Greece, Three Bridges - Anarchist campaign - Prison and paid work ... two communicating vessels - Rosa Nera squat (Chania, Crete)

The common phrase “bad guys are in jail” is often used sarcastically towards the 
usefulness and reliability of the institution. But how many can really picture a society 
without sadistic institutions of imprisonment and exclusion for those who break the rules? 
---- How are people to resist an institution that they spontaneously or empirically 
dislike, but also one which its reform they fail to conceive? ---- For us, a start would 
be to re-discuss the conceptual construction of the necessity of prisons, as a necessity 
linked mainly to the rules of surveillance and punishment in working relations. That is, 
to discuss the institution of prison, without looking at it through the myth of 
reformation, but seeing it as the current version of a mechanism that underminines labor, 
as a tool for the reproduction of class inequality.

Besides, let us not forget that every prison is reproduced and built upon the same 
relations that characterize every exploitation system· Hierarchical- bureaucratic 
relations of power, torture, forcibility, sadistic violence, imprisonment, debasement, 
alienation and exploitation of labour through the usage of new technical and scientific 
methods – those are the elements that characterize prisons, and that we see in every 
capitalist institution or in production.

The illegalization of immigrants

In greek prisons, the majority of inmates are poor people and workers. Moreover, in the 
case of immigrants held for months in “new” type prisons like Amygdaleza, the imprisonment 
takes place solely because of the immigrant’s failure to present the appropriate legal 
documents like a residence permit. The acquisition of those documents however is strongly 
linked to labor, since ones eligibility for acquiring them requires a certain amount of 
work stamps.

And thus, work (and unemployment) does not constitute some kind of “right” for those 
people, but a duty, which even though they fulfill, they remain forcibly illegal and more 
vulnerable to exploitation. For example, if an immigrant person has work, without a 
residence permit, is at just the same risk of getting arrested as having the permit while 
being unemployed, which will stop them from renewing that permit, due to lack of working 
stamps.

The economy of crime

Also held prisoners are some of the bosses of the black economy, either failed businessmen 
of the mafia, or successful ones that do business from inside the bars, together with the 
Big Boss of black economy, the State itself.

Drugs, guns, gambling, smuggling, trafficking, protection rackets and similar activities, 
are businesses of the invisible part of the Greek economy, which are in reality profitable 
for the capital. From this economy of “crime”, those who profit greatly are the local 
bosses (some big, some smaller). One would have to be delusional to believe that huge 
bulks of illegal merchandise, services and human beings are trafficked under the State’s 
nose; Apart from the cops, for who we occasionally learn how they make their pocket money, 
black economy is a section of production, and constitute a field of “big business” done by 
the deep state and its economy.

As in every section of a capitalist economy, this one has competition. For that reason 
there are occasional arrests, some to show the financial preference of the State and some 
to use as a cover. Recently, the head of Drug Enforcement in Agrinio was arrested with two 
other cops for drug trafficking, and was released after political pressure coming from the 
officer union of the Western district of Greece

And thus, entering and leaving prison is a question of class. Immigrant worker denied of 
work and political rights - prisoner. Police staff of protection and trafficker of black 
market “goods” – out and about.

A specific example is that of the recent arrests of the neo-nazis. Some of their members 
were already in jail as failed mafiosos or useful expendable morons of the mafia (like 
their former candidate, executor Rigas). With the vote of the racist mob, the golden dawn 
went from being the bosses’ sucker to dreaming about a big piece of the black economy and 
state management pie. For various reasons they didn’t make it, and after Pavlos Fyssa’s 
murder, the state and mafia moved them to the “bench” until further notice.

What could all this have to do with the undermining of labor? The workforce of black 
economy are workers, local or immigrant, that (consciously or not) function as expendable 
material for prisons or cemeteries, as long as profit is gained for the “invisible” black 
market’s bosses and political staff. In fact this is the same which happens in the entire 
social factory, in every form of work, even though we ought to say that the risk taken by 
the black market worker is often (if not always) bigger.

Thus evolves a parallel-illegal economy within which workers are once more the excluded 
ones. From all 11.988 inmates in greek prisons, those in for drug and cannabis cases are 
4.346. Often small dealers (which are also users) are labeled big drug traffickers and led 
to prison with exterminating sentences, while the real death traders remain out, and the 
State, having done its job, continues selling smack.

Should we be in jail?

For some years now the phrase “we should be in jail” has emerged in every-day talk. It is 
used metaphorically due to the bad economic state of many people. However, while 
repression increases and new prisons are built, the specific phrase ironically becomes 
more than just humor.

