Why
did the correctional population start to rise in the 1980s, together
with the onset of neoliberalism? How is this increase related to the
upward redistribution of income and the capitalization of power? Can
soaring incarceration sustain the unprecedented power of dominant
capital, or is there a reversal in the offing? The paper examines these
questions by juxtaposing the ‘Rusche thesis’ with the notion of
capitalism as a mode of power. The empirical analysis suggests that the
Rusche thesis holds under the normal circumstances of ‘business as
usual’, but breaks down during periods of systemic crisis. During the
systemic crises of the 1930s and the 2000s, unemployment increased
sharply, but crime and the severity of punishment, instead of rising,
dropped perceptibly.
