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Through this, the series explores both the political situations Hundred finds himself in, and the mysteries surrounding his superpowers. The series ended in August with issue fifty. The title of the comic comes from the Latin phrase ' deus ex machina ', and is also a reference to Hundred's superhero persona, the Great Machine, in that he is now an 'ex-Machine'. In the first issue, Mitchell explains that he chose the name "Great Machine" based on a quote about society by Thomas Jefferson. Accordingly, one of the series' recurring themes is the tendency of citizens to become overly reliant on their government and constantly expect it to save them.

Vaughan has said that the comic was "born out of my anger with what passes for our current political leadership on both sides of the aisle ". Vaughan has admitted seeing the series as a means to explore real-world contemporary politics as well, but states that discussing themes overtly is not something he prefers. Ex Machina has been collected in the following trade paperbacks:. In addition, the series is being released in deluxe hardcovers, the first of which was released on July 15, Production designer Carey Meyer built the ship Serenity in two parts one for each level as a complete set with ceilings and practical lighting installed as part of the set that the cameras could use along with moveable parts.

That meant the environment worked for us and there weren't a lot of adjustments that needed to be made. One was that it allowed the viewers to feel they were really in a ship. Besides evoking a mood associated with the character who spends most time in each area, the color scheme also alludes to the heat generated in the tail of the ship. Whedon was also keen on utilizing vertical space; thus, having the crew's quarters accessible by ladder was important.

The set had several influences, including the sliding doors and tiny cubicles reminiscent of Japanese hotels. Their small budget was another reason to use the ship for much of the storytelling. When the characters did go off the ship, the worlds all had Earth atmosphere and coloring because they could not afford to design alien worlds. Greg Edmonson composed the musical score for the series.

He stated that he wrote for the emotion of the moment. However, one reviewer averred that he also wrote for the characters, stating: The slide guitar and fiddle used in this piece are portable instruments which fit the lifestyle of the crew: It was used at the end of the Battle of Serenity Valley, but also helped set up the joke for when Mal tells Simon that Kaylee is dead in the episode " Serenity ". The most memorable use of "Sad Violin", however, is at the end of " The Message ", when the crew mourned the death of Tracey.

This was also the last scene of the last episode the actors shot, and so this was seen by them, and Edmonson, as Firefly 's farewell. To denote impending danger, "Peril" was used, which is "a low pulse, like a heartbeat, with deep chimes and low strings". The criminal Niska has his own signature: Eastern European or Middle Eastern melodies over a low drone.

Simon and River's signature was a piano played sparsely with a violin in the background.

This is in contrast to the portable instruments of "Serenity": The various signatures were mostly established in the first pilot, "Serenity", and helped enhance the narrative. In every episode, the musical score intensified my experience of this intelligent, remarkable show. Using and combining all these signatures, Greg Edmonson brought out aspects of Firefly 's story and characters that were never explicitly revealed in the other elements of the series.

Whedon's use of music in his television shows has been regarded as 'filmic', in that he has been argued to use it to remind viewers at 'pivotal moments' of earlier events, resulting in a tighter continuity throughout the season. The musical score expressed the cultural fusion depicted in the show.

Cowboy guitar blended with Asian influence produced the atmospheric background for the series. As one reviewer stated:. Old music from the future—the music of roaring campfires and racous [ sic ] cowboys mixed with the warm, pensive sounds of Asian culture and, occasionally, a cold imperial trumpet, heralding the ominous structural presence of a domineering government. Whedon wrote the song before the series was greenlit and a preliminary recording performed by Whedon can be found on the DVD release.

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Behnken and the other crewmembers of STS on February 12, In casting his nine-member crew, Whedon looked first at the actors and considered their chemistry with others. Cast member Sean Maher recalls, "So then he just sort of put us all together, and I think it was very quick, like right out of the gate, we all instantly bonded". However, while filming the original pilot "Serenity", Whedon decided that Rebecca Gayheart was unsuitable for the role of Inara Serra , and shot her scenes in singles so that it would be easier to replace her.

Whedon approached Nathan Fillion to play the lead role of Malcolm Reynolds ; after Whedon explained the premise and showed him the treatment for the pilot, Fillion was eager for the role. He noted that "it was really thrilling. It was my first lead and I was pretty nervous, but I really wanted that part and I wanted to tell those stories. Fillion has called his time on Firefly the best acting job he ever had, [48] and compares every job he has had to it. Alan Tudyk applied through a casting office and several months later was called in for an audition, where he met with Whedon.

