America is a Prison Industrial Complex-Jalil A. Muntaqim

Attica Correctional Facility, February 20, 2012

The 2.3 million U.S. citizens in prison represent more than a problem of criminality. Rather, the
human toll of the U.S. prison industrial complex addresses and indicts the very foundation of
America’s history.

In 1865, the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution served to institutionalize prisons as a
slave system. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime….shall exist within the United States.”

This Amendment evolved out of the Civil War allegedly to abolish chattel slavery. However,
since that time, prisons have become an industrial complex. As an industry, its investors are
financial institutions such as “Goldman Sachs & Co., Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Smith Barney Shearson, Inc., and Merrill Lynch & Co. Understand, these investors in this slave industry in 1994 are no different from investors in the slave system prior to 1865.

The political system supports this industry by passing laws that enhance criminal penalties,
increase penal incarceration and restrict parole. Former U.S. President Clinton’s 1985 Crime Bill
effectively caused the criminalization of poverty, exponentially increasing the number of people
being sent to prison. On May 12, 1994, the Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled,
“Making Crime Pay: Triangle of Interests Created Infrastructure to Fight Lawlessness; Cities See
Jobs; Politicians Sense a Popular Issue and Businesses Cash In—The Cold War of the ‘90s.” The
article clearly indicated how prisons have become a profitable industry, including so-called
private prisons.

Given this reality, the struggle to abolish prisons is a struggle to change the very fabric of
American society. It is a struggle to remove the financial incentive—the profitability of the
prison/slave system. This will essentially change how the U.S. addresses the issue of poverty, of
ethnic inequality, and misappropriation of tax dollars. It will speak to the reality that the prison
system is a slave system, a system that dehumanizes the social structure and denigrates America’s moral social values.

The prison system today is an industry that, as did chattel slavery, profits off the misery and
suffering of other human beings. From politicians to bankers to the business investment
community, the prison industrial complex is a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise, all of
which has been sanctioned by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

It is imperative that those of you here come to terms with the reality that America is the prison
industrial complex, and that the silence and inaction of Americans is complicit in maintaining a
system that in its very nature is inhumane.

Abolish the American prison industrial complex!!
All Power to the People! All Power to the People!
All Power to the People!

Jalil Muntaquim (Anthony Bottom), a former member of the Black Panther Party, has
been a political prisoner since 1971. He is the author of “We Are Our Own Liberators,
and is currently incarcerated in Attica, NY.