How a Post-Carceral World would Work

How will it work?

The task of creating a Post-Carceral world and having such a massive reform to policies and procedures that have been implemented for many, many years in itself is a tremendous feat. Prisons have been a normal part of our society that it would be difficult to gain the trust of an entire country. In attempting to make this new world work, the same opportunities and programs would have to apply to all within our society. Throughout history, racial divides have caused rifts between the government and the people. However, in order for this new Post-Carceral world to work, it would take a combined effort from all without separating "...white from black or white suburbia and black 'urban ghettos' " (Matthew Lassiter, Impossible Criminals: The Suburban Imperatives of America’s War on Drugs, p. 135) based on who is more likely to commit a crime due to the color of their skin.

The disparity of the incarcerated population, which was mostly African American including women, directly correlates with the efforts of law enforcement and their "tactics" in U.S. history. "Without institutional safeguards, black women seeking security or justice would have to create those circumstances for themselves, which often placed them on the receiving end of harsh sentences from the same legal system that failed them." (Kali Nicole Gross, African American Women, Mass Incarceration, and the Politics of Protection, p. 26). This statement is a clear example that our Post-Carceral world would have to instill equality among all people and be treated without racial or gender bias.

The most complicated part of having a Post-Carceral world to work properly will be finding new, more effective ways to separate high-level criminal offenders, such as murderers and rapists, from lower-level criminals, such as repeat unpaid parking ticket offenders or minor drug possessions. As mentioned before, assistance programs would be in place to help criminal offenders. However, do we really want to put those who have killed someone or have committed sexual crimes back into our society? We can argue that we can attempt to help these people with proper counseling and medical treatment and continue to educate them in a craft or knowledge, but to have them back in our society would be a massive risk for everyone else that abide by the laws set forth. In cases such as these, it would be proper to focus on the underlying issues with these types of offenders rather than the actual crimes. Why do they commit these crimes? What are the psychological processes in these offenders' minds and can the root be found and fixed? An assumption is always made that these offenders deserve to be incarcerated, but in our new society, we have to go to the source of these thought processes in order to better understand why these people commit such crimes, and make adjustments based on findings.

Another point to consider when it comes to more horrendous crimes such as; murder, rape, sex crimes, treason, espionage, etc. would be the implementation of mandatory service. These offenders would have to join an American Foreign legion type military, where we can send them off for a specific time period, ranging on the seriousness of the crime. We will implement counseling to every violent offender. We introduce the person or persons to a series of doctors and counselors to ascertain the mental status they are in and after heavy evaluation and considerations, a personal program will be designed to specifically address each individual persons issues and problems.

Hard labor has been proven at best ineffective and with this in mind, we have to continue with a sort of rehabilitation that will possibly be more effective than just assistive programs. We recognize that not everyone wants to be saved and some will always be criminals. In The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, Caleb Smith says, regarding the House of Refuge in which Austin Reed began his journey through prisons, "Its mission was to turn the children of the disorderly populations into obedient laborers, teaching them the habits of industry and submission 'by which,' as the society’s board of managers put it, 'they may earn an honest living, and become, from degraded outcasts, useful and reputable citizens of this Republic.'...inmates worked seven or eight hours a day, resting only on Sundays. The exploitation of their labor was justified as a kind of character building..." (Caleb Smith from Austin Reed's The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, Editor's Introduction). The previous intentions of hard labor can be repurposed in the form of counseling or other assistive programs.

Finally, immigration and the deportation process would have to change. Since most immigrants are not criminals or are not involved in criminal activities, then there is no reason to deport them to the country they left. There will be no prisons to hold them in our new world so that means that these people can extend their visas with no penalty or can have an opportunity to become citizens without the need to punish them. They have to show our governing body of their intent to become citizens and so a fine would be imposed if they are not making the effort. Of course, this process will be subject to if they really are innocent people coming to the U.S. or not. If these people are criminals in their own country, the option would be to send them back or accept them into our country but they will be under the same sanctions as every other criminal offender, which is to rehabilitate them and help them using the same programs we mentioned earlier. Since the prison system will no longer be in effect, that means that the funding used could be used to support all of our changes for this new world to work. The hiring of counselors, workers, and interpreters will all be in effect. The implementation of our programs will also be able to go live with this funding.

Overall, our Post-Carceral world would only work if everyone in our society contributes. The rise of prisons and the rise of mass incarceration had a major emphasis on racial divide and control, which cannot be a part of our new world. There will always be people that disagree or have some type of dislike or hatred for a group of people and this is what will cause our post-carceral world of not being able to function the way it should. It takes a group effort to make such a drastic change in our society and hopefully the world can see this the way we see this now. Opportunity will be available for all without the profiling of certain groups, which will make our country better and stronger. Society just has to work together to make this a reality.