Abstract
This article explores the moral, political, economic and philosophical reasons for the expansion of the prisoner re-entry industry in the United States over the last several years. Tracing the influence of the military-industrial-prison complex and its mindset of “crackpot-cynical” realism rooted in a fear-based model of human nature, it argues that the very system and policies set up to control the “problem” of crime has led to an exacerbation of it, creating an ever-expanding, permanent “industry” that has traumatized both ‘ruler and ruled’ in a never-ending cycle of pain, mistrust, moral numbness and dysfunctional dependency. The article attempts to unite political and spiritual progressives and begin the mobilization necessary for radical structural and moral changes harkening back to the dissensus politics and ‘spiritual toughness’ of the civil rights and welfare rights tradition of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aichorn, August. 1935. Wayward youth. New York: Viking.
Becker, Howard S. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: Free Press.
Cloward, Richard A., and Frances Fox Piven. 1966. A strategy to end poverty. The Nation 2: 510–517.
Cloward, Richard A., and Frances Fox Piven. 1977. Poor people’s movements: Why they succeed, how they fail. New York: Vintage.
Lemert, Edwin. 1951. Social pathology. New York: McGraw Hill.
Lerner, Michael. 2006. The left hand of god. San Francisco: Harper.
Kittrie, Nicholas. 1996. The right to be different: Deviance and enforced therapy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Melman, Seymour. 1974. Permanent war economy. New York: Touchstone.
Michael, Robert. 1911. Political parties. New York: Free Press.
Miller, Jerome. 1996. Search and destroy: African-American males in the criminal justice system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mills, C.Wright. 1956. The power elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Platt, Anthony. 1968. The child savers: The invention of delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schur, Edwin. 1972. Labeling deviant behavior. New York: Harper and Row.
Schur, Edwin. 1973. Radical non-intervention: Rethinking the deliquency problem. New York: Spectrum Book.
Sutherland, Edwin. 1939. Principles of criminology. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Szasz, Thomas. 1961. The myth of mental illness. New York: Harper.
West, Cornel. 2004. Democracy matters. New York: Penguin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vrettos, J.S. A strategy to end parole dependency. Dialect Anthropol 34, 563–570 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-010-9171-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-010-9171-0