He was called back to test with two candidates for the role of Zoe Wash's wife and was told that it was down to him and one other candidate. The Zoes he tested with were not selected Gina Torres eventually received the role and Tudyk was sent home, but received a call informing him he had the part anyway. The Legendary Journeys , was at first uninterested in doing another science fiction show, but "was won over by the quality of the source material".

For Adam Baldwin , who grew up watching westerns, the role of Jayne Cobb was particularly resonant.

Canadian actress Jewel Staite videotaped her audition from Vancouver and was asked to come to Los Angeles to meet Whedon, at which point she was cast for the role of Kaylee Frye , the ship's engineer. Sean Maher recalls reading for the part and liking the character of Simon Tam , but that it was Whedon's personality and vision that "sealed the deal" for him. Glau had first worked for Whedon in the Angel episode " Waiting in the Wings ". Two weeks later, Whedon called her to tell her she had the part. Veteran television actor Ron Glass has said that until Firefly , he had not experienced or sought a science-fiction or western role, but he fell in love with the pilot script and the character of Shepherd Book.

Tim Minear was selected by Whedon to be the show runner , who serves as the head writer and production leader. According to Whedon "[Minear] understood the show as well as any human being, and just brought so much to it that I think of it as though he were always a part of it". The writers were selected after interviews and script samplings.

Greenberg and Jane Espenson. Next, the writers except the one working on the previous week's episode meet in the anteroom to Whedon's office to begin 'breaking' the story into acts and scenes. For the team, one of the key components to devising acts is deciding where to break for commercial and ensuring the viewer returns. For instance, in " Shindig ", the break for commercial occurs when Malcolm Reynolds is gravely injured and losing the duel. They're both big moments, but one of them leaves you curious and the other doesn't. Next, the writers develop the scenes onto a marker-filled whiteboard, featuring "a brief ordered description of each scene".

A writer is selected to create an outline of the episode's concept—occasionally with some dialogue and jokes—in one day. The outline is given to showrunner Tim Minear, who revises it within a day. The writer uses the revised outline to write the first draft of the script while the other writers work on developing the next. This first draft is usually submitted for revision within three to fourteen days; afterward, a second and sometimes third draft is written. After all revisions are made, the final draft would be produced as the 'shooting draft'.

Jill Ohanneson, Firefly ' s original costume designer, brought on Shawna Trpcic as her assistant for the pilot. When the show was picked up, Ohanneson was involved in another job and declined Firefly , suggesting Trpcic for the job. Trpcic used deep reds and oranges for the main cast, to express a feeling of "home", and contrasted that with grays and cool blues for the Alliance. Since the cancellation of the series, various cast and crew members have revealed details they had planned for the show's future: Firefly consists of a two-hour pilot and thirteen one-hour episodes with commercials.

The series originally premiered in the United States on Fox in September The episodes were aired out of the intended order. Although Whedon had designed the show to run for seven years, [69] low ratings resulted in cancellation by Fox in December after only 11 of the 14 completed episodes had aired in the United States. After it was canceled, the campaign worked on getting another network such as UPN to pick up the series. Club cited several actions by the Fox network that contributed to the show's failure, most notably airing the episodes out of sequence, making the plot more difficult to follow.

However, Fox decided that "Serenity" was unsuitable to open the series, and "The Train Job" was specifically created to act as a new pilot. Fox remastered the complete series in i high-definition for broadcast on Universal HD , which began in April The Science Channel began airing the series on March 6, Along with each episode, Dr.

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Michio Kaku provided commentary about the real-life science behind the science fiction of the show. A box set containing the fourteen completed episodes including those which had not yet aired in the United States was released on region 1 DVD on December 9, , [79] region 2 on April 19, , and region 4 on August 2, The box features the episodes in the original order in which the show's producers had intended them to be broadcast, as well as seven episode commentaries, outtakes and other features. The DVDs feature the episodes as they were shot in By September , its DVD release had sold approximately , copies.

