Dyer, Joel :

Joel Dyer is a former editor of Boulder Weekly. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Utne Reader, and numerous other national magazines. He is the author of Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only the Beginning.

"�a profound analysis of the problems that have to do with the causes and consequences of inflated public fears."

--Readings

"Dyer deserves credit for coming up with an interesting and complex explanation of one of our most distressing problems."

--Philadelphia Weekly

"Enlightening and frightening, The Perpetual Prisoner Machine is sure to disturb�and likely enrage�any American citizen�. [A] moving and gripping social commentary."

--Rocky Mountain News

"[A] good assault on destructive social policy."

--San Diego Union-Tribune

"Dyer's assertion that America is profiting from prison-building is ultimately accurate: Our streets are safe, the social order is stable, and law-abiding citizens are secure."

--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"This bold and deep-probing analysis of the American criminal justice system raises serious questions about crime and punishment which reflect not just on the prisons, but on a profit-driven society."

--Salamanca, NY, Press

"[P]rovides an ideal place to begin looking at the issue of why most states spend more money building prisons than schools."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Dyer supplements meticulous research with argumentative anger and verve to make a strong case that what has been called the "prison-industrial complex" is preying on largely minority and underclass segments of our society."

--Publishers Weekly

"This is one of the most important books about the state of this nation that has come along in years. The fact that we have become the new Soviet Union, the new South Africa, when it comes to incarcerating our own citizens is perhaps our most shameful accomplishment of the past decade. The brilliance of Joel Dyer's book is that he just doesn't state that sad and compelling fact, he gives us the why behind it�how politicians, lawyers, and corporations have profited by frightening the public into believing that we must lock up as many people as possible."

--Michael Moore, Filmmaker, "Roger & Me" and "The Big One"

"The Perpetual Prisoner Machine is a bold and deep-probing analysis of our criminal justice system. It raises serious questions about crime and punishment which reflect not just on our prisons, but on our profit-driven society."

--Howard Zinn

Perseus Books Group Web Site, Aug., 2001

In The Perpetual Prisoner Machine, author Joel Dyer takes a critical look at the United States' criminal justice system as we enter the new millennium. America has more than tripled its prison population since 1980 even though crime rates have been either flat or declining. The U.S. now incarcerates nearly two million people in its prisons and jails on any given day and over five million of its citizens are currently under some form of justice department supervision. These facts raise an obvious question: If crime rates aren't going up, why is the prison population? The Perpetual Prisoner Machine provides the answer to this question and, shockingly, it has little to do with crime or justice. The answer is "profit."In the 1990s, through their mutual and pension funds, millions of American investors are now unwittingly profiting from crime. As a result of America's controversial push towards the privatization of its justice system, a growing number of well-known and politically influential U.S. Corporations�and subsequently their shareholders�are now cashing in on a prison trade whose profit potential is tied directly to the growth of the prison population. A disturbing realization, when you consider the influence that these same multi-national companies now have over our government's policy-making process by way of their lobbyists and their ability to fill campaign coffers.The Perpetual Prisoner Machine explains how the new prison-industrial complex has capitalized upon the public's fear of crime�which has its origins in violent media content�to help bring about the "hard on crime" policies that have led to our prison-filling, and therefore profitable, "war on crime." In addition to a quest for profits, Dyer describes an astounding chain of events including media consolidation and globalization, advances in communication technology, and the increasing political dependence upon public opinion polls and campaign funding that have led to the creation of what the author calls "the perpetual prisoner machine," a mechanism designed to suck the funds from social programs that diminish the crime-enhancing power of poverty and spit them into the bank accounts of those who own stock in the prison-industrial complex.Dyer concludes that powerful, market-driven forces have manipulated America into fighting a very real war against an imaginary foe. "Unfortunately," says Dyer, "real wars have real casualties. And in this case, the victims are America's poor, particularly those segments of our black and Hispanic population who live in poverty and who now comprise the vast majority of the new human commodity."

A New Commodity
The Crime Gap
Violence for Profit
Manufacturing Fear
The Politics of Public Opinion
The Weapons of War
Collateral Damage
Same Old Logic, Same Old Problems
The Hidden Costs of Private Prisons
Sidestepping the Restraints of Democracy
Pulling the Plug