Prison Industry Series

The Perpetual Prisoner Machine by Joel Dyer, 2000, Excerpts

Politicians know that we are afraid of crime. Politicians from both parties fully embrace the politically expedient “hard-on-crime” position.

Political consultants use the research of behavioral scientists and advertising agencies to help them create an anticrime argument to persuade us to vote for them. They simply follow the formula described in Petty and Cacioppo’s book Attitudes and Persuasion: [1] it is no longer safe for our women and children to walk our streets; [2] if we do not stop coddling criminals and start punishing them, there will be more and more victims, and next time, it could be your wife, your daughter, or your elderly mother; and finally, [3] if you elect me, I will work to put an end to “country-club” prisons, and I will vote for the three-strikes law that will keep the most dangerous criminals off our streets forever.

In today’s political world, our elected representatives often make their important decisions, such as how to deal with crime, based upon the opinion of the masses, who admittedly base their opinions regarding crime on the distorted coverage of this issue provided by television and therefore have little or no knowledge of the facts of the issue.

Since we are never presented with the root causes of crime [poverty, and so on] as a part of the crime message, we do not hear or see anything regarding criminals that might elicit any emotional response other than fear, anger, and contempt. As a result of this chain reaction of ignorance, politicians have restructured the justice system in a manner that would be more appropriate for dealing with the quantity and type of crime in the world that we observe through our television window – an imaginary world hundreds of times more violent and crime laden than the real world.

If politicians were out to tell us the truth about their war on crime, they probably wouldn’t’ be getting our votes. The only way that the war on crime can maintain its political appeal to the targeted electorate is if it continues to be masked in the illusion that it is being waged primarily against the violent criminals whose actions are greatly exaggerated by their sensationalized depiction of TV and in the movies.

Because the polls taken by the consultants of both Republicans and Democrats reflect the same public opinions and because the reason for taking such polls for both parties is to allow politicians to shape their positions toward this public opinion, it has to follow that Republicans and Democrats would increasingly be putting forward nearly identical platforms in the areas where the public’ opinion is the strongest. This helps to explain why the issue of crime – where the public’ opinion is perhaps more unified than on any other issue – is the most common theme found in the campaign ads of both parties.