The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex

Host: The night was hot, urban, and restless — the kind of heat that clings to the walls of a city that never really cools, only sweats. A distant sirens’ wail bled through the cracked window of a small apartment, where the light from a flickering neon sign outside stuttered in red and white across the walls, painting everything in alternating shades of guilt and truth.

The television hummed on low volume — another documentary about incarceration, another montage of statistics and faces. Beneath it, two figures sat in silence: Jack, leaning forward on the arm of an old couch, his grey eyes fixed and unblinking; and Jeeny, cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by papers and notes, her brown eyes lit with quiet fury.

On the screen, Henry Rollins’ quote flashed across in stark white letters over a black background:
“The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.”

Host: The words hung there like the smoke curling from the half-finished cigarette in Jack’s hand — bitter, heavy, uncomfortably true.

Jack: (exhaling) “Business. That’s the word, isn’t it? Always comes back to business.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “Everything does. Even morality. Especially morality.”

Host: The sound of distant police sirens echoed again, sharper this time — not metaphor, not background. A rhythm that the city knew too well.

Jack: “You ever notice how they talk about reform like it’s a revolution? As if repainting a cage makes it less of a cage.”

Jeeny: “Reform’s just the illusion of progress for people who can afford the view.”

Jack: “So what do you call it then?”

Jeeny: “Maintenance. Of a machine that’s too profitable to stop.”

Host: She looked up at the screen again — the montage of prisons, weapons factories, children in overcrowded classrooms, all cut together like a fever dream of American contradictions.

Jack: “You know what kills me? The efficiency of it all. The kid drops out of school, gets picked up, goes to trial, goes to prison, gets out, can’t get a job, gets picked up again. It’s a perfect loop. Someone’s always cashing in.”

Jeeny: “It’s not broken, Jack. It’s designed.”

Host: Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. The words themselves were heavy enough to make the air still.

Jeeny: “When you turn justice into a product, you stop asking who deserves punishment. You start asking who’s profitable to punish.”

Jack: (bitterly) “And Compton pays better than Cambridge.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The neon light from outside flickered again — Liquor & Loans — red, white, red, white — like a heartbeat struggling to find its rhythm. Jack’s hand trembled slightly as he stubbed out his cigarette.

Jack: “You know, when Rollins said that, people called it cynical. But he was just doing the math. You’ve got private prisons making millions per inmate, military contracts feeding politicians, lobbyists feeding Congress — and the rest of us feeding the illusion that justice is impartial.”

Jeeny: “Cynicism isn’t the disease. It’s the symptom. The disease is greed wearing a suit and calling itself democracy.”

Host: The television cut to an image of school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Jeeny’s eyes softened for a moment, not out of nostalgia but grief.

Jeeny: “We tell kids education is freedom. But if they’re born in the wrong zip code, freedom costs extra.”

Jack: “And if they can’t afford it, there’s always a cell waiting.”

Jeeny: (shaking her head) “It’s a trap disguised as opportunity. One system bleeds them, another buries them.”

Jack: “And all of it signed off as ‘business.’”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked steadily, mechanical, indifferent. The kind of sound that mocks urgency by repeating itself.

Jeeny: “You know what the cruelest part is? People like to believe it’s about race or crime or safety. But it’s about economy. Always economy. Race is the color of the paint — money is the wall underneath.”

Jack: “And the wall’s made of bills. Literal and figurative.”

Jeeny: “They don’t even hide it anymore. They advertise it. ‘Corrections Corporation of America,’ ‘Defense Solutions,’ ‘Detention Logistics.’ The euphemisms are almost poetic.”

Jack: “Yeah. The poetry of capitalism. Every empire writes it before it burns.”

Host: The rain outside began to fall harder, washing the city in streaks of silver and shadow. Jeeny stood, walked to the window, and looked down. Below, a police car’s lights painted the wet street in rotating red and blue. Somewhere, someone was being arrested. Somewhere, someone was getting richer.

Jeeny: “You ever wonder how history will remember this?”

Jack: “It won’t. History’s written by the well-fed.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But someday, someone’s going to look at all this — the prisons, the wars, the profit — and wonder how we managed to justify it.”

Jack: (quietly) “We’ll say we were doing our jobs.”

Jeeny: “And that’s the tragedy. Everyone’s just doing their job.”

Host: Her voice trembled, not from weakness but from rage held too long inside. She turned from the window, her reflection framed in the neon light — half-angel, half-indictment.

Jeeny: “When business dictates morality, innocence becomes a liability.”

Jack: “And guilt becomes a market.”

Host: The television clicked off with a soft hum, leaving only the rain and their breathing in the dark.

Jack: (after a long silence) “You know what scares me most? It’s not that the system exists. It’s that it feels… normal.”

Jeeny: “That’s how you know it’s winning.”

Host: She picked up her notebook, her pen trembling slightly. In the quiet, the sound of her writing was sharp, rhythmic — a human sound in a mechanical world.

Jack: (watching her) “What are you writing?”

Jeeny: “A reminder.”

Jack: “Of what?”

Jeeny: “That someone saw it. Someone still cared.”

Host: The camera pulled back slowly — the two of them framed by the city’s restless light, the rain, the hum of injustice that never sleeps.

And as the sound of the storm merged with the faint echo of sirens, Henry Rollins’ words returned like scripture for a fallen age:

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises.
We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he’s a criminal instead of a scholar. It’s business.

Host: Because in a world where profit outweighs humanity,
the bars don’t just belong to prisons —
they belong to every system that decides who gets to be free.