Considering the fact that the US prison population is heavily skewed in one direction, that the US has the highest per capita prison population, that prison populations are used as forced labor, I'm quite convinced it's intentional. The small number of people that are accidentally targeted unintentionally are just collateral damage nobody really cares about.
Regardless, there isn't even a need to find some shadowy special interest to explain the high incarceration rates in the US, when the laws that led to those high incarceration rates were passed very publicly for very straightforward reasons: to curb the late-20th-century crime wave of the 1970's-1990's. This was a major, high-profile political issue, and the majority of voters at the time favored "tough-on-crime" measures that led to mandatory sentences, longer sentences, three-strikes laws, and fewer judicial prerogatives. That's why they elected the people who promised to pass those laws before getting elected and kept those promises after being elected. And just like every other well-intended law that's ever been passed, there were unintended consequences that we can and should fix.
There’s a reason some one people like Bernie Sanders were against the 1992 crime bill. Which many republicans and democrats were for. To say the people for it were well intentioned when Bernie and others were telling them of the consequences and having already seen the negative consequences up to that point shows these were not unintended and not well intentioned.
It can interest me when parts of a [sub]group do something. However it doesn’t have to mean anything too concrete or logical or line up so perfectly and neatly as your last sentence states.
I often hear "oh well {criminal justice system, healthcare, insert other bad industry} is not a failure because it's doing its intended purpose, which is profit". No, that's the current goal of the system running it. The actual, intended purpose, in a functioning society, is to {serve fair punishments and rehabilitate, enhance quality of health, etc}.
I'm not sure which history books you've been reading, but modern police were invented in the 17th and 18th centuries as brutal forms of population control. In America, the "actual, intended purpose" was to be a genocidal force that clears the land of Amerindians, to patrol the slaves, to terrorize the workers, and so on. In the South, you can trace the history of police departments directly to Confederate troops, who, immediately after losing the war, rounded up people and threw them in prison on fabricated charges. To a lot of people, it was as if the war never happened. The fact that there was no reign of terror in the south tells you everything you need to know. And the slavery continues to this day. So I have no idea what you mean when you talk about this fantastical "intended purpose".
The US instance is one.
Robbert Peele's "Peelian Principles" (UK) are another, which is how the UK ended up with a largely unarmed and civillian institution "policing by consent". (It also has its darker elements, but that's the thumbnail sketch.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
A French "gendarme" is literally a "man at arms", and is derived from military forces, representing a third tradition.
I was recently reminded of this due to a strange story having to do with covid and a shortage of license plates in Washington state, due to "social distancing" in the DOC. So that state contracted with another state whose prisoners were still incarcerated and still hard at work making license plates.
> The DOC has experienced issues since last summer, when compliance with social-distancing requirements slowed production, according to spokesperson Rachel Ericson. To address the issue, the agency has increased staffing and started outsourcing some production on July 31.
> License plates first began to be manufactured by individuals incarcerated at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla in 1923. It’s now one of 43 prison factories around the country that produce plates for 40 states and the federal government.
Original: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-state-g...
Outline (no paywall): https://outline.com/YnDVG6
No judgements! I only mention because it was a boon when someone pointed out i had a similar habit
Thank you for putting words to this. I think it's something I've struggled with as well.