Punishing the Poor: the Neoliberal Govt of Social Insecurity

[Neil Foxlee]

Some salient statistics from a book review:

Book of the week: Punishing the Poor
6 August 2009

Louise Hardwick on the imbalance in the US social funding see-saw


"The US prison system employs seven times more people than IBM. The correctional services system in California alone has 45,000 employees - twice as many as Microsoft. From 1980 to 1990, government expenditure on public housing in the US fell by more than half, while expenditure on operating penal establishments more than doubled."

"when Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1980 the US was spending $6.9 billion on operating its penal establishments but, by 1990, this had increased nearly fourfold to $26.1 billion."

To put these figures into context, read the review at
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/s ... 407630&c=2

The author of the book is a Freddie King fan.

[jackdaw version]

Hey, Neil, you're not trying to give me more ammo for my ranting and raving and general all-round slagging off of the Untitled States of Amusement, are you?

Somewhere I've read that the US incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any other country including China. A fact to be checked. But there's no doubt that prisons are big business in the US—literally. Many are run by private corporations for profit. Hard to believe, isn't it?