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" Some critics of the prison system have employed the term "correctional industrial complex" and others "penal industrial complex." These and the term I have chosen to underscore, "prison industrial complex," all clearly resonate with the historical concept of a "military industrial complex," whose usage dates back to the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. It may seem ironic that a Republican president was the first to underscore a growing and dangerous alliance between the military and corporate worlds, but it clearly seemed right to antiwar activists and scholars during the era of the Vietnam War. Today, some activists mistakenly argue that the prison industrial complex is moving into the space vacated by the military industrial complex. However, the so called War on Terrorism initiated by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the 2002 attacks on the World Trade Center has made it very clear that the links between the military, corporations, and government are growing stronger, not weaker. "
― Angela Y. Davis , Are Prisons Obsolete?
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" We thus think about imprisonment as a fate reserved for others, a fate reserved for the "evildoers," to use a term recently popularized by George W. Bush. Because of the persistent power of racism, "criminals" and "evildoers" re, in the collective imagination, fantasized as people of color. The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism. "
― Angela Y. Davis , Are Prisons Obsolete?