The first suspicions must have been felt from some people in the 90s, way before the 
recent rise in unemployment, the drop in wages, the creation of immigrant detention 
centers and finally the creation of C’ type prisons, with special detention conditions.

The endless and fragile work force demands a rational management for the benefit of the 
“market” and a strengthening of the legal armory of the state, proportionate to the raise 
in work force (threatened with repression).

With wages and pensions of poverty, unsound work until old age, abolition of access to 
public social and health insurance for big parts of the population, it is not at all 
strange that the ones under target are the small debtors, ex small bosses (the system’s 
mainstay), those who couldn’t cope with competition and are now in debt to the tax office. 
Despite the governments announcements about using an ‘in flagrante delicto’ method, it is 
impossible to criminally regulate 900.000 taxpayers with overdue debt. And so in that 
case, another feast is organized (apart from the “de facto” undermining of labor, since in 
fear of jail, everyone would work for lower wages). That of the opening of the 
confiscation of the first residence and other assets. The confiscation that is of basic 
means of survival, to achieve further debasement.

New prisons for the many, new profits for the filthy few.

As the inmates of the “reformatory” institutions grow in number, more prisons are built 
(according to the ministry of justice, the number of inmates on November 1, 2014 was 
11,988, and while the number of slots of all the institutions together was 9,886. In 
reality the number of slots is around 3,500)

Doesn’t it make sense then, with all that rise in “demand”, that some want the creation of 
private prisons (like the ones existing in the US) so that the prisoners can do unpaid 
work for reformation?

The press and state talk about “wiping out crime” and target whole social groups 
(strikers, those with risky jobs, immigrants, people with minor debts to the state, 
homeless, HIV positive) or resisting people (anarchists, demonstrators, people in 
environmental or workers’ movements) aiming to their marginalization and repression.

The devaluation of work and the depreciation of human life go together with the rise in 
prisons and in reasons why you could find yourself in them. For those who resist, or do 
not fit with the new greek capitalism, there is now a “prison inside prison”, the type C 
prison, and any variations that may exist temporarily, with other names.

In that context, prison is always an opportunity for profitability. Apart from providing 
salaries for cops, prosecutors, judges and other correctional powers, salaries it 
provides, the building of a prison is a contractor’s paradise.

We have already heard and read state specialists’ proposals for private prisons with 
in-house voluntary work. Or for people under custody working with a “geo-locator bracelet” 
that is suggested as an alternative corrective system, while in reality is a new form of 
labour. It comes as no surprise therefore that the ‘bracelet’ is suggested even for 
misdemeanors (an expensive bracelet, sold by a private company, that the prisoner has to 
buy out of their own pocket). Which boss wouldn’t want even cheaper, vulnerable and 
obedient workers?

conclusion

The contemporary form of prisons is the reflection of the capitalistic apportionment of 
work, and will only perish if the surrounding system is destroyed. This doesn’t mean that 
struggles against prisons are partial, quite the opposite. They are of most importance, 
because they strike one of the capitalist axes of the repression and exploitation system 
that recreates ideologies, fear, allegiance and acceptance. Prisoner struggles are cracks 
in the world that surrounds us. This battle is given point by point, even through 
technologically advanced surveillance.

For those who don’t like geo-locating, let them take a look into their pocket, at their 
cell phones. For those “lucky” enough to have work, for example, their boss can geo-locate 
them at any moment, and let them know of “work emergencies”or ask them to stop what 
they’re doing and get themselves down there.

It is important to recognize prisons in one’s surrounding relationships and institutions. 
Mainly in work, its architecture, it’s timed hours, in the state organization of 
unemployment the different forms of surveillance, punishment and exclusion inside and 
outside of prison. This understanding is a condition for the destruction of every facility 
and ideology of confinement in society, and for the reinforcing of prisoner struggles, 
until the destruction and overcoming of prisons and every system of exploitation and 
oppression.

Κατάληψη Rosa Nera (Χανιά), March 2015

prisons_rosa.pdfhttp://3gefires.org/sites/3gefires.org/files/pdf/prisons_rosa.pdf

Today's event is part of Anarchist Solidarity Campaign Internationalist "Three Bridges".

First bridge: Solidarity in Southern Europe

http://3gefires.org/el/node/53
http://3gefires.org/el/content/fylaki-kai-misthoti-ergasia-dyo-sygkoinonoynta-doheia