In keeping with the arguments of Marxist-influenced scholars, some maintain that prison is used as a stopgap measure to deal with social problems that society and government have failed to adequately address, such as racism, poverty, and mental illness. In this view, as Ted Conover noted in his compelling journalistic work on his year spent as a corrections officer at New York's infamous Sing Sing, prison itself has become a social problem.

According to the most recent survey of inmates in prisons and jails, jail inmates report the highest rate of mental health problems (60 percent), followed by state (49 percent) and federal prisoners (40 percent). Partly as a result of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and the lack of community mental health services, some say prison has become a de facto mental health system.

Prisons are often built in areas with high unemployment rates, and work in prison then becomes a major feature of the regional economy. The privatization of prisons has led many to question whether punishment should be profitable and left to the workings of the market. Prison labor has been another area of debate, with corporations criticized for exploiting the labor of prisoners, and prison officials supportive of any activity that occupies the time and attention of inmates.

Some theorists have gone beyond consideration of prison as a social problem and beyond the host of social problems that occur within prisons. Historian Mike Davis is credited with first using the phrase "prison industrial complex" to describe the collection of interests, mainly political and economic, that have fueled the expansion of U.S. prisons regardless of their efficacy or cost-effectiveness in preventing and reducing crime.

References:

1) Conover, Ted. 2001. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. New York: Vintage Books.

2) Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.

3) Mauer, Marc and Meda Chesney-Lind, eds. 2003. Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. New York: New Press.

4) Morris, Norval and David J. Rothman, eds. 1998. The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. New York: Oxford University Press.

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