Poverty And Incarceration In 20th Century
In Prison Writings in 20th Century, Franklin illuminates a positive correlation between poverty and incarceration after the 1929 stock market crash. Over a roughly ten-year period, the Great Depression elucidates an intersection of poverty and “criminality,” where impoverished conditions created behavioral responses that American society has criminalized. In addition, the crash created a profusion of cheap labor and therefore decreased the demand for prison labor. In 2008, the Great Recession destroyed countless people’s wealth, employment, and hope. The increase in poverty created by the recession should, according to the 1929 crash, also have a corresponding increase in incarceration and decrease in the use of prison labor. Yet incarceration