Abolition
A philosophy that holds that prisons do more damage than good
to a society. Because of this, prisons should be abolished. Abolition
is a commitment to the vision of a future without prisons, and
a philosophy that can guide political decisions and choices. Abolitionists
do not want to reform prisons; they want to close prisons.
The CCPOA
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association is the
union which represents prison guards, parole officers, and other
employees of the California State prison system. The union is
one of the most powerful forces in state politics, and donates
more money to legislative elections than any other entity.
Convict Lease System
A system put in place in the American South after the Civil War,
which allowed prisons to “lease” prisoners out to
business as workers. By encouraging this system, Southern businesses
were able to maintain the cheap labor that they had access to
under slavery. The last state to end convict leasing was North
Carolina, which ended the practice in 1933.
Critical Resistance
A national network of grassroots prison abolitionists.
Determinate and Indeterminate Sentencing
In the late 1970s, the courts began to move from issuing indeterminate
or “flexible” prison sentences to indeterminate or
“fixed” sentences. In the past, a person convicted
would get a sentence like “three to eight years.”
A person would get out of prison when they had been deemed “rehabilitated.”
Critics of indeterminate sentencing pointed out that it was racist:
white people would inevitable get out of prison much sooner than
people of color. Reformers argued for “determinate”
or “fixed” sentences, with the idea that everyone
would be treated more fairly. A determinate sentence is a fixed
amount of time, it is not variable in the same way as an indeterminate
sentence. Critics of determinate sentencing, like “3-strikes”
and “mandatory minimums” point out that it takes power
away from judges to consider each case in a different way. They
also say that there is no motivation for prisoners on determinate
sentences to “reform” themselves.
Lease Revenue Bonds
In the 1980s, California prisons were funded by voter-approved
bond measures on the state ballot. Voters had to approve the money
for new prison construction. When voters stopped approving these
bonds, the state began funding prisons using lease revenue bonds,
which do not require voter approval. The Delano II prison was
funded with lease revenue bunds.
Mandatory Minimums
Laws that force judges to impose fixed prison sentences for certain
types of convictions.
Military Industrial Complex
Since World War II, the United States has developed and maintained
the largest military in the history of the world. The term Military
Industrial Complex describes the relationships between business,
culture, politics, and society that come from having a nation
organized around such a large military. It includes all of the
corporations making money from defense spending, all of the universities
that are funded by defense spending, and all of the people whose
jobs are dependent on military spending. The term also refers
to the mindset that a society must have in order to justify such
a large military.
Prison Industrial Complex
In the early 1980s, the United States and California started the
largest prison-building project in the history of the world. Prison
building and prison spending became central to the economy, and
the ideology of being “tough on crime” became central
to politics. The term Prison Industrial Complex is used to describe
the complicated relationships between the economy, culture, politics,
and society that happen when a society becomes dependent on mass-incarceration. |
