Skip navigation

Articles by Christian Parenti

Deadly Nostalgia: The Politics of Boot Camps

The short, stout eighth grader Gina Score, was never much of an athlete. But that didn't matter to the staff at South Dakota's Plankinton boot camp for girls, where militarystyle discipline and calisthenics were the modus operandi and, as staff put it, "quitting is not an option." On her first ...

Guarding Their Silence: Corcoran Guards Acquitted of Rape

The acquittal in November, 1999, of four California prison Guards charged with arranging for a young prisoner to be raped by Corcoran State Prison's notorious "Booty Bandit" was the result of a massive legal and political show of force on the part of the state's prison guards union, prisoners' advocates ...

Rural Prison as Colonial Master

In 1964, a tsunami swept over Crescent City, California completely destroying the downtown. Only nine people died, but the town -- nestled just below the Oregon border -- never recovered. It was rebuilt as a shabby imitation of California's worst planning examples; empty parking spaces and box-like buildings dominate the ...

Weed and Seed: The Fortress Culture

America's inner cities are being militarized. And Operation Weed and Seed, initiated in 1991 by the Bush administration in order to subordinate social spending to the agenda of the Justice Department, lies at the heart of the assault.

Michael Zinzun of Los Angeles's Coalition Against Police Abuse puts it bluntly: ...