Reynolds", as well as an additional featurette, "Firefly" Reunion: Lunch with Joss, Nathan, Alan and Ron. Many reviews focused on the show's fusion of Wild West and outer space motifs. TV Guide ' s Matt Roush, for instance, called the show "oddball" and "offbeat", and noted how literally the series took the metaphor of space operas as Westerns. Roush opined that the shift from space travel to horseback was "jarring", but that once he got used to this, he found the characters cleverly conceived, and the writing a crisp balance of action, tension and humor.

The Boston Globe described Firefly as a "wonderful, imaginative mess brimming with possibility". The review further notes the difference between the new series and other programs was that those shows "burst onto the scene with slick pilots and quickly deteriorate into mediocrity Firefly is on the opposite creative journey. Chocano noted that the series lacks the psychological tension of Buffy , and suggests that this might be attributable to the episodes being aired out of order. Firefly generated a loyal base of fans during its three-month original broadcast run on Fox in late These fans, self-styled Browncoats, used online forums to organize and try to save the series from being canceled by Fox only three months after its debut.

Their efforts included raising money for an ad in Variety magazine and a postcard writing campaign to UPN. Navy ships by April for recreational viewing by their crews. These and other continuing fan activities eventually persuaded Universal Studios to produce a feature film, Serenity. Numerous early screenings of rough film cuts were held for existing fans starting in May as an attempt to create a buzz to increase ticket sales when the final film cut was released widely on September 30, On June 23, , fans organized the first worldwide charity screenings of Serenity in 47 cities, dubbed as Can't Stop the Serenity or CSTS, an homage to the movie's tagline, "Can't stop the signal".



In July , a fan-made documentary was released, titled Done the Impossible , and is commercially available. The documentary relates the story of the fans and how the show has affected them, and features interviews with Whedon and various cast members. A fan-made, not-for-profit, unofficial sequel to Serenity , titled Browncoats: According to the film's creator and producer, Whedon gave "his blessing" to the project.

Talkin' VAWLS - Episode #35 "Coaching or Execution? Who is to Blame?"

The film was sold on DVD and Blu-ray at the film's website, with all proceeds being distributed among five charities. Firefly came in first place, with its cinematic follow-up Serenity in second. Brad Wright , co-creator of Stargate SG-1 has said that the th episode of SG-1 is "a little kiss to Serenity and Firefly , which was possibly one of the best canceled series in history". In the episode, "Martin Lloyd has come to the S. Ten thousand people lined up to get into the panel, and the panel ended with the entire crowd giving the cast and crew a standing ovation.

A tenth anniversary special, Browncoats Unite , was shown on the Science Channel on November 11, The special featured Whedon, Minear, and several of the cast members, in a discussion on the series' history. According to Reason ' s Julian Sanchez , Firefly ' s cult following "seems to include a disproportionate number of libertarians. The characters each exhibit traits that exemplify core libertarian values, such as the right to bear arms Jayne, Zoe , legal prostitution Inara , freedom of religion Book , logic and reasoning Simon , and anti-conscription River.

He's the opposite of me in many ways. At the time the series was cancelled by Fox, it averaged 4. When he and Leonard Hofstadter are discussing their roommate agreement, they include a passage in which they dedicate Friday nights to watching Firefly , as Sheldon believes it will last for years. Upon its cancellation, he brands Rupert Murdoch , the owner of Fox , a traitor.

When Raj tries to hit on her he says that although he is an astrophysicist, she was actually in space during the shooting of Firefly. Glau chides him for believing this and Raj backtracks, saying, "Those are crazy people! They have an agreement that if one of them dies, the other will stage it to look like a suicide caused by the cancellation of Firefly , in the hopes that it will bring the show back. The television series Castle , where Fillion plays the lead character Richard Castle , has made ongoing homages to Firefly.

Castle has props from Firefly as decorative items in his home, has dressed up as a "space cowboy" for Halloween "You wore that five years ago," cracked his daughter , speaks Chinese that he learned from "a TV show [he] loved", and has made rapid "two-by-two" finger motions while wearing blue surgical gloves. He has been humorously asked if he has ever heard of a spa known as "Serenity", and Firefly catchphrases such as "shiny", "special hell", and "I was aiming for the head" have been used as punchlines during various dramatic scenes in Castle.

