By Gilles Dauvé
DDT21
June 2025
The prison has its mythology. The one we’re going to talk about, Rikers, is in TV series and movies like Carlito’s Way Brian De Palma (1993). For a few tens of euros, we can even, online, try to avoid this (a game for children under 10 years of age).
The collective gripping repulsion-attraction for a world often preach as populated by ethnic gangs where violence reigns, whether exercised by the institution or between the triggers themselves.
In the book City Time. On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island , one of the goals of David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan (D. J. is to react against a vision of the prison universe ” concentrated only on violence and predation “obtains which ignores” the innumerable trivial days of ordinary ennui and waste of human potential that characterize life behind bars for many ordinary people ” .
Prison Island
A short distance from Manhattan, on the East River, Rikers Island (2 km long and 1.3 km wide) has housed since 1932 the main prison of the city and the second most important prison in the United States in terms of persons. The New York City Council is considering closing it, but it locks up 11,000 people, divided into a dozen different schools.
One of them, opened in 1964 and enlarged in 1973, the Eric M. Taylor Center (EMTC) reserved for men and minors convicted of so-called City Time , penalties of less than one year,
may be locked in about 3,000 people? l a majority are for non-violent crimes, especially thefts (less than 1,000 dollars), small amounts often associated with mental health or drug problems . Half of them remain 30 days, or less, sometimes a series of weekends.
David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan were arrested for direct political reasons? David was imprisoned in Rickers from October 2019 to October 2020 (for a fight with right-wing extremists), Jarrod in June 2016, ” Observers participating “in spite of themselves prison realities.
Imprisonment
Convicted persons of a type City Time “are only islands of the vast US penal archipelago. The number of inmates in the United States is to be around 2.3 million, with an additional 4.5 million people on parole and and Proval , making this country number 1 in prison in the world.
One of the main causes is the length of the sentences imposed, which is much higher than in the rest of the world, owing to cumulative penalties.
In the United States as a whole, by 2025, by Federal Bureau of Prisons , almost half of the evictions (43.7%) are for trade (or even consumption) of drugs? 22v% for possession of weapons and arson; 13.5% for sexual offences; 4.6% for illegal immigration; 3.4% for homicide, ” Aggravated Assault “and kidnapping.
In 2018, 2.8 million Americans worked directly in the “Justice, public order and security” sector, more than than 1.5 % of total employment (compared to less than 1 % in the automobile industry). This without counting the companies in contract with the police services, tribunals and prisons.
On the other hand, the Scandinavian countries, Germany and the Netherlands have lower incarceration rates, and even if they are decreasing in the race of the last decade, the United States is joined global trend.
In the United Kingdom, the number of prisoners has doubled 1993 and 2012, mainly due to the increase in immediate custody ( immediate custody ), temporary detention ( remand ), and the lengthening of sentences. In 1993, the New Labor programme wanted ” No weakness against crime, no weakness against the causes of crime ” (” Tough on crime. Tough on the Causes of Crime “) . These causes are to be sought, according to the British Left, not under conditions social services , but in non-compliance Individual Good morals: the historians of the future will describe our time, despite appearances, as that of a great return of morality . A few years later, the Labour Government introduced the Anti-Social Behavior Order allowing the prosecution of any person giving signs of “anti-social” behavior, defined according to a range broad enough to include public drunkenness, begging, absence of a fixed home, aggressive attitude, listening to too loud music, the company of a perceptible threat, etc., gestures generally associated with the classes. As a result, explains the Prison Reform Trust Great Britain has the highest rate of imprisonment in Western Europe. Over the long period, the prison population of England and Wales quadrupled between 1900 and 2018, half of the increase since 1990.
