Restructuring Global Capitalism

Section 1

The U.S. prison system appears to be most closely connected to crime within our

country. It seems as though prison populations and standards would respond to levels of crime

and popular public opinion. However, this is far from reality. Prison populations and practices

respond to capitalistic needs for an exploitable population in order to maximize profit.

Corporations utilize the prison to access a labor force without workplace standards, protections,

or fair pay, and to sell overpriced and poor amenities to a population with no other options. The

14th amendment outlawed slavery with one very important exception; as punishment for

commiting a crime. This allowed for the criminalization of the black community, and a new way

for white people to lock up black individuals for the purpose of forced labor. Convict leasing is

the ancestor of the prison labor we see today, and it proves that the goal of incarceration has

always been the creation of an exploitable population (Alexander, 2010). When those in power

could no longer do whatever they pleased, institutions were quick to adapt to a new way of

finding forced labor, one that we still see in today's society.

In order to not only fundamentally change the U.S. criminal justice system, but to create

a global society in which the conditions for these atrocities to arise does not exist, the U.S. must

create and adhere to a new standard of global citizenship that has no exceptions, and applies to

every individual in the same way. Harsha Walia explains why global citizenship is a vital step

towards abolition, explaining, “The border, the prison, the sweatshop, the reservation, the

checkpoint, the gated community are all part of the same carceral system operating through

dispossession, capture, containment and immobility. These bordering/ordering regimes

simultaneously manufacture and discipline surplus populations under capitalism and

colonialism, while extracting land, labor and life itself.” (Polychroniou, 2015). Building a global

society where we can prevent human rights violations entails eradicating the myriad of different

ways in which we categorize individuals. As long as people have the power to put other
individuals into categories and utilize these to determine rights, exploitation will keep

orchestrating the world into a damaging hierarchy.

This new constitution of global citizenship must be constructed in two parts. The first

should detail standards of labor practices, including conditions, pay, safety, hours, and

sustainability. The U.S. must alter economic practices so that the only corporations who are

allowed to participate in the U.S. economy use labor that adheres to this constitution, no matter

where in the world this labor is coming from. Second, it should detail the responsibilities that a

government owes every citizen, including fair and adequate access to education, healthy food,

healthcare, safe housing, restorative justice, and rehabilitation programs. The government must

be able to prove that they have provided adequate avenues for any individual to access these

benefits.

Crime needs to be redefined as governmental failure to protect society from

victimization. In the U.S. we prosecute crime as if someone has victimized the state, or in other

words, all of society. If the government cannot maintain a society in which all individuals can

thrive without causing harm to others, then they are in fact the ones victimizing society. Under

this definition, responding to crime is not a question of what to do with an “offending” individual,

but of how to alter society so that such offenses do not occur. In this situation there is no one

victim or perpetrator. Everyone involved will be analyzed based on how their lives line up to the

standards of global citizenship, and remedies will be applied when government inadequacies

are discovered. Restorative justice practices will be applied to heal community relationships as

well, which includes providing adequate reparations to those who were victimized. Materni

illustrates this concept explaining how restorative justice “focuses on the unique needs of the

individuals affected by specific incidents of crime and invites them to participate in a

personalized and private experience where they have the opportunity to consider what is

necessary to help them heal.” (Materni, 2013). Restorative justice is able to take into
account what is best for all parties involved in a crime, something our current justice does

even come close to accomplishing. Restorative justice would “show that it is possible to

meet the needs of both crime survivors and the justice-involved without reliance on prisons

(Beckett, 2018)” which would legitimize ideals of rehabilitation and abolition. This practice

will yield better outcomes for everyone and help nourish a healthier society.

These decisions should be carried out by a rotating group of members of the community

in which a crime occured. This way, power will be evenly distributed throughout all of society,

and people will have an incentive to respond to the infractions of others in the same way they

would hoped to be, and might eventually be, treated by community members. This will also

facilitate a more holistic analysis of the societal failures that led to the crime. Members of this

panel should include random community members, those who have caused victimhood, those

who have experienced victimhood, psychologists, and members of disadvantaged groups. Their

responses will be required to always address both societal failure and the individual needs of

those involved in the event, including a comprehensive restorative justice program.

This change in citizenship definition will have massive impacts on the world at large. The

U.S. has the largest economy in the world, and if corporations were only allowed to operate

within the U.S. if they strictly adhered to universal labor standards, corporations across the

globe would have to reform, and other countries would likely adopt these standards as well.

Another key part of global citizenship is having open borders. The constitution of global

citizenship will recognize the fact that borders are an extension of the U.S. carceral ordering

system, and serve to further oppress already disadvantaged populations. As equal inhabitants

of the globe, everyone has the right to move freely and reside where they please. This will

require the U.S. to decarcerate immigration all together, which will abolish immigration detention

centers and the pathway to prison that they create.

 Symbiotic institutions of capitalism and incarceration will become inadequate and the

structure of global capitalism will change dramatically. The lives of anyone who is currently

exploited under this global regime will improve. This constitution would also completely alter the

way in which we perceive punishment and how we respond when conflicts arise. How we view

‘crime’ and ‘victimhood’ would transform, and this would also help us to more adequately

address such issues.

