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Why a Post-Carceral World?
Why a Post-Carceral World?
It's easy to see from the time we've had in class that from the earliest prisons in the antebellum era, prisons had the intentions of reforming convicts but quickly turned into punishment. "...this was precisely the historical period when the value of labor began to be calculated in terms of time and therefore compensated in another quantifiable way, by money" (Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, p. 44). From the Auburn system of New York to the convict leasing programs to the Good Roads programs of the Southern Sates of the early 20th century, the main focus was to rehabilitate prisoners in order for them to become contributors to society once released but quickly became punishment rather than rehabilitation. "The penitentiary as an institution that simultaneously punished and rehabilitated its inhabitants was a new system of punishment...imprisonment was regarded as rehabilitative and the penitentiary prison was devised to provide convicts with the conditions for reflecting on their crimes and, through penitence, for reshaping their habits and even their souls...incarceration became the punishment itself." (Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, p. 26). But we have found that this isn't the case. Instead of rehabilitating societies "deplorable's", we created massive voids in lower income communities, especially African-American communities where one in three African-American men will be incarcerated at one point in their lives. Men are taken from family and friends, and forced to spend years, if not forever, behind bars on the tax payer's dime. Creating one; a highly inefficient system that doesn't rehabilitate but actually creates more "criminals". And secondly; by stripping men of color from there families and communities we create an environment where their children are more likely to become criminals too from the lack of a male/father figure in there lives. By also removing a potential bread winner from families we insure a life for them and their families on the lowest end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Thus continuing the the cycle of poverty than prison that plagues communities of color.
The limitations that are currently set for those charged with crimes is a major factor for those who continue to return to prison or continue to live life of crimes. With no assistance and with no clear path after prison time, convicts have no where to turn except to the criminal life they are accustomed to. This in turn continues a massive cycle of incarceration within our country on top of the stringent laws set to punish crimes. Our post-carceral world would then be established in order to break this cycle rather than continue to feed into it. Cassandra Adams exemplifies the effects of a Carceral world in her poem stating "WE DON’T HIRE FELONS!!! WE DON'T RENT TO FELONS!!!" (Cassandra Adams, "Freedom Gon' Come", Interrupted Life, p. 326-27). This is one good example of why a Post-Carceral world is needed from the eyes of a convict and why this new world would be established with proper rehabilitation rather than punishment. By labeling someone as a felon we punish them for life, punishing them just isn't enough, though. We make sure that people can't get a decent job, vote, rent, or own a gun. One can easily discern how counter productive this is. We send people to prison to punish and "rehabilitate" them, insofar that they'll leave the system better suited to be a productive citizen. But yet the opposite happens and by labeling someone as a felon we impede their progress for life.
(Courtesy of: www.mokidscount.org)
Another aspect of a post-carceral world is that we hope to break the divide the minority communities feel towards law enforcement and the criminal justice system in general. Referring back to Elizabeth Hinton's article, she explains that government programs such as the Great Society (War on Poverty and Crime), "Unprecedented in its fury and frequency, this disorder radically reshaped the direction of Johnson’s Great Society programs, resulting ultimately in a merger of antipoverty programs with anti-crime programs that laid the groundwork for contemporary mass incarceration" (Elizabeth Hinton, “A War within Our Own Boundaries”: Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the Rise of the Carceral State, p. 100). The ultimate goal of a post-carceral society is for a more peaceful and prosperous nation.
The final piece to answer the "why" is immigration. Immigration happens when people are trying to escape the hardships and prejudices in their own country. These people are coming to this country for a reason, which most are not of criminal nature. These people come here knowing that the U.S. is the land of opportunity, but when they arrive, they find themselves fighting against the prison system. U.S. laws prevent undocumented people from establishing residency here without undergoing the proper process. This process is what deems people from being able to stay here or to be deported. However, they become detainees when they are being investigated. These strict laws on immigration have caused a massive increase in the prison population. In our post-carceral world, these non-criminals have to be helped rather than segregated and jailed. "They still have rights...even though they are illegal aliens...they're all entitled to due process. They still have civil rights, they're all humans, we're all human beings" (Mark Dow from Luisa Aquino, American Gulag, p. 91).
(Courtesy of: Mark Dow, American Gulag, p.ii)
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