New Research Proposal

Okay, so just a few days into researching music piracy and I'm already sick of it.  Wrote a new research proposal, here it is:


    Beginning in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the incarcerated population of the United States spiraled out of control. According to the 2008 U.S. Census, there are now over two million people imprisoned in America’s penal system. A disproportionate majority of these prisoners are black and hispanic. Nearly 1% of all adult Americans are currently in prison, and the United States now has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. This spike in the prison population is not the result of a higher rate of crime, but of a higher rate of punishment. Nearly half of all inmate are imprisoned for non-violent or victimless crimes. Imprisonment is now profitable, thanks to what is known as the prison-industrial complex.
    The prison industrial complex is made up of actors that benefit from the expansion of the prison system. Construction companies, companies that contract prison labor, lawyers, and surveillance technology firms all profit greatly from the penal system, and employ lobbyists to ensure that they will continue to benefit. By supporting public policy that keeps this country’s prisons full, these companies ensure that they will have a market for their product and a massive cheap labor force to build them. These groups are not interested in punishing crime and rehabilitating prisoners, but in turning a profit. 
    On average, prisoners are only paid around 40 cents an hour for their labor. Therefore it is far more profitable for corporations to contract prison labor than to hire employees from outside the prison system. Major companies that use incarcerated labor for manufacturing include Boeing, Microsoft, Dell, Texas Instruments and Motorola. In addition, many large retail stores use prisoners to stock their shelves at night, such as Toys R’ Us, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer. As long as these companies continue to profit from the inordinate amount of Americans being incarcerated, the prison industrial complex will continue to thrive.
    There are nearly five times as many Americans behind bars as there were 30 years ago, and the incarceration rate continues to climb. Because most prisons do not focus their goals towards the rehabilitation of prisoners, nearly half become repeat offenders and end up incarcerated again. This huge rate of incarceration can wreak havoc on low-income communities and damages families. Our prison system and related policies must be reformed, otherwise the United States runs the risk of becoming a police state.
    For further research I plan to use resources from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Critical Resistance (an anti-prison industrial complex group), and works by Eric Schlosser and Angela Davis. I intend to argue that the prison industrial complex is perhaps the most scathing social problem facing the United States today, and that lengthy reforms are needed to establish a just and effective prison system. I will address various viewpoints on the issue, such as prison abolitionism as well as “tough on crime” arguments that are in favor of the current penal system. I hope to prove that prison reform is now essential to our society.