He has worked a murder case at a science fiction convention with suspects being the cast of a long-cancelled space opera that only ran for a season, and has had incidental interaction with people portrayed by Firefly cast members. Con Man , a comedy web series created by Tudyk and co-produced by Fillion, draws on the pair's experiences as cult science fiction actors touring the convention circuit. Staite, Torres and Maher made guest appearances. Maher played himself as a former Firefly actor. The popularity of the short-lived series served as the launching point for a media franchise within the Firefly universe, including the feature film Serenity , which addresses many plot points left unresolved by the series' cancellation.

Additionally, there are two comic-book mini-series , Serenity: Those Left Behind 3 issues, pages, , Serenity: Better Days 3 issues, 80 pages, and a one-shot hardcover Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale 56 pages, , along with the one-shots Serenity: Downtime and The Other Half and Serenity: Float Out in which Whedon explored plot strands he had intended to explore further in the series.

The comics are set, in plot terms, between the end of the TV series and the opening of the feature film. The two mini-series were later published in collected form as hardcover and paperback graphic novels. A six-issue series titled Serenity: Leaves on the Wind began in January and the series takes place after the events of the film. No Power in the 'Verse began in October and the series is set about 1. Studios announced that they had acquired the comic book and graphic novel publishing license to Firefly with plans to release new monthly comic book series, limited series, original graphic novels and more.

In July , the release of video game Firefly Online was announced that planned to have the cast reprise their roles. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. After a tour by the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, the group included in its report its concern that the HSU "was a secret experiment in political persecution" ibid. In , a federal judge ruled that the Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department had "unlawfully designated prisoners to Lexington based on their past political associations and personal beliefs" ibid.

Lexington was closed in , but activists and prisoners argue that its operations were simply transferred to a newer women's prison in Marianna, Florida. The final indictment leveled against the control units is their failure to even remotely rehabilitate prisoners for release into the general prison population, much less for release from prison. The overwhelming conclusion by people who have spent time observing control units and their effects on prisoners is that they produce more violence in the prisoners under their charge.

Stuart Grassian, a Harvard psychiatrist, in a famous study of the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners in Walpole, MA, wrote that prisoners developed: Grassian concluded that Pelican Bay's SHU "takes the most out of control of the prison population and makes them much more out of control by the time they leave" ibid. The conclusion activists, prisoners and researchers reach is that control units, and current prison conditions in general, produce more violent prisoners, who are for the most part eventually going to be released from prison.

Illustrating the possible consequences of this is an example provided by Ray Luc Levasseur: Last year [], a prisoner released from the isolation and brutality of California's notorious control unit at Pelican Bay killed a cop before he got home and unpacked his bag. Apparently, someone forgot to explain the finer points of deterrence to him. The response of the state representative from the district including Pelican Bay was illuminating. He introduced legislation mandating that released Pelican Bay prisoners be transported directly to their destination so that when the bodies drop it will be in some other bailiwick, and not stain the Department of Corrections.

Of course, activists point out, producing more violent prisoners serves to justify more repressive measures and more prison expansion. We will return to this issue of "planned failure" below. It seems this is one of the reasons prisoners and activists focus so much attention on the use of control units. In fact, the trend is disturbing enough to have earned the condemnation of Human Rights Watch: Human Rights Watch deplores the fact that 36 states have followed the example of the maximum security prison in Marion, Illinois [the first modern day prison of this type], to create super-maximum-security institutions.

The states have been quite creative in designing their own "maxi-maxis" and in making the conditions particularly difficult to bear, at times surpassing the original model. Prison Conditions in the United States In light of prisoner and activist writings, therefore, the incidents and events discussed above are not simply aberrations in an otherwise properly and humanely functioning control unit prisons. They are instead examples of pervasive, widespread patterns of abuse and injustice that have in essence become institutionalized c.

Dowker and Good write, "Just as control units suppress the prison population, so prisons act in our poor, African-American and Latino communities. Another area that receives a great deal of attention by activists and prisoners, and very little attention from most academics, is prisoner resistance. Prisoners are far from passive about the brutality and injustice they are subject to by the state.

The existence of control units in the first place attests to this. However, prison "disturbances" are either ignored or misrepresented by the media and the little academic literature that does exist on this subject is often less than illuminating c. The fact is that, from immigration detention centers to the most sophisticated federal penitentiaries and control units, prisoners are actively resisting the deteriorating conditions and the escalating abuses found on the inside.

