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Elias sits down with Dr. Christopher Petrella, a Lecturer in American Cultural Studies and Associate Director of Programs for the Office of Equity and Diversity (OED) at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and contributor to Boston Review and Black Perspectives (African American Intellectual Historical Society) to discuss his work on exploring and exposing the private prison industry, which has previously been featured in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, Boston Review, and The New Yorker, has appeared on ESPN and NPR, and has been debated in the U.S. House of Representatives. Strap in, Unsettlers, this is a good one!
Talking points:
Renown Scholar Forced to Discuss The Onion; a town with more prisons than stop lights; when private prisons become ubiquitous, are private prisons “normal”?; “mass incarceration” vs “the carceral state”; you don’t have to be in prison to be imprisoned–how are bodies criminalized?; immigration becomes a crime–crossing the Streamline; detainment as a “market”; bed quotas and minimum occupancy requirements for ICE and prisons; “if you build it, you will fill it”–empty prisons lead to uncomfortable questions; banks built the prisons; don’t get it twisted–“state-funded” prisons aren’t “better”; our previous “victories”; why stocks for private prison corporations surged after Trump’s win; race and the state; weaponizing a census; “real estate companies who dabble in incarceration.”
Related links:
- Convict Sentenced To Generating $80,000 To $100,000 In Profits For Private Prison (The Onion)
- Detention Bed Quote Statement (National Immigrant Justice Center)
- Homeland Security Budget-in-Brief: Fiscal Year 2016 (DHS.gov)
- How Immigrants Became Criminals (Alan A. Aja and Alejandra Marchevsky, Boston Review)
- The Preservation of the White Race (Christopher Petrella, Boston Review)
- DHS memos detail aggressive immigration enforcement and speedier deportations (Michelle Mark, Business Insider)
- My four months as a private prison guard. (Shane Bauer, Mother Jones)
- Five myths of the private prison industry (Beryl Lipton, Muck Rock)
- How Speculating on Prisons Leads to Mass Incarceration (Christopher Petrella, Truthout)
- Justice Department will again use private prisons (Matt Zapotosky, The Nation)
- Corrections Corp. and GEO Group Prison Stocks Surge On Trump Win (Ben Popken, NBC News)
- The Private Prison Industry Is Licking Its Chops Over Trump’s Deportation Plans (Madison Pauly, Mother Jones)
- Did Private Prison Contractor Illegally Boost Trump? (Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast)
