RT Article
T1 Prison, subordination, inequality: again on a Marxist perspective
JF Tracing the relationship between inequality, crime, and punishment
SP 301
OP 324
A1 Melossi, Dario 1948-
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1879546728
AB This Chapter advances two claims which are related and sustain each other. The first is that in the contemporary “post-Fordist” world, the coupling of imprisonment and production persists in a relationship, if not between “the prison” and “the factory” - as Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini wrote 40 years ago - rather between “the prison” and “subordination”, because what all the multiple forms of “labor” and “non-labor” have in common - and have in common with the origins of protoindustrial capitalism - is subordination. The second is that the traditional reading of the “Rusche and Kirchheimer hypothesis” on the relationship between economic cycles and imprisonment depends on the specific conjuncture and class composition of the capitalist social formation to which it is applied. One thing is economic development in the period of Fordist mass industry and another in the globalized and fragmented labor market of neo-liberalism. Often imprisonment promotes phases of capitalist development rather than crises and recessions. Furthermore, subordination and inequality are strictly linked and feed on each other. Inequality promotes subordination, by putting the squeeze on those who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy; but subordination at the same time promotes inequality, by making sure that those who occupy those bottom positions, stay there. One strong link in the chain of subordination to inequality is penality, because penality reinforces inequality by reaffirming subordination. Data about long-run empirical relationships between imprisonment rates and inequality measures for the US and Italy are discussed.
SN 9780197266922
K1 Prison
K1 Factory
K1 Subordination
K1 Inequality
K1 Marxism
K1 Post Fordism
K1 Rusche and Kirchheimer hypothesis
K1 Labour
K1 Penality
DO 10.5871/bacad/9780197266922.003.0012