This resistance takes both violent and non-violent forms and ranges from spontaneous, nonplanned actions to well planned and coordinated ones. Furthermore, we must also consider incidents of prison violence, rioting, etc. Finally, aside from the disturbances themselves, activists and prisoners argue that an important component of understanding these uprisings involves looking at the role of the media. One of the more serious uprisings in recent years occurred after the House of Representatives, in mid October of , rejected the recommendations of the U.

Sentencing Commission to reduce the to 1 sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine Pens, More recently, close to prisoners in New Folsom prison California staged a 1 day work strike on the 11th of August, in response to imposed or planned restrictions by the Department of Corrections, including "a ban on weightlifting, family visits, rehabilitation programs, vocational training, packages from home, and canteen" Wisely, A month later a series of disturbances occurred in Folsom's segregation control unit unit that prison spokesperson Lt.

Jay Schievelbein, in a candid moment, said was probably related to the earlier work strike ibid. In November of an uprising took place on death row at Ohio's Mansfield Correctional Institution. Sonny Williams a former prisoner and current coordinator of the Ohio Prisoner's Rights Union states that "I know form my contact with prisoners that it was the conditions on death row and the repression against the Lucasville Five that were the main reason for the uprising Prison Legal News March , p.

There was another hunger strike lasting for 30 days in " ibid. Although I wasn't able to locate any information on whether prisoner resistance has been increasing as a result of the punitive shift in corrections, there is evidence that prison resistance is both underreported and misrepresented by the media see Niederpruem, for a brief discussion. Prison activists and prisoners point out that because prisoners have little, if any, access to the media, the information about these disturbances are based almost exclusively on press reports by prison officials.

Also, when reported, prison disturbances rarely reach the national news media and are limited to coverage by local media in the area the prison is located. Since so many prisons are located in rural areas with small populations, it is no surprise that many people hear very little about prisoner resistance and the conditions that spark these incidents. According to Dan Pens, the media reported the uprisings associated with the sentencing disparity decision widely, but relied almost entirely on statements from Bureau of Prison officials, who denied or downplayed any relationship between the Congressional ruling and the disturbances.

After reviewing 30 newspapers, Pens found only one quote from a prisoner involved ibid. There were, however a few quotes from unofficial sources, including the president of a union representing prison guards, who stated "The inmates said they were trying to send a message to the U. They said the [ to 1 sentencing] law is racially motivated" quoted in ibid.

State officials reported that a number of the disturbance were really incidents between black and white inmates, while prison activists contend that the repressive measures of the state and severe overcrowding led to the uprisings racial incidents are reported to be the number one cause of prison disturbances. Dissatisfaction with rules and regulations were second. Also in , an incident in which five prisoners at California's Calipatria maximum security prison stabbed a sergeant, resulting in the prison being placed on indefinite lockdown, was represented by prison officials as a planned attack with no motive.

What was not reported was that prison guards had beaten another prisoner earlier that day who was from the same gang as the five who assaulted the sergeant. The latest incident resulted in the prison being placed on lockdown status for four days. According to Washington state prisoner, Paul Wright, "The amazing thing about this latest incident wasn't so much that it received little attention from the corporate media, but the blatantly untrue headline 'Prison Riot Lacks Motive' in the Peninsula Daily News article by Mike Dawson. The subheading of the article read: Prison Legal News later contacted prisoners at the facilities and found that they in fact had a number of grievances, ranging from a small law library, to store prices and staff corruption ibid.

These are just a few examples of the types of resistance prisoners are engaging in and the representations of these incidents by prison officials and the media when they are covered at all. It should be remembered that these incidents are only a small sample of a pattern or resistance, and prisoners and prison activists make it clear that they are a result of regressive and punitive prison policies and the effects of these policies on prison life.

Furthermore, the uprisings themselves surprised few if any of the prisoners and activists keeping track of the state of corrections. Most predict that continued overcrowding, increasing brutality and increasingly repressive prison policies will only guarantee more uprisings. What also demands our attention here is the response of prison officials to these types of uprisings.

By and large, prison officials have little tolerance for prisoner resistance of any kind, no matter what the particular grievances or methods. Thus the responses are usually swift and brutal. Their responses also typically target not only the prisoners involved in the disturbance, but also anyone unlucky enough to be in the area. Not infrequently, as in the case of a lockdown, the whole prison population is punished.