A society criminalizes what disrupts its “normal” functioning, the norms vary evidently depending on the country and the era. Once one of the most serious acts, parricide is nolong considered as such, while the conjugal rape has had a legal reality in France only since 1990 (1992 in England)… but not in Saudi Arabia where, on the other hand, the rape is punishable by death. As above indicated, the drug accounts for half the sentences in the United States. The question is to understand what disrupts social order, and what shocks public opinion. In a company based on the exploitation of labour by capital, it is “normal” to devote more resources to “stups” than to the inspectors of work (in France, accidents at work cause two deaths every day).
For its part, France has increased the penalties by more often and pouring more longterms in prison, and enlarging the field of penalization: for example, according to sources, road infractions lead to between 5 and 12 % of detention.
These statistics, like all the others, especially official ones, give only an order of magnitude… Who is considered “enclosed”? In France, the “administrative retention”, not counted as detention , is no less a confinement. We will also avoid comparisons that make American democracy appear even more repressive than the current Nazi, Stalinist or Chinese penitentiary systems… Who is “in prison” and who is “at work”? “Technically”, most Uighurs now subjected to forced labour (500,000? 1 million?) are not “detainees”.
On the other hand, it’s Society which can sometimes itself serve as a prison without mediation: informal social control, by “the vigilant neighbours”, the pressure of conformism, community surveillance, the call to report violators, and websites, such as the other side of the Atlantic, which denounce and harass relief released after having served their sentence. The well-intentioned reformer does not fail to present Sweden in a “model to follow”: 58 per 100,000 inhabitants (103 per 100,000 in France).
If nous étions enfermés, we would probably prefer to be in Norgehaven (Bays-Bas), a prison according to Wikipedia ” la plus confortable au monde “, qu’à Fleury-Mérogis, but we also know that capitalism is ne serait être doux qu’à la marge. La paix sociale ne vaudra jamais pour tout le monde. Pour l’essentiel, la justice « met la transgression (et sa sanction) en spectacle afin de l’évacuer. La prison reassure plus ceux qui n’y iront sans doute pas, qu’elle ne dissuade ceux qui ont des chances d’y aller. » ( La Démocratie triumph à Outreau )
(Sur)live
To be a prisoner is to be subjected to depersonalization and reduced autonomy to a minimum, but also, as D describes. J., forced community.
In Rikers, the convicts relevant to City Time do not live in cells, but vast dormitories where, as the authors in analysis in detail, they reproduce a complex complexensemble of rituals and relationships, the only way to survive and give meaning to the time that is stolen: “In of spite an appearance of chaos, the social life of City Time is as structured as we can find almost everywhere else “.
La prison caricature un monde dit libre qui impose ses logiques.
Au point que certains petits délinquants en viennent à « considerar leur brève incarceration comme un accident du travai l […] Si le vol est une profession, ils constituent ce que nous pourrions appeler son précariat. » (D. & J.)
” The multiple political misadventures of the drug war and the dismantling of the health service de facto transformed prisons and centres into mental health services for the poor and especially for minorities. ( Homer Venters, responsible for health at Rikers between 2008 and 2017 ) In 2003, one third of the persons living in a home for the homeless had been interned, and it is abdicated to be accommodated, in a New York prison.
The gang, the most explicit form of cooperation between detainees
” Gangs are local affinity organizations, which have prospered since the 19th century e century in New York City among working-class communities of ethnic and racial segregation, aggravated by exclusion from the regular and well-paid labour market. … the gangs offer the promised of a social status, of money and power thanks to participation in a black market economy, although at the major risk of losing one’s freedom or even one’s life. “(D. – J.)
Without being ubiquitous or all-powerful, gangs are no less at the heart of Rikers’ social life. In 2014, wanting to decrease their influence and also the risks of aggression, the administration had decided to reunite members of each gang in the same dormitory? She returned to this measure in 2021.
The existence of gangs has a double effect. On the one hand, it promotes a certain solidarity, even as will it will be seen, encouraging a strike by women prisoners. On the other hand, this collective force works for the benefit of the “band” itself thus fortified in ” proto-State “(D. J.), which is justified like any State: ” Without us, it would be chaos.” ” Gang members pay priority to the best beds, phone choice, telephone access, etc. According to D. J., each dormitory to his hierarchy, not always that of an organizer in the prison and outside: is “head” who gives himself (or to whom the group recognizes himself). Sometimes against the racism of the guards. But there are also “neutral” dormitories, with a self-designated “leader”, soft power more or less accepted.
In this cramming of poor people forced to live together, the collective imposes its clothes, its rules. The insufficiency of a meal eaten in a maximum of ten minutes is somewhat compensated by an exchange of food (often stolen from the kitchens, since the essential practical services are assured by the prisoners), in exchange for money, but sometimes available, although, as in the free, here nothing totally is free: the “gift” the helps donor to build “social capital” useful in other occasions.
Collectifs également, le balayage et nettoyage du dormtoir, effectues en commun, souvent avec le souci d’efficacy et ” un puissant sens du collectif “, selon D. & J., alors manifeste en ce moment privilegé.
With the guards, the detainees live in the mode of an e tacitly, now ” a kind of surface order, the outward appearances of a smoothly managed prison “( D. J. ).
As is the case in the free world, this does not exclude the claim. During the Covid, as in many other places, companies in particular, City Time have gone on strike to demand protection (request for masks, tests, etc.), and their return has been achieved, in particular thanks to the support of part of the media. In David’s unit, the strike was organized in a non-hierarchical manner, but in the neighboring unit, the fight was taken in hand by a gang, and without that support, D. – J., The action would certainly have been difficult, if not dangerous.
A gang helps to resolve conflicts. Par exemple, il forcera un perturbateur à changer de dortoir : sorte de bannissement, pas necessairement violent, par une pression à laquelle sassocie l’ensemble du dortoir.
” The gang is the most explicit form of cooperation between women prisoners “( D. J. ): like any checks and balances, it acts as a mediator, as a pacifier, and lives on an exchange of services with a base, from which it benefits, of course, first of all from its members.
Monitor
Many of the guardians ( Correction Officers , “COs” in short) come from the same backgrounds, or even the same neighbourhoods, as those they monitor.
At Rikers, in 2020, among the COs, Les Blancs made up 11% of the supervisors, and 8% of the grades, a proportion almost equivalent to that of the inmates. Blacks were 59% of supervisors and 74% of graduates, and Latinos were 24% and 14% respectively.
Moving away from the multiracial metropolis of New York City, in Elmira prison (west of New York State) studied by Andrea Morrell in 2008, 97 per cent white guards kept prisoners locked up between 60 and 70 per cent color prisoners.
Moreover, in 2020, women were in the majority among the guardians (and mostly Black). They are subject to a ” Gender-based balance of work against women ” (insults, harassment) on the part of their male colleagues as relaxations, many of which do not accept to have to live in an institution” Women-led “(D. – J.)
En reaction, les comportements les more agressifs contre les prisonniers viennent souvent des gardiennes, peut-être, supposent D & J, parce que ” les surveillants masculins n’ont tout simply pas à faire autant d’effort [that their female colleges pour que leur autorité soit reconnue” . »
On the other hand, D. J. did not connotado sexual violence, which they interpret as follows: ” Une homophobie généralisée et affirmée, partagée dans toute l’institution par les détentes comme par les gardiens, s’est relatively bien intégré à un interdit des agressions sexuelles. ”
At Rikers, ethnic or gender identity follows social role and solidarity created by work . The COs may admit.” Doing a dirty job “( a dirty Job ), they and they still live as in ” a separate company “(D. – J.), the interests of the prisoners.
This is evidenced by a strike by staff in February 2025, which in February 2025 mobilized 14,000 guards in 40 of the 42 prisons in New York State. As a striker complains about a journalist, ” New York State is becoming too lax. He refuses to allow us to use the means at our disposal. Sometimes, [detainees are people so bad that we need the strongest means. ”
” Although COBA [Sensors’union has obtained substantial salary increases and social benefits for its members, the main problem that motivates the syndicate’s activity is the freedom of COs to use violence against people incarcerated as they intend, without bureaucratic surveillance or independent investigation. “(D. – J.)
