<http://www.monthlyreview.org/090601holleman-mcchesney-foster-jonna.php>Link
--Posted By johannes to <http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/06/penal-state-in-age-of-crisis.htm>monochrom at 6/11/2009 06:33:00 PM
By Hannah Holleman, Robert W. McChesney, John
Bellamy Foster, and R. Jamil Jonna.
As a rule, crime and social protest rise in
periods of economic crisis in capitalist society.
During times of economic and social instability,
the well-to-do become increasingly fearful of the
general population, more disposed to adopt harsh
measures to safeguard their positions at the apex
of the social pyramid. The slowdown in the
economic growth rate of U.S. capitalism beginning
in the late 1960s and early 1970s—converging with
the emergence of radical social protest around
the same period—was accompanied by a rapid rise
in public safety spending as a share of civilian
government expenditures. So significant was this
shift that we can speak of a crowding out of
welfare state spending (health, education, social
services) by penal state spending (law
enforcement, courts, and prisons) in the United
States during the last third of a century...
