Theorizing financial extraction: The curious case of telephone profits in the Los Angeles county jails

Existing models of financial extraction in the criminal justice system are applied to the case of profitable telephone contracts in the Los Angeles County jails during the mid-1990s. The case exemplifies instances of a “punishment” model of monetary sanctions, in which profits are derived for crime...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Punishment & society 2021-01, Vol.23 (1), p.107-126
Main Author: Lara-Millan, Armando
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Crime
Crime prevention
Criminal justice
Criminal justice system
Exploitation
Extraction
Jails
Mental health care
Mental health services
Obligations
Predation
Prisoners
Prisons
Profits
Punishment
Sanctions
Telephones
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Existing models of financial extraction in the criminal justice system are applied to the case of profitable telephone contracts in the Los Angeles County jails during the mid-1990s. The case exemplifies instances of a “punishment” model of monetary sanctions, in which profits are derived for crime control purposes, and a “predation” model, in which inmates are seen as potential resources to absolve fiscal crisis and create market opportunities. However, the case contains an additional element: legal demand concerning inmates’ mental health care treatment. It is shown that telephone profits in jails could not have been used for predation or punishment purposes without the exploitation of legal ambiguity around inmate’s healthcare. Broader implications for the study of financial extraction as a constitutive theory – one that is both historical causal explanation and generalizable description – are drawn.
ISSN:1462-4745
1741-3095
DOI:10.1177/1462474520941929