In fact, explains David, ” Guardians demand to be able to use force, not only as a practical means, but as a kind of barometer of their political power.” for “l a calls for impunity, expressed by the guards, refers to the maintenance of violence that is at the heart of the system. (Andrea Morrell)
Under the exchange of objects and services, and bartering, with the petty and good-natured aspects of small commerce, the constraint and the potential violence of some times rests the penitentiary system.
If one doubted, as soon as the guards fear losing control, the institution responded by the brutal force of the “ninja turtles”, thus nicknamed for their riot equipment resembling a shell. Last way, the state is ” a group of armed men ” (Engels).
Work
According to D. J., if you dare an comparison, the work at Rikers would paradoxically have more in common with the New Deal than with slavery on plantation. There are more workers than work. No anything is produced for the outside world: cooking, cleaning, etc., the “turns” prison through relaxation, which often receives a salary, much lower than the free labour. In August 2020, reacting to a strong drop in wages, descending to 25 cents/hour, the inmates decided a work stoppage, and their strike result in a compromised, unfavorable for the previously “well” paid minority. According to jobs, in October 2021, prisoners are paid 55 cents, 1 dollar or 1.45 dollars per hour. As for those prisoners, a minority, who work for a private enterprise, they contribute to the profit of this enterprise, not directly to the system.
In parallel, fueled in part by these very small revenues, there is an internal market: sales of tobacco, telephones, drugs, etc., manufacturing with means of the board of dishes and drinks dying while dreaming seems very popular), mixture of monetary exchange and service exchange, solidarity but also the constitution of this “social capital” so precious people who have almost no other.
Why?
In countries like the United States (other thing is forced labor in China, for example), modern capitalist society is ready (which pre-capitalist corporations did not do) to spend a lot to keep those who see as deviants to sideline.
In 1911, Emma Goldman that it cost the United States a trillion dollars per year to maintain institutions, ” almost as important as the combined production of wheat, valued at 750 million, and of coal valued, at 350 million .” In 2021, each inmate at Rikers costs an average of 550,000 dollars a year in New York City (the situation greatly varies according to the states and the salary of prison personnel: from 23,000 dollars in Arkansas to more than 300,000 in Massachusetts).
Half a million dollars a year per prisoner… astronomical figure, “absurd,” they say, and there’s no shortage of criticism to lament that ” in the two last decades, the money spent on prisons has increased six times faster than the money spent on universities ” (Adam Gopnik). P to build prisons, m They would be worth creating productive jobs, and investing in school and vocational training, thereby preventing crime before it is committed.
But what world do we live in? We did not wait for our time to move from a mass of potentially dangerous dispossessed: at the end of the 18th century, 1 inhabitant of France out of 8 would have been indigent, and it is estimated that there could be in Paris up to 100 1,000 beggars, or 1 out of 5 or 6 Parisians. The novelty of capitalism is produced to its own population in surplus, ensemble of those who do not find a place within the capital/labour relationship, each country treats its margin and its social rebus according to its history and according to its methods. The United States are one of the extreme examples of the general trend towards illness, but a minority of countries, the Netherlands, for example, where it is possible to maintain freedom from “excluded from work” more or minus, are even able to offer a “carceral decline”.
Whatever it may be, the prison does not have to be profitable in monetary terms. Despite the trend towards privatization, public institutions do not have to make money a priority, and the cost/beturn balance sheet of the school, the police and the army is not evaluable in dollars or roubles.
What it considers a crime, society does not treat it to elur, but to give it a prize , settled not in money, but in months and years of confinement. Both for a car theft, both for an assassination, knowing that justice does not charge a price fixed . In court, we market, it happens even – rarely – that we get out without paying: a trial is the reign of randomness.
