The Logic of the Whip: Mass Incarceration as Labor Discipline in the Neoliberal Social Structures of Accumulation

• In Event: Hyper-Surveilance and Confinement: Then and Now

Abstract

This paper argues that mass incarceration is a central institution in the neoliberal social structures of accumulation in the United States. Mass incarceration as an institution plays a critical but under-appreciated role in channeling class conflict in the neoliberal SSA. Neoliberalism has produced a significant sector of the working class who are largely excluded from the formal labor market, for which the threat of unemployment is not a sufficient disciplining mechanism. At the same time, it has undermined the welfare systems that had managed such populations in either period. Finally, the racial hierarchy essential to capitalist hegemony in the United States was threatened with collapse with the end of Jim Crow laws. The paper argues that mass incarceration has played an essential role in overcoming all of these barriers to stable accumulation under neoliberalism.

Author

• Geert Dhondt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY