Die Bedeutung des Gefängnisses für das neue Armutsregime

The spectacular growth of incarcertion in the U.S. can hardly be explained by the genesis a "prisonindustrial complex," as suggested by some criminologists, journalists and justice activists. Instead we must look at the rise of the "liberal-paternalist state", in which the prison functions as part of a triadic institutional nexus: The penal system contlibutes directly to regulating the lower segments of the labor market; it complements and compensates for the collapsing ghetto as device for the confinement of a population considered deviant, deviolls, and dangerous; and it is directly connected to the logic of welfare-to-workfare reforms.