Section 2

Instituting a global citizenship constitution that enshrines the right to restorative justice

would completely transform the way our justice system, and society at large look. It would

completely change the way labor is carried out, and if it was determined that labor is part of

punishment, it would be under completely safe conditions with a livable wage, just like

everywhere else. Labor standards across the country, and eventually the world would reform as

well. How we respond to crime, how we even conceive of crime would be unrecognizable. When

an individual is victimized, a panel of peers will work together to analyze the specific set of

circumstances that led the event to occur. When it is identified who among those involved was

victimized by society, these insufficiencies will be remedied. In this way, someone who acts out

of financial desperation will find support to get back on their feet, someone who acts out due to

addictions will be able to access rehabilitation, those who act out in the absence of opportunity

would be guided toward a good education, and anyone who acted violently could learn to

manage their emotions in anger management. The individuals would also participate in

restorative justice practices to heal together and keep the community strong, something that is

completely lacking from our current justice system. Our current system focuses on retribution.

Its goal is giving people the punishment they “deserve” not healing individuals or society. It

places people in trauma inducing spaces, provides no avenues of support for anyone involved

in crime, and creates criminogenic environments. Instituting a restorative justice model would
transform this and introduce the victim into the process of justice, something the current system

has failed to accomplish. It would show that everyone is a valued member of the community and

worthy of resolution. When people value their communities more, they will be less likely to harm

them. This differs greatly from current prisons, which are used to manufacture differences and to

weaken the strength of communities. Individuals and society at large will become healthier and

safer when the needs of people are being met and conflict is worked through.

This model will allow deterrence to truly become the driving force behind punishment.

The philosophy backing the global citizen model is similar to that of John Locke, except for the

fact that it truly does refer to all individuals. According to Locke, for punishment to be justified,

two things must be true. First, the one carrying out the punishment must have the power to do

so. Second, the punishment must “be directly useful for the procuring some greater good.”

(Suess, 2015). By addressing situations based on a global citizenship standard that provides

rights such as access to healthy food, safe housing, good education, access to higher

education, safe labor practices, equal access to employment, livable wages despite profession,

access to healthcare, access to mental healthcare, participation in restorative justice, and

decriminalizes victimless crimes, punishment will be able to address the conditions that allowed

a crime to occur, and aid an individual so that they will not be in a position to commit similar

actions again. A key aspect of this is how society engages with an individual during their period

of punishment. Isolation breeds violence, but community programs that introduce skills and

create connections have true impacts. Programs that respond to crime must be robust in

education and opportunity, and give people the tools they need to succeed. Phelps illustrates

the importance of these, stating, “...researchers find significant effects for educational and

vocational training as well as for general cognitive skills training, although in some studies the

cognitive skills training programs seem to be somewhat more effective in reducing recidivism.”

(Phelps, 2011). Our justice system needs to radically change the way that it provides for the

people who interact with it. If you give individuals the tools they need to succeed as part of
crime response, they will be able to build a life that does not entail victimizing others. You can

see further evidence of this in the film, They Call Us Monsters. The incarcerated youth thrive

when given the opportunity to meaningfully engage with each other on a project, and it helped

them process what they had been through that led them to incarceration. By taking this idea and

transforming it to be the main form of punishment, we can diminish the number of crimes that

occur.

This model will force society to correct the issues we experience, such as racial and

gender inequalities that lead to disproportionate rates of crime. Angela Davis explains, “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.”(Davis, 2003). By replacing prison with restorative justice

practices, we as a society will be forced to address these disparities and their consequences,

and will push us to do the work to remedy them. It will replace the torturous conditions of today’s

punishment with humane alternatives that do good for all of society. It has been proven that the

more inequality a society experiences, the more crime that occurs. Individuals are forced to

engage in illegal acts to survive, while others have more than enough resources. When people

experience such rampant inequality, they feel alienated from society and the institutions that are

supposed to support them, leading to resistance in the form of acting out against them. They do

not feel like part of a community or society, and therefore feel no obligation to care for others,

leading to higher tendencies towards violence (Itskovich 2023). By addressing these

inequalities, society will do the large scale work that is necessary to deter crimes and abolish

prisons.

Sources

1. Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow.. The New Press

2. Beckett, K. (2018). “The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the

Context of Mass Incarceration. Annual Review of Criminology pg 254

3. Davis, A. (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press

4. Itskovich, E. (2023). “Economic Inequality and Crime: The Role of Social Resistance”.

Journal of Criminal Justice. Vol 86. 102065.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235223000363

5. Materni, M. (2013). “Criminal Punishment and the Pursuit of Justice”. Br.J.Am. Leg.

Studies. Pg 301

6. Phelps, M. (2011). “Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era, The Gap Between Rhetoric and

Reality in U.S. Prison Programs. Law and Society Review. Vol 45 No1. pg 62.

7. Polychroniou, C.J. (2022). “We Need A World Without Borders in our Increasingly

Warming Planet. Global Policy, Durham University.

.https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/13/09/2022/we-need-world-without-borders-ou

r-increasingly-warming-planet

8. Suess, M. (2015). “Punishment in the State of Nature: John Locke and Criminal

Punishment in the United States of America.” Washington University Jurisprudence

Review. Vol 7. No2. pg 378