Marxism, Racism, Sexism and the American Penal System

Applying Marxist theory to any social institution begins with locating the power center of that social institution. The most frustrating problem with the criminal justice system today for a Marxist is also the most overarching problem, and the easiest to describe: those who design and legislate the laws are the ones who stand to benefit the most from those laws. To deny that there is an ideological bias to punishment is to ignore the blatantly obvious; can anyone really deny a causal connection between the massive amounts of money big business contributes to politicians and the disparity in severity between robbing a convenience store and robbing a pension fund?

The corrections facilities may very well be the most explicit example of how ideology saturates the penal system. A central tenet of Marxism suggests that the dominant class has naturalized an unnatural perception of the quality of crime. White collar crime that affects hundreds or thousands, but from which the criminal is detached by time and geography is not punished in the same way as a blue-collar crime that may, in fact, be less oppressive not only in number, but to the individual. Whereas a member of the ruling class may destroy the lives of thousands he’s never seen and be sentenced to a “country club” facility, the poor person who steals that man’s car is sentenced to a violent, maximum-security prison.