The prison has, for a long time now, been the bread and butter of American institutional justice. In fact, the United States apparently believes in the efficacy of the prison so much so that, despite the fact that it holds 5% of the world's total population, it holds around 25% of the world's prison population. This is despite the fact that crime rates overall (especially violent ones) have been on a steady decline for the past few decades. In this post, it is my intention to examine some of the ways that the prison functions both as a part of our society as well as a micro-society of its own.
As Michel Foucault notes, the prison's widespread use was largely born from a desire to punish more humanely. In the era leading up to the 19th century, bodily harm was typically visited upon the criminal. Foucault's Discipline and Punish begins with a graphic description of the criminal's flesh being torn from his body with hot metal pincers before his body is burned. The stock and pillory were common punishments for criminal offenders as well, made to endure extreme discomfort and public shaming. In this way, the punishments were an extreme deterrent for those thinking of criminal acts: See what happens when you commit a crime?
The prison in present day functions almost in a completely opposite manner. The prison is a place to which undesirable elements are removed and kept separate from society until they can reform. The prison is a place that we don't have to think about consciously. We can be assured that the necessary processes are taking place for the reform of these prisoners, but those who are deemed to have traits incompatible with a smoothly functioning society are kept out of public view, and thus, largely out of public consciousness. This is not to say that the prison doesn't still function as a deterrent measure of justice: we are assured that prison is a horrible place by media that suggests rampant gang rape ('Don't drop the soap!'), daily stabbings and riots, and characters of pitiless evil that reside within the prison walls.
And yet, how many of us have actually seen the inside of the prison? Viewed the daily inner-workings? Talked to the men and women it houses? In essence, the prison does not solely functions as a way to keep criminals separate from society. Its walls, rigid segmentation, and systems of surveillance also serve to prevent public oversight and interaction with those within the prison. The prison keeps criminals inside and society outside. This both deepens the distinction between the guilty and the innocent (as if they were separate sub-categories of humans) and places the prisoners largely at the mercy of their custodians.
The guards, wardens, and other staff of the prison are either employees of the state or, in the case of private prisons, are contracted by the state. This means that the order, discipline, and violence visited upon the prisoners can be readily viewed as state-sanctioned. The violations of privacy, rigid disciplinary provisions, and mandatory cavity searches all become state-sanctioned actions under which the prisoner is held under the overwhelming power of the state. The division between the prison and society further places the prisoner in a situation where society's silence over his condition further sanctions the violence visited on him or her. The prisoner is denied private dominion over something so basic and taken for granted as the body. It should be no surprise to us, then, that many forms of resistance used by prisoners are those that are bodily in some way. The weaponization of bodiy fluids is a manner of using the only resources left to the prisoner. Hunger strikes and self-mutiliation are the ultimate demonstration of authority over one's body: that one is so in control of their body that one is willing to sacrifice the flesh. Steve McQueen's film Hunger is an excellent portrayal of such a struggle by imprisoned members of the IRA in the UK.
And what choice does the prisoner have but to find modes of resistance? As Albert Camus said, "nothing is more despicable than respect based upon fear." If prisoners are placed at the bottom of a power dynamic by which their lives and liberty are fully in the hands of the state, what can they do but to try and reclaim some power. In fact, is this not something that we can all relate to? It is not just the prisoner who is at the mercy of the state. It is not so hard to imagine ourselves in a position under which our own fates could be decided at the hands of a judge and jury. Many of us have likely committed crimes that, under the law, jail time could have been served (from speeding tickets, to underage consumption, to petty theft). And yet, it is generally only the poorest among us who are convicted and separated from society.
I expect that one counter-argument to these ideas is the notion that those who have committed a crime have forfeited their rights as a citizen. This is a common mode of thinking and is reflected in practices of society like denying felons voting rights, cutting funding for prison outreach organizations that promote education, reform, and vocational training, and so forth. It seems hard for us to imagine helping someone who has committed murders or stolen large sums of money and property or have otherwise visited very legitimate harm on others. As one attendee of a public philosophy lecture put it: why should I care about the health care of violent criminals when I myself struggle to afford health insurance?
To me, this reflects an important point: that the division between guilty and innocent is not so distinctive as we might wish to believe. We cannot trust the labels between the two to do the work upon which society is founded. It's not difficult to imagine that had we been raised in an environment and subject to the same conditions as these prisoners that we might have gone down the same path. Can we come to view these people not as undeserving of our help, but those who need it the most? Perhaps a rising tide can indeed lift all boats.
I want to conclude with an anecdote from the John Irwin's Lifers, a book that features interviews with California prisoners who are incarcerated under indeterminate sentencing. One lifer had gotten two of his adolescent children involved in outreach groups that worked with the prison in hopes of preventing poor youth from committing crime. The group, called SQUIRES, had been a very positive force in each one of their lives. It came time for the father's parole hearing for which he was extremely hopeful. The parole board came back with an extension of his sentence and within two weeks, both of his boys had been arrested for separate crimes. Today, both boys, now adult men, are in jail along with their father.
When we tear away family members and support networks from the communities that need it most, we doom those forgotten members of society into hopeless cycles of incarceration, criminality, and desperation.
No comments:
Post a Comment