GRIID Class on the Prison Industrial Complex in Kent County – Week #3

For week #3, participants in the discussion on the Prison Industrial Complex in Kent County, we looked at two items before we talked about the main reading.

The first item was a follow up to Week #2, where we discussed a specific news story about how the Kent County Prosecutor determined that the GRPD “followed procedure, when they shot an unarmed Black man who was struggling with mental health issues. I sent them a link to a new report entitled, GRIID 2024 News Monitoring Project, which has data and analysis about news coverage on policing/public safety.

Two major findings in the study were 1) of the 673 policing/public safety stories over the past 12 months, there were only 16 stories about community-based groups doing crime prevention work; and 2) of all these 673 stories that centered around crime, there were only 11 stories about the GRPD actually preventing crime, which means in most of the stories the GRPD showed up after a crime had already been committed. 

The second thing we discussed had to do with the 2025 Kent County Budget. I provided them with a link to the budget document and asked if they could determine how much of the county budget was spent on the Sheriff’s Department, on the Kent County Jail and the court system in Kent County, including the Prosecutor’s office. There was an interesting conversation around issues like how the budget is deliberately difficult to read, how their are hidden costs associated with those departments (grant funds, etc), and how there was no listing of contracts that Kent County had with private contractors related to the jail, the courts and the Sheriff’s Department.  

The bulk of Week #3  was spent discussion the first two chapters of the book, Beyond Courts. The book is one of the best I have come across that provides a critical analysis of the court system, which usually receives less attention when we talk about the Prison Industrial Complex. 

Chapter One provides a great introduction to the court system, with the chapter title being Criminal Courts 101. However, unlike most 101 bits of information, this book provided a more robust critique about the court system and why it is primarily used as a way to punish members of the working class and BIPOC communities. Chapter Two raised great questions about the court system, along with well researched analysis and great graphics & visuals, which acted as excellent popular education tools to communicate ideas, like graphic at the top.