In the Ohio death row disturbance, in which a prisoner overpowered a guard and opened up all the cell pods with the guard's key, officials waited 5 hours to retake the unit. According to first hand accounts "guards could have come into the unit any time and peacefully regained control" Prison Legal News , March , p.

Instead, 60 highway patrol officers and 50 prison guards stormed the unit and fired up to 13 canisters of tear gas. Prisoners, most of whom had nothing to do with the actual overpowering of the guard, were cuffed, maced and severely beaten. Guards then proceeded to moved through the unit destroying prisoner property ibid. Aside from the violence, the most striking aspect of prison officials' response to inmate resistance is in the different treatment of violent and non-violent protests. Adrian Lomax argues that it is often the non-violent protesters who are treated more harshly.

Many times, participants in violent incidents will face a sentence in segregation, but leaders of food strikes, hunger strikes and other non-violent forms of protest face transfer to prisons in other states and longer sentences in control units for example, 38 prisoners involved in the work strike at Folsom were sent to SHUs at Pelican Bay and Corcoran. Lomax writes that "With the extreme malicious persecution of nonviolent protester and the lack of an operational grievance system, it is no surprise that prisoners turn to violent protest Every act of violence by prisoners strengthens the correctional administrators' hand" Lomax, [].

Violence, in other words, gives requests by prison officials for more funds an appearance of legitimacy ibid. The control units and the issues surrounding them are not aberration in the prison system as a whole. Prisoner activists and prisoners' rights activists have documented extensive physical and psychological abuse, arbitrary rules and enforcement including transfer to control units for political and organizing activities in the general prison population as well.

On the other side, prison administrators appear to do everything they can to keep abuses out of the public eye e. Given that the nation's prisons are severely overcrowded, often understaffed, are unable to provide any sort of adequate medical treatment to inmates, and rule by force, it is not surprising that prisoners resist.

Punitive policies that fail on the outside also fail on the inside, and this is especially true of the control unit "solution. II While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made--profits from crime! Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now! The emerging prison-industrial complex is without a doubt one of the central, if not the central, concerns of the prisoner and activist writers.

Within the context of a post-Cold War global order and economy, these writers argue, the prison industry has quickly become the largest and most profitable growth industry in the United States cf. As I hope will become apparent, the discussion of these issues by prisoners and activists places the emergence of the prison-industrial complex within the context of a shifting U. The explicit political-economic framework used in these analyses is, however, firmly grounded in an historical sensibility.

The work, therefore, is by and large an example of materialist history. With the fall of the Soviet bloc and the apparent triumph of neo-liberalism, the U. Military bases were closed, military contractors began laying off workers and many communities that had been economically dependent on defense dollars from the government began to experience serious economic downturn.

At about the same time the downsizing phenomenon gained media attention, eating away at even middle class job security, and Wall Street began its current, record breaking bull market. More generally, the nation's economy had been suffering for almost 10 years when the prison construction boom began in earnest, in the early 's. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow.

The United States now has the largest income disparity in the industrialized world. The "response" to the dismal state of the economy has been as severe as the conditions which produced it. Affirmative action, social welfare, and a number of other programs are under attack if not totally vanquished.

Anti-immigration is also on the rise once again. In fact, the Immigration and Naturalization Services may be enjoying a prosperity parallel to that of the Bureau of Prisons. As the editors of The Celling of America: An Inside Look Inside the U. Prison Industry point out, the "new politics of post-Soviet bogeymanism have struck prisoners particularly hard Prisoners make an especially easy target for attracting the fear and loathing of the American public. Prisoners have no economic or political power whatsoever. They make the perfect scapegoat" p.

Thus, prisoners and crime form a core of the elements that have moved in to fill the economic, as well as the ideological, space that has opened up in the last 25 years. In addition to the work prisoners do running prisons, inmates also do a variety of work for the public and private sector. In alone the Federal Prisons Industries Inc.

The list of large corporations taking advantage of the low cost captive workforce is equally impressive. The economic incentives to using prison labor are not hard to identify. In some cases inmates do make minimum wage or more, but most of that money is taken by either the federal government or the state government to cover anything from "cost of corrections" to social security to mandatory savings accounts Pens, p. Even in instances were pay is at minimum wage, in other words, inmates actually see only a fraction of what they have earned.

Although local, state and the federal government all seem to benefit from convict labor, it is corporations that appear poised to make the most of this arrangement. In , for example, the Dept. The DOC also subsidizes much of the overhead for these companies, including 24 hour security for companies at the Washington State Reformatory facility Pens, p. Private corporations also benefit form the lack of minimum wage laws in prison.

In Konica Business Machines, Inc. Inmates working on the project were paid between 35 and 47 cents an hour for their work ibid. Ohio inmates also did data entry for Unibase for a base wage of 47 cents per hour ibid. Enforcement of environmental and occupational safety regulations also seems to be compromised inside many U. Prisoners at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution were used for removing asbestos hanging off pipes, again without any protective clothing ibid. Activists and prisoners argue that the increasing use of prison labor for private profit represents "a Third World labor model in the heart of America" Wright, p.

In fact, it is precisely the conditions that drew American corporations to Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. Thus it isn't surprising that another parallel between prison labor and Third World labor is that it can be used to compete with free labor in the industrialized world. It is certainly possible that, given the increasing size of America's prison system, a trend is emerging to use prison labor, on a limited scale, as a replacement for free labor for many of the reasons discussed above.

At the very least, the use of prison labor can function as a threat to free workers. In fact, states and correctional institutions are beginning to advertise their captive workforces in much the same way that Third World countries advertise cheap labor and lax labor, safety and environmental regulations in industry publications c. Concrete examples of this trend do exist. Data Processing Accounting Services, for example, moved assembly jobs back to the U.

Even more striking, the male convicts that work for Chatleff and Lockhart at the Lockhart facility are doing jobs that were formerly held by employees of Lockhart technologies. In , however, Lockhart laid off those workers and moved the jobs into the correctional facility Bloomer, p. Again, the reasons for these types of shift seem transparent. It was opposition from organized labor, based on concerns about unfair competition, that helped to curtail prison labor at the close of the 19th century, and organized labor appears equally concerned about the use of prison labor today.

This is not surprising. TWA, for example, "used inmate labor to break strikes. During a flight attendant strike in , TWA turned its reservation clerks into flight attendants and put inmates to work on the phone. Some proponents of convict labor also see this as a concern. Linda Marin, executive director of Texas-CURE a prisoner rehabilitation group has expressed concern that "prisoners would be used as a union-busting tool" quoted in ibid.

The justification for using prison labor seems to have two distinct elements. On the one hand is the punitive model that imprisonment should involve hard labor be it productive or unproductive in an economic sense , while on the other is a more rehabilitative discourse that stresses the skills inmates learn working, which can then be used to obtain a job after release.

Within this spectrum we find a wide range of pronouncements. The head of Arizona's Dept. A more "subtle," and more revealing, statement is found in the testimony before Congress of Morgan Reynolds, director of the Criminal Justice Center, who asserted that "State and federal prison systems control a huge asset- convict labor- and largely waste its productive potential" Wright, p.

However, what is interesting, and new, is the politics of prison labor in the context of the global economy and, more specifically, within the context of a "race to the bottom" that places so much emphasis on corporate competitiveness. While a number of politicians are using the issue of convict labor as sign of their resolve to "reform" prisons by making prisoners work Wright, p. Prisoners, in other words, seem to be joining Third World workers as part of a reserve army of labor Adamson, p.

Of course, the communications giant was a major beneficiary of this inmate spending. While most prisons were almost self contained, self sustaining institutions at one time, even growing their own food Wright, p. In addition to the companies that provide prisoners with long distance phone services are firms that provide food, healthcare, goods for prison commissaries, transportation of prisoners between institutions, and security technologies.

According to the president of the American Institute of Architecture, over firms in the U. Construction firms are also benefitting from the money being spent on prison construction. High-tech companies are also beginning to take advantage of the profits to be made in providing for America's imprisoned. Within the context of a post-Cold War economy a trend receiving significant attention is the conversion of companies that were producing for national defense from communism to production for protection from and containment of criminals c.

Indeed, the secretary of defense was one of the featured speakers at a conference in entitled "Law Enforcement Technologies for the 21st Century" with "topics including 'the role of the defense industry, particularly for dual use and conversion' and 'how to penetrate the law-enforcement market'" Thomas, p. Military contractors, seeking to offset military cutbacks ibid. A1 , have already started the retooling needed for conversion to a prison economy. And weapons manufactures, according to Ken Silverstein, "see both public and private prisons as an outlet for 'defense' technology, such as electronic bracelets and stun guns" Silverstein, a p.

Lands freed up by military base closings also stand to be made use of under this trend. Thomas, for example, writes that "businessmen stood up and cheered Edward Kennedy announced that Fort Devens would be converted to a federal prison" Thomas, p. The concerns that prisoners and activists raise with regard to the involvement of the defense industries in imprisonment echo the wide ranging objections that President Eisenhower, peace and anti-war activists had to the creation of a military industrial complex; building an economy based on the existence of crime and the imprisonment will only serve to perpetuate both.

While this is true of the prison economy in general, and I will return to this below, it is especially important to monitor the involvement of large corporations in this industry, given the influence they have over economic policy and economic life in general. This reasons for this concern become even more apparent when we look at the issue of private prisons. The crime bill signed into law by President Clinton provides funding for the construction of , prison cells between and Ferraro, ?

The re-emergence of private, for profit prisons is perhaps the most significant development in corrections next to the new role of the military industry. As with the latter, there is big money involved. Privately run prisons are not new to the United States, in fact they were fairly common in the 19th century Silverstein, ; McDonald, p.

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Ironically, private prisons began to disappear around the turn of the century, having been outlawed in most states because of widespread abuse of inmates, severe overcrowding and because prisoners were being farmed our for use as slave labor Silverstein, p. This is ironic because these conditions have re-merged, just as the private prison industry is really beginning to take off Bates, ; Silverman. Currently, most privately run facilities are low and medium security institutions, including half way houses, "boot camps," juvenile detention centers and Immigration and Naturalization Services' detention centers.

These companies, however, have begun moving into the management of larger and higher security facilities Silverstein, a p. A number of corporations have already made significant profits from the current boom. It is now the sixth largest prison system in the country Bates, p. WCC's investors, for their part, "have enjoyed an average return of 18 percent during the past five years and the company is rated by Forbes as one of the top small businesses in the country" Silverstein, a p. The third largest company, Correctional Services Corp.

Brian Ruttenbur, an analyst for Equitable Securities Corp. The number of prisoners held in private prisons, now at around 60,, is estimated to reach , by the next decade Silverstein, a p. A number of analysts argue that private companies and the profits they stand to make are driving the latest leg of the prison building boom and, more specifically, the trend towards using private prisons Donziger, p.

Steven Donziger, who headed a recent study of the war on crime for the National Criminal Justice Commission, writes that "Based on our study, it [the expansion of the prison industry] has to do with the economic imperatives of the prison industry" Donziger, p. Activists and inmates appear to agree if the issues that permeate their writings are any indication.

Perhaps both a result and a cause of the performance of "prison stocks" on Wall Street, American Express, Smith Barney, Goldman Sacks, Merrill Lynch and a number of other firms have begun investing in the prison industry Silverstein, a p. American Express and General Electric have both invested directly in prison construction and other Wall Street firms have already made large sums "by underwriting prison construction with the sale of tax-exempt bonds" ibid.

The argument that politicians and the industry make in favor of privatization is a familiar one. The discourse used by officials and business leaders stresses that, as with any service, the private sector can run prisons more efficiently than the public sector. While a number of studies found that private corporations could in fact build and operate prisons more efficiently see Tomz, for a brief overview of some of these a review of cost comparison studies by the General Accounting Office found that "These studies do not offer substantial evidence that savings have occurred in Bates, p.

A number of activists even arguer that private prisons end up costing more, both in the short and long run e. Beyond the issue of cost, activists and prisoners point to a number of disturbing problems that private prisons present, and they are not alone. Pointing to perhaps the most obvious and most chilling problem, Jenni Gainsborough of the ACLU's National Prison Project writes that there is" a basic philosophical problem when you begin turning over administration of prisons to people who have an interest in keeping people locked up" reprinted in Silverstein a p.

Speaking implicitly to this relationship, the chief financial officer of CCA remarked that Clinton's crime bill of would be "very favorable to us" reprinted in Thomas, p. Of course, corporations in the prison industry, as in any industry, need to make a profit to survive.

The reason why the federal government's crime bill was seen as favorable to the CFO of CCA is that it very likely will lead to more arrests and, thus, to an increase in the number of convictions. This can benefit private prisons because of what David Shichor, a professor of criminal justice, calls the "Hilton scheme: You want to keep your hotel always full" reprinted in Bloomer, , p.