RT Article
T1 Theorizing financial extraction: The curious case of telephone profits in the Los Angeles county jails
JF Punishment & society
VO 23
IS 1
SP 107
OP 126
A1 Lara-Millan, Armando
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1748353969
AB Existing models of financial extraction in the criminal justice system are applied to the case of profitable telephone contracts in the Los Angeles County jails during the mid-1990s. The case exemplifies instances of a “punishment” model of monetary sanctions, in which profits are derived for crime control purposes, and a “predation” model, in which inmates are seen as potential resources to absolve fiscal crisis and create market opportunities. However, the case contains an additional element: legal demand concerning inmates’ mental health care treatment. It is shown that telephone profits in jails could not have been used for predation or punishment purposes without the exploitation of legal ambiguity around inmate’s healthcare. Broader implications for the study of financial extraction as a constitutive theory – one that is both historical causal explanation and generalizable description – are drawn.
K1 legal financial obligations
K1 Law
K1 Jails
K1 financial extraction
K1 carceral state
DO 10.1177/1462474520941929