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Is Gangsta Rap Pushed By The Prison-Industrial Complex?

kmossel

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Dec 14, 2006
Messages
108
This was a new one to me. It's a lengthy article, so I'm quoting only the conclusion:

I officially quit the music business in 1993 but my heart had already left months before. I broke ties with the majority of my peers and removed myself from this thing I had once loved. I took some time off, returned to Europe for a few years, settled out of state, and lived a “quiet” life away from the world of entertainment. As the years passed, I managed to keep my secret, fearful of sharing it with the wrong person but also a little ashamed of not having had the balls to blow the whistle. But as rap got worse, my guilt grew. Fortunately, in the late 90’s, having the internet as a resource which wasn't at my disposal in the early days made it easier for me to investigate what is now labeled the prison industrial complex. Now that I have a greater understanding of how private prisons operate, things make much more sense than they ever have. I see how the criminalization of rap music played a big part in promoting racial stereotypes and misguided so many impressionable young minds into adopting these glorified criminal behaviors which often lead to incarceration. Twenty years of guilt is a heavy load to carry but the least I can do now is to share my story, hoping that fans of rap music realize how they’ve been used for the past 2 decades. Although I plan on remaining anonymous for obvious reasons, my goal now is to get this information out to as many people as possible. Please help me spread the word. Hopefully, others who attended the meeting back in 1991 will be inspired by this and tell their own stories. Most importantly, if only one life has been touched by my story, I pray it makes the weight of my guilt a little more tolerable.

Find the whole story on http://www.hiphopisread.com/2012/04/sec ... music.html
 
Although the US has a huge prison population, by all accounts the crime rate has actually been dropping steadily for twenty years.

In fact the very year mentioned - 1991 - seems to have been the tipping point in that process - but in the reverse direction to the one desired by those at the alleged meeting. (See here, here and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.htmlhere, and lots of other places - also a list of actual figures here.

So, there really doesn't seem to be any correlation. Ice T's Original Gangster, was released in 1991, but NWA - who popularised the genre - more or less ceased to be in the same year.

To be honest, if there ever was a meeting, the people involved got it completely the wrong way round.

Maybe Gangsta rap is in fact good for you.
 
I don't buy the story about the "meeting" for one second.

BUT, the emergence of gangsta rap and the rapid marginalisation of more positive/political/thoughtful hip hop is a curious phenomenon. Gangsta plays up some of the most racist cliches about black people, in particular black men. It has also been adopted, in the UK at least, by marginalised white and Asian inner city youth.

The last few decades have seen vastly increased social inequality in most of the West, and in particular the US and UK. It strikes me that it is much easier for what I will loosely call the "ruling class" to have a sub-culture of criminality/violence/drugs etc amongst those at the bottom of the heap than it would be to have them organised, politicised and (importantly) sympathetic.

So, even if the details of this story are untrue... I think it hints at a broader truth
 
Who know? But private prisons would presumably indeed have a commercial reason for wanting to remain full - and even if this story is bogus, that is still a big dichotomy and a potential source of corruption isn't it?

I heard it said somewhere that US prisoners actually keep the economy afloat -as they are required to work for less than minimal wage and thus provide a source of cheap labour. Nooo idea if it's true. Maybe Alex Jones said it. ;)
 
Who know? But private prisons would presumably indeed have a commercial reason for wanting to remain full - and even if this story is bogus, that is still a big dichotomy and a potential source of corruption isn't it?

Indeed - and there was a pretty shocking case in the US a year or so ago involving a judge taking bungs from a private prison company, and subsequently jailing large numbers of petty juvenile offenders.

I heard it said somewhere that US prisoners actually keep the economy afloat -as they are required to work for less than minimal wage and thus provide a source of cheap labour. Nooo idea if it's true.

US prisoners are certainly used as a source of cheap labour but I don't think it's right to say that they "keep the economy afloat" - the work they do is usually low-skilled and it would be much cheaper to pay a free worker to do it.

What is probably more significant is that the US prison system warehouses huge numbers of primarily unskilled, uneducated males who would otherwise make the unemployment figures look much, much worse than they are...
 
I think the commercial exploitation of prisoners, especially in the South, where in the past many prisons appear to have been run like feudal fiefdoms, is well-attested and undenied - possibly it originated in a desire to fill the labour gap after the emancipation. (By coincidence, the James Lee Burke novel I re-read a couple of weeks back refers to the subject.)

Many US facilities are still known as Prison Farms, because that's what they are - commercial farming enterprises (agriculture is involved, but the term 'farm' is I believe employed in the older sense of a source of revenue); Angola, the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary is still know as 'The Farm', which is also the title of the fairly well-known documentary that was made about it a few years back. Apparently most of the labour involved actually goes towards making the prisons as self-sufficient as possible - any profit going to the state. Convicts were, and I think still are, leased from the state to work for private enterprises - which is probably where I suspect some of the real exploitation comes in.

Quake42 said:
...US prisoners are certainly used as a source of cheap labour but I don't think it's right to say that they "keep the economy afloat" - the work they do is usually low-skilled and it would be much cheaper to pay a free worker to do it....

Yes, I can see the explotation of prison labour having an economic impact at a very localised level - maybe more-so in the past - but not much beyond that.

All very interesting but, rewinding to the original post, I don't believe Rick Rubin has much to do with it.
 
I think the commercial exploitation of prisoners, especially in the South, where in the past many prisons appear to have been run like feudal fiefdoms, is well-attested and undenied - possibly it originated in a desire to fill the labour gap after the emancipation.
Rumours of the abolition of black slavery in the US have been greatly exaggerated.

Penal labor in the United States, a form of slavery or involuntary servitude, is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This form of legal slavery is only allowed when used as punishment for committing a crime. The 13th Amendment states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

It's endemic in the South. Strange that. Black youths are routinely handed down harsh sentences for minor infractions. One in every seven black men in New Orleans is either in prison, on parole or in probation. [source]
 
I would recommend The House I live In - which documents how the so-called war on drugs has failed to do anything much beyond feed the prison industrial complex. The argument that this consequence was intended is, it seems to me, moot - but now the situation exists, private and institutional interests are making billions from it and more than a little interested in its continuation. The statistics are really quite frightening.

There is another argument, that income from civil asset forfeiture (under the aegis of RICO) - which is then used to fund law enforcement - has created a whole set of false incentives for some police forces, and an over concentration on drug crimes at the expense of others. At one point it is suggested that some areas are now so focused on drug-busts that they lack the skill sets to investigate murder.

I'm not convinced that the war on drugs started out as anything but well-intentioned, if misguided - and I have no issue with police forces diverting drug profits for the purposes of law enforcement, or with hardened criminals being locked up*. But something has gone very wrong - and some people are doing very well out of that very wrong.

*But not guys doing 'life without parole for three ounces of methamphetamine'

 
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Although the US has a huge prison population, by all accounts the crime rate has actually been dropping steadily for twenty years.In fact the very year mentioned - 1991 - seems to have been the tipping point in that process - but in the reverse direction to the one desired by those at the alleged meeting. (See here, here and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.htmlhere, and lots of other places - also a list of actual figures here. So, there really doesn't seem to be any correlation. Ice T's Original Gangster, was released in 1991, but NWA - who popularised the genre - more or less ceased to be in the same year.
To be honest, if there ever was a meeting, the people involved got it completely the wrong way round.
Maybe Gangsta rap is in fact good for you.

On the contrary, what the statistics are demonstrating is the success of the program of contraception and abortion the USA has engaged in. As the number of unwanted pregnancies have fallen, so too has the attendant crime.

http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy

http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/

It has nothing to do with rap music, which just happened to coincide with a social policy that began in the 1970s.
 
On the contrary, what the statistics are demonstrating is the success of the program of contraception and abortion the USA has engaged in. As the number of unwanted pregnancies have fallen, so too has the attendant crime...

I'm not sure what that 'on the contrary' is contrary too. As I said, depending to a certain extent on the figures you look at, the US crime rate is dropping - I made no claim as to why that was happening. But I'd suggest that there is a little of the non causa pro causa about drawing hard and fast correlations between the number of unwanted pregnancies, and fluctuations in reported crime. Clearly, the correlation is worthy of investigation - but how provable is the connection?

The point made by many though is that although the rate of crime seems to be dropping, the rate of incarceration is actually increasing (the results of a quick google inludes figures that suggest 400 - 500% in the last forty years - which, if accurate, are pretty staggering).
 
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I'm not sure what that 'on the contrary' is contrary too. As I said, depending to a certain extent on the figures you look at, the US crime rate is dropping - I made no claim as to why that was happening. I'd also suggest that there is a little of the non causa pro causa about drawing hard and fast correlations between the number of unwanted pregnancies, and fluctuations in reported crime. Clearly, the correlation is worthy of investigation - but how provable is the connection? The point made by many though is that although the rate of crime seems to be dropping, the rate of incarceration is actually increasing (a quick google suggests that 400 - 500% in the last forty years).

My point was that the fall in crime has nothing to do with Rap music.

The connection between falling crime rates and rising rates of contraception and abortion has been supported in studies in many countries, including Canada, Australia, and Romania. The methodology and conclusions are pretty sound, and translate into the fall in crime rates in the USA too as the related articles I posted will demonstrate.

Now the issue that rates of incarceration are growing is a completely different issue that I didn't address at all.
I didn't even pretend that I had.

So lets talk about the issue. If a nation has a huge drop in crime, and over-resourced police forces with invasive powers of search and arrest that were geared to fight a perceived "crime epidemic" (that doesn't really exist outside the minds of individuals in a moral panic), and a free market based prison system that profits from more crime, then a nation will see more crime detected and convicted and more people in prison. If most of the people incarcerated are interned for victimless crimes such as non violent drug related offenses, then it is pretty easy to see that the situation is unjust.

Your thoughts?
 
My point was that the fall in crime has nothing to do with Rap music.

Yes, well I was kind of being tongue in cheek when I suggested that gansta rap might be good for you. (Note to self: must use smileys more often.)

...If a nation has a huge drop in crime, and over-resourced police forces with invasive powers of search and arrest that were geared to fight a perceived "crime epidemic" (that doesn't really exist outside the minds of individuals in a moral panic), and a free market based prison system that profits from more crime, then a nation will see more crime detected and convicted and more people in prison. If most of the people incarcerated are interned for victimless crimes such as non violent drug related offenses, then it is pretty easy to see that the situation is unjust.

Your thoughts?

Generally speaking, I'd agree.
 
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Considering the constant rapper shootings and murders in the USA, it looks like there's some truth in it, but can't be proven.
 
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