From Social Justice Wiki
"Imagine..a world without prisons"...
“The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from
From Social Justice Wiki
"Imagine..a world without prisons"...
“The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs – it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism, and, increasingly, global capitalism.” - Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Angela Davis developed her critical thinking of the United States prison system through her personal experience of time spent in jail. Arrested in 1970 for her ties to the campaign to free George Jackson and the Soledad brothers, her involvement in prison issues only deepened as a result of her incarceration, as her understanding and activism only grew.
While in prison, Davis collaborated with Bettina Aptheker to learn from other contemporary movements to free political prisoners. From this initial work, the inextricable link between the racial, class, and gender character of the prison system was glaringly painful, as the numbers of poor people of color imprisoned continued to increase disproportionately.
Davis was just beginning to blossom into the influential and reknown activist, teacher, and writer she will later become, but despite her young age at the time, she later remarked in an interview:
“Of course we had not yet thought through all of the implications of such a position [of combining a call for the freedom of political prisoners with one for the abolition of prisons], but today it seems that what was viewed at that time as political naivete, the untheorized and utopian impulses of young people trying to be revolutionary, foreshadowed what was to become, at the turn of the century, the important project of critically examining the political economy of a prison system, whose unrestrained growth urgently needs to be reversed.”
The Development of Prisons
The penitentiary as an institution for simultaneous punishment and rehabilitation was a new conception, first appearing around the years of the American Revolution and seen as a progressive reform at the time as a replacement of the capital and corporal punishment of Europe. The historical links between slavery and the early penitentiary system are strong – employing similar forms of punishment, subordination, and dependence and instituting prison regulations very similar to the Slave Codes, which deprived human beings of virtually all rights. Following the abolition of slavery, in order to continue to regulate the behavior of free blacks, the Slave Codes were legally revised by governments into new Black Codes, and in this way, crime was racialized and black people became targets of a developing convict lease system
With a growing emphasis on a notion of self-reflection and self-reform, the prison model evolved into one heavily incorporating solitary confinement. Over time and with new technology, super-maximum security prisons saw rapid expansion and construction. Today African-Americans and Latinos are vastly over-represented in these supermax prisons. During lock-down, prisoners are confined to their cells for twenty-three hours a day.
In addition to solitary confinement, education opportunities are being eliminated through repressive strategies and disestablishment of writing and other prison educational programs – one of the many sources of frustration that incited the 1970 prisoner rebellion at Attica. Over time what has disappeared in any prison discourse are all references to individual rehabilitation; there is no pretense that rights are respected and there is no concern for the individual.
The Prison-Industrial Complex
Angela Davis further developed the concept of a “prison-industrial complex,” originally articulated by social historian Mike Davisand others. The prison-industrial complex refers to the complex and intertwined relationships between governments and politicians, for-profit corporations and investors, correctional facilities, guards’ unions, and the media. The prison system is essentially a business thriving on the marginalization of individuals, their labor, and the removal of their rights. Not only is the prison-industrial complex increasingly tied with economic globa