“The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems. Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic, and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for “tough on crime” politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions, and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.”

“The prison industrial complex (PIC) refers to a massive multi-billion dollar industry that promotes the exponential expansion of prisons, jails, immigrant detention centers, and juvenile detention centers. The PIC is represented by corporations that profit from incarceration, politicians who target people of color so that they appear to be “tough on crime,” and the media that represents a slanted view of how crime looks in our communities. In order to survive, the PIC uses propaganda to convince the public how much we need prisons; uses public support to strengthen harmful law-and-order agendas such as the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism”; uses these agendas to justify imprisoning disenfranchised people of color, poor people, and people with disabilities; leverages the resulting increasing rate of incarceration for prison-related corporate investments (construction, maintenance, goods, and services); pockets the profit; uses profit to create more propaganda.”

“In essence, the prison industrial complex is a self-perpetuating machine where the vast profits (e.g., cheap labor, private and public supply and construction contracts, job creation, continued media profits from exaggerated crime reporting, and crime/ punishment as entertainment) and perceived political benefits (e.g., reduced unemployment rates, “get tough on crime” and public safety rhetoric, funding increases for police, and criminal justice system agencies and professionals) lead to policies that are additionally designed to ensure an endless supply of “clients” for the criminal justice system (e.g., enhanced police presence in poor neighborhoods and communities of color; racial profiling; decreased funding for public education combined with zero-tolerance policies and increased rates of expulsion for students of color; increased rates of adult certification for juvenile offenders; mandatory minimum and three-strikes sentencing; draconian conditions of incarceration and a reduction of prison services that contribute to the likelihood of recidivism; collateral consequences—such as felony disenfranchisement, prohibitions on welfare receipt, public housing, gun ownership, voting and political participation, and employment—that nearly guarantee continued participation in crime and return to the prison industrial complex following initial release).” (2008)

“As prisons proliferate in U.S. society, private capital has become enmeshed in the punishment industry. And precisely because of their profit potential, prisons are becoming increasingly important to the U.S. economy. If the notion of punishment as a source of potentially stupendous profits is disturbing by itself, then the strategic dependence on racist structures and ideologies to render mass punishment palatable and profitable is even more troubling.… But private prison companies are only the most visible component of the increasing corporatization of punishment. Government contracts to build prisons have bolstered the construction industry. The architectural community has identified prison design as a major new niche. Technology developed for the military by companies like Westinghouse is being marketed for use in law enforcement and punishment. Moreover, corporations that appear to be far removed from the business of punishment are intimately involved in the expansion of the prison industrial complex.” (1998)

“Three decades after the war on crime began, the United States has developed a prison-industrial complex—a set of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need. The prison-industrial complex is not a conspiracy, guiding the nation's criminal-justice policy behind closed doors. It is a confluence of special interests that has given prison construction in the United States a seemingly unstoppable momentum. It is composed of politicians, both liberal and conservative, who have used the fear of crime to gain votes; impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the [incarcerated] population.” (1998)

“Anti-trans/queer violence and the reproduction of gender normativity are important ways in which PIC logics proliferate, dangerously unnamed. Gender normativity, understood as a series of cultural, political, legal, and religious assumptions that attempt to divide our bodies into two categories (men/women), is both a product of and a producer of the PIC. In this we mean to suggest that we must pay attention to the ways that the PIC harms trans/gender-non-conforming and queer people and also to how the PIC produces the gender binary and heteronormativity itself.” Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans, 1998: “[The U.S.’s] monumental commitment to lock up a sizable percentage of the population is an integral part of the globalization of capital. Several strands converged at the end of the Cold War, changing relations between labor and capital on an international scale: domestic economic decline, racism, the U.S. role as policeman of the world, and growth of the international drug economy in creating a booming prison/ industrial complex. And the prison industrial complex is rapidly becoming an essential component of the U.S. economy. Like the military/industrial complex, the prison industrial complex is an interweaving of private business and government interests. Its twofold purpose is profit and social control. Its public rationale is the fight against crime.” (2011)

“Ten years ago, nobody used the term “prison industrial complex” (PIC) to talk about the elaborate set of relationships, institutions, buildings, laws, urban and rural places, personnel, equipment, finances, dependencies, technocrats, opportunists, and intellectuals in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors that synergistically make up the PIC. The term gained wide popularity after the historic 1998 “Critical Resistance—Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex” conference and strategy session in California; but almost as rapidly it lost its meaningful breadth. By becoming too narrow, PIC became less accurate. The phrase, intended to resonate with rather than simply mimic ‘the military industrial complex,’ has not fulfilled its potential to help people theorize adequately how the PIC shapes political and social life for everyone. As a result, it has yet to become a broadly useful tool in mobilizing opposition to the complex’s continued expansion.” (2007)