NCJ Number
85243
Date Published
1980
Length
35 pages
Annotation
This discussion examines the relationship between contradictions in capitalist America and those emerging within corrections as the State's sanctioning system attempts to respond to the contradictions of the larger social order.
Abstract
The capitalist State's basic functions create contradictions. These functions include (1) maintenance of an environment appropriate to the accumulation of capital, (2) generation and maintenance of an ideology legitimizing unequal capitalist accumulation, and (3) preservation of its own legitimacy so that it can protect and legitimize private accumulation of capital. The contradictions of monopoly capitalism generate increased State intervention and still other contradictions that undermine the State's capacity to facilitate capital accumulation and legitimization, thereby decreasing the State's legitimacy and resulting in a fiscal crisis. Corrections plays an important role in securing the legitimacy of the State and in forcing a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of property acquisition. Two correctional themes, deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionalization, are inherently contradictory and mirror the contradictions of the capitalist welfare state and its current fiscal crisis. The combination of decreased monies for social welfare expenditures resulting from the State's fiscal crisis and increasing prison populations due to rising crime rates and public alarm have generated a crisis within corrections. Strategies to reduce the prison population will probably be tried, although this population is likely to grow along with the State's attempts to legitimize it. If the social order should break down, the State would have in place a powerful ideological weapon to justify the suspension of civil liberties and mass imprisonment of those seeking change. About 60 references are cited.