With no public acknowledgement of the irony the U.S., the ‘land of the free,’ has both the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest overall prison population. The dominant public perception appears to rest at the local level: the state has the right to prohibit socially destructive acts; people commit socially destructive acts and they are put in prison. Left largely unconsidered is the nature of the democratic capitalist state that claims this right to incarcerate. American history places it squarely in the service of economic interests. The country was founded on genocide and slavery. Western political theory frames these as ‘political’ acts. Genocide against the indigenous...
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