I know. Sounds crazy right? Prison abolition? Like, what would you even do about all those psycho serial killers? But instead of being a closed-minded asshole, try to imagine the bigger issue here. What are prisons in our society really good for? Sure there are the child molesters, the rapists, the crazy murderers. But how much of society is actually made up of such people? And let's say it's a lot. Let's say a really big chunk of society is actually composed of people who need serious mental help. If so, it would appear that the rational response to this would be just that: mental help. Perhaps intensive therapy? But no. It seems that the response to every crime--whether it be not paying that parking ticket you got 5 months ago or murdering a guy who just slept with your girlfriend,--punishment is always the very real threat of incarceration. So what's up with this? Is prison really making our lives safer, more secure? Many social activists and philosophers seem to think otherwise.
Take Michel Foucault, influential French philosopher who has given a lot of attention to the issue of crime, punishment and discipline. In his book, Discipline and Punish, Foucault outlines the history of punishment in order to clearly show how jail has become the institution it has. In the old-days, punishment was in the streets, as a kind of theater if you will. If someone in the community stole something, they would be put in the barracks or stoned in the town-square. The reason for this was two-fold. First, people in the community would actually see justice at work and be able to comprehend the implications of doing things that the law prohibits. Ah! Jimbo stole something, I see. Well, that's just what happens when someone steals shit, I'm glad we're holding him accountable. Fucking asshole will steal anything he can touch. Second, the public humiliation or disciplining of guilty persons helped to prevent others from acting out of order. Fuck! They're getting rocks thrown at them! Rocks hurt! I don't want to get rocks thrown at me like that! So this public display of justice not only showed people that there would be retribution if they did something that was in opposition to the rules, but also showed what would happen if you were to do the same thing as those found guilty (and usually it wasn't very good.) Another aspect of this public penalty system allowed the guilty people to make amends to the community that they had 'wronged'. If someone did steal something, the village people were able to see the stealers paying back their debt to society. Oh look honey! Jimbo's come such a long way, he keeps the town square so dust free with all that sweeping, he must really feel bad about that whole stealing thing! I really think he's learned his lesson. Now of course this was flawed because of historical incidents and corruption (why only the villagers getting stoned while the King murders people everyday?), but justice was very much a part of society here, even if it wasn't administered as equally between classes as it should have been.
Today, however, our concept of justice is based on the right or the wrong on the act. Helping an old lady cross the street is right, Kicking an old lady in the shins is wrong. Once a jury of our peers (ha) has deemed the act in question as permissible or not permissible, a decision must then be made regarding punishment. If the crime was especially heinous (rape, murder, molestation, etc.), jail time will be ordered and assessed. Now this is when things get kind of weird. So let's say a mobster is put in jail. The case itself is huge--all over the papers and Internet--and everyone is so glad the judge ruled that the mobster is guilty (