Justice is ” less a way of resolving conflicts than of supporting conflicts that have not been prevented. In doing so, it is incoming them and in Switzerland. To the present absurdity of the criminogenic prison, a remedy worse than evil, of the most enlightened bourgeois humanists. … Denouncing the most common justice and prison present these two institutions as the tough, repressive, dictatorial face of capitalism. The prison would be a medieval institution, a survival of the barbaric times. The police would be the “ Fascist fascist “facilitated face of capital. In reality, the prison as a social depot and massive place of exclusion is a modern phenomenon that began at the time of the “ large-circulation “of the 17th and and 18th centuries with the General Hospital, the workhouses , etc. But it was a question of isolating an unstable population judged dangerous and of forcing it to work. It was not until the 19th century. e century to pulp the concentration system of a large minority delinequant into a specific place. Like the conscription army, universal suffrage, secular and obligatori school and administrative bureaucracy, modern justice and prison are daughters of the State of the Industrial Era. … Police and justice are responsible for settle their accounts those with who disturb the economic-social order, for cleaning up behaviors that outlying social norms, foring punish murders and thefts that do not fall within the usual framework of society: an accident at work is not a “ murder “, a tax fraud over billions is not necessarily a theft “, unless an hourly judge scrupulously is involved. “(“For a world without innocent people”, The Issuage , No 4, 1986)
No human group, no society, lives without standards, whatever their names and no matter how diverse they are. How do you treat the behaviors, the acts that don’t respect you? One certainty: prison is one of the worst solutions. What would happen in a revolution that would get rid of the state, the classes, the capital-to-labour relationship? Fundamental question, more often addressed by anarchists than by Marxists.
David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan deal with numerous aspects of the prison that we have not been able to address: visits (replaced by video meetings due to COVID), “vacation”, codes, food, hygiene, clothing entry and exit formalities, health, racism, etc.
More than a testimony: a social analysis. A book that is eagerly to be translated.
GD, June 2025
David Campbell, Jarrod Shanahan, City Time. On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island , NY University Press, 2025.
Some readings
Un précédent livre de Jarrod Shanahan analysait déjà Rikers: Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage , Verso, 2022.
One e ntretien with David : Charlie Hix, ” David Alex Campbell Released From Rikers “, Fifth Estate , No. 408, winter 2021.
Grounds for incarceration in the United States in 2025.
Prisoners of democracy (3 numbers, 1984-85): the purpose of this bulletin, in which several animators from The Issuage participated, was to contribute ” in and out of prisons [to a debate between all those who are outlawed by society or who, because of their activity, are threatened to be treated as such one day or the other, and who anticipate the need for a radical criticism of realities that are close to them.” “
Numbers available in PDF on the Autonomandous archive site .
Jacob Whiton , In too many American communities, mass incarceration has become a jobs program , 2020.
Prison Reform Trust, Prison. The Facts , 2022.
Adam Gopnik, The Caging of America. Why do we lock up so many people?
Emma Goldman, ” Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure “, in Anarchism – Other Essays , , 1911.
Entretien de Jarrod Shanahan avec Andrea R. Morrell sur la grève des gardiens en 2025 : NY’s Prison Guard Strike Has Roots in Decades of Racialized Deindustrialization.
Christian Romon, ” Mentors – policemen in Paris in XVIII e century ” , History, Economics and Society , No. 2, 1982, p. 259-295.
Charlie Bauer, Fractures of a lifetime , Agone , 2004.
Roger Knobelspiess, QHS, High Security Quarter (1980), Le Rocher, 2007.
Alexandre Berkman, Prison memoirs of an anarchist , Escape, 2020. Foreword by Hervé Denès, preface by Jacqueline Reuss.
The Issuage , No 1, 1983, ” For a world without morals “.
The Issuage , No 4, 1986, ” For a world without innocent people “:
Gilles Dauvé, Karl Nesic, Democracy triumphs over Outreau , 2006.
