Description

The Industry of Fear

If the nation follows California’s example, we must be leaping headlong into an explosion of prison construction, into the development of control units, and the expansion of what has rightly been termed the prison-industrial complex. There can be no real, substantive discussion of the problem unless we take stock of the underlying factor, fear, which fuels this construction:. Americans live in a cavern of fear, a psychic, numbing force manufactured by the entertainment industry, reified by the psychological industry, and buttressed by the coercion industry (i.e., the courts, police, prisons, etc.). The social psychology of America is being fed by a media that threatens all with an army of psychopathic, deviant, sadistic madmen bent on ravishing a helpless, prone citizenry. The state’s coercive apparatus of “public safety” is erected as a needed, protective counterpoint.

prison, corporations — United States — prisons; crime and criminals; racism; fear

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 27, No. 3 (2000): 22-24