River Hallinan, J.T. (2003) Going

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Hallinan, J.T. (2003) Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation. Random House: New York.

Joseph Hallinan is a Pulitzer-winning journalist who writes about crime and punishment in the United States and is a reporter for Wall Street Journal. In Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, he looks at the phenomenon of prison-industrial complex and the corruption of the correctional system. Hallinan argues that today the purpose of the prison is not to rehabilitate but to make profit out of it. How did this happen? Consider that if the American prison population in 1980s was 500,000, by 1995 it was 1,500,000 and by 2000 it surpassed 2,000,000. The United States is by far the biggest incarcerator in the world, surpassing even Russia and China. Every week, the prison population increases by 1,000 inmates -- which may fill up two prisons. And this prison population surge is not a reflection of the rising crime rate. In fact, the crime rate from 1995 to 2000 decreased by 16%.

It took Hallinan around four years to write this book, as he travelled from prison to prison although spending most of his time in Texas, the state that locks up and executes more people than any other state in the country. For example, in the year 1995 (when George W. Bush was the governor of the state), a new prison was being opened almost every week. And between 1991 and 1996, Texas built more prisons than the Federal government had in the last 200 years. But Hallinan has seen the surge in incarceration and institutionalized brutality of the system across the country. He tells in grisly details of the torture, sadism, and sexual mistreatment prisons are subjected to -- by inmates and guards alike. In one prison, he sees prisoners with their arms broken and eyes gouged out, while in another he sees guards placing bets in so-called "human cockfights" by gang members who were pitted against each other. "The level of violence," Hallinan says, "and fear and degradation that permeates most prisons makes a luxury of everything but survival" (p. 216).

So, why does the prison population boom at the time when crime rates fall? Hallinan's answer is unsettling: it is profitable. He notes that the private prison system has been growing ever since the first private prison was opened in 1983. Telephone companies such as AT&T make a billion dollars by monopolizing the prison phone system, while Procter & Gamble and makers of shampoos also seek opportunities in the prison market. Large industries are looking for cheap labor provided by inmates, while local communities, looking for working-class job opportunities, try to get prisons built in their communities. The largest private prison company Corrections Corporation America had its stocks soared by 1,000% after the opening of the first private prison, making the company's owners very rich men. When there is so much profit out of expanding prison population, why care about decreasing its number? Indeed, Hallinan argues that, although rehabilitation programs still exist, Americans are increasingly of the opinion that prisoners are in prison not for rehabilitation but to be punished.

In this book, Hallinan raises important questions that cannot be ignored. For example, he notes that one out of eleven men is estimated to go through the correctional system throughout his life but the figures for nonwhites are even higher. Forty-nine percent of inmates are African-American and eighteen percent are Latino. What happens is that many of these black inmates are taken from cities and locked up in prisons built in rural areas. Residents of these communities are white men and women who have limited, if any, experience of living with people of color and are of working-class background. Some of them are young men right out of high school. Not surprisingly, this encounter often leads to violence and racial tension. Hallinan writes that "it is hard to ignore that those getting rich are usually white and those in prison are usually not" (p. xiii). In other words, the profitability of the prison-industrial complex is not only corrupting the system by turning inmates into assets, but also contributing to the racial tension which still has not been erased from American society.

Some of his assertions are controversial. He emphasizes the pernicious influence of the private prison industry but that industry began in 1983 and the number of private prisons today is around 150. Most of the prisons are still federally funded though Hallinan notes that the relatively small number of private prisons have developed a culture that has influenced other prisons -- namely, an emphasis "not on producing an improved inmate, one who will commit fewer crimes when released, but on producing a cheaper inmate" (p. 145). And given that the number of private prisons is growing and that the concept is being viewed as acceptable and effective by ever greater number of corrections officers, criminologists, politicians, and ordinary Americans, the influence is also likely to grow.