Prisions for Commercial Profit: Harper's Brave New World





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The Harper government is pursuing a crypto-fascistic agenda with respect to the Canadian prison system. At this very moment, the federal Conservative Party, their various corporate partners, and their provincial proxy-parties are pushing hard for a major expansion of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). This is the term we use to refer to the interest groups, businesses, and government institutions that rely on locking people up to increase their bottom line.

While private contractors are a major aspect of the PIC, this issue is about more than privatization. It’s about an ideology of “Law and Order” driven by fear, racism, and moral panic. It’s about the extent to which the logic of prison is being extended into society generally, through increased surveillance and heavier-handed policing in the name of “public safety.” And it’s about our town, Kingston, Ontario, where the first Canadian prison was ever built, and what it means to be a city that experiences economic booms when more people are being put in prison.  It is also about the conversion of Canada's prisons into a commercial profit centre for Big Businesses.  That would create an incentive to deny rights to disenfranchised people across Canada.

Drawing on the experiences of the anti-Harris movement could provide insight into effective tactics and strategies with which to resist and ultimately defeat the current government and any future governments determined to implement such policies.

Internet site reference: http://zinelibrary.info/superprisons-canada


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