Tennessee’s use of a Racist Police System to Benefit Corporate Slavery

Reporting Writer: Myra Seay

Abstract  
 
This research paper will dive into the history of the Prison Industrial Complex within America,
boiling down to the specifics of its relationship with the state Tennessee. This paper will explain what
the Prison Industrial Complex is, where it originated, why it still exists in America, what the outcome for
American citizens is versus American corporations, and how the United States Government has been
involved with prison labor for decades. 

This paper also investigates the racial discrepancy of Tennessee’s arrest rates, the growth of the arrest
rates, and who along with which organizations benefits from the arrests of American citizens. The
historical information talked about within this paper spans all the way from the post-American
Revolutionary War to 2019 as the context of when  events happen heavily relates to why the events
happen. 

The Racist Police System 

 
Ronald Reagan’s presidency kicked off the modern adaptation of free, controlled labor by black and
brown peoples. Reagan’s neoliberal agenda held many race related faucets that rung issues for
communities of color. Reagan’s agenda not only created the beginnings of the States becoming a fascist-
police state that used racist police terror to try and re-colonized minority communities through racist
mainstream media (propaganda), but also to use this new false ideology as an explanation to the mass
incarceration of black and brown peoples. 1 

 But Reagan was only pushing a racist social structure that was alive before he took office: the over-
pollicization of black and brown communities. In fact, from 1971-1975, there was an average of 63% of
national arrests being just of black and brown peoples under the ages of 18 for “violent” crimes in areas
of deep poverty. “Violent crime” includes murder, forcible rape, and aggravated assault.  

In 1969, it was shown that in major American cities, at least 20% of black and brown families living in
these cities fit the specifications of being “poor.” This 20% was of the poor black and brown families out
of the total 85% of black and brown people who made up the population in these cities. In Tennessee,
these cities were Memphis and Nashville.  

Memphis ranked as the 7th poorest city in Tennessee while Nashville ranking right behind as the
8th poorest city in Tennessee. And just in one year, from 1974-1975, Nashville saw a 22.3% rise in crime
and Memphis seeing an 8.3% rise in crime. This rise in crime also rose at the same time as the number of
sworn in officers. This means that while Nashville saw a 22.3% rise, the city of Nashville also saw an
increase of 12 new officers from 1973-1974 leaving the city of Nashville with a total of 15 sworn in police
officers just one year before the so-called “violent crime” had an increased as well. And along with these
new officers came the need for more black officers as between the years of 1971-1975, 39.9% of police
departments reported “employee morale” as the highest-ranking issue within the American Police
System even before the 21st century.  
Along with the increase of hiring sworn in police officers that have shown a consistent habit of being
white and targeting poor, non-white people to imprison, there was also a failure to establish trust
between black & brown American citizens for the police departments to uphold the social contract to
serve and protect ALL Americans. Meaning black and brown communities did not know how to identify
the role of police officers which lead to the depersonalization of the police officer within their
communities and lacking boundaries within an officer’s given power (i.e. stop and frisk). 2 

In the state of Tennessee, incarcerated individuals are segregated into federal, state, and local facilities
depending on the crime, and arrest rates continued to rise for Tennessee as the years went on. In fact,
from 1991-2018, Tennessee saw a 68% increase of felony arrests. This increase was so abrupt that by
2018 federal prisons had to spilt up inmates with 73% of incarcerated felons being housed in state
prisons and 27% being housed in state prisons. This means that roughly 22,130 felons were moved to
state prisons, and 30,180 felons were moved to state prisons, so out of 100,000 Tennesseans, 447 were
to be arrested.  

Now, in Tennessee, Black people make up 17% of the state’s population, but make up 40% of
Tennessee’s state’s prisoners. This means Black people, Black men, have the highest incarceration rates
of Tennessee. Black men are 4 times as likely to get arrested compared to white men meaning out of
100,000 Black men, 2,200 are arrested and jailed for “violent” crimes.3 

Police Brutality  

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLZ5RZrs4PU 
The Prison Industrial
Complex: https://confluence.gallatin.nyu.edu/context/interdisciplinary-
seminar/prison-labor-in-the-united-states  

The Prison Industrial Complex, or prison labor, is displayed as a complex ideal that has the face value of
distributing a sense of psychological well-being to incarcerated citizens in regards to preparing
inmates to be re-introduced to society, yet has a long history of corporate exploitation, and has even
manifested to be life-threatening to inmates. Prison labor has been a part of American history since
1783, post-American Revolutionary War, meaning the origins of prison labor stemmed from the
outcomes of having prisoners of war. And after the war, prison labor was molded from an inhumane
treatment towards opposing soldiers to a form of public humiliation for convicted citizens who were not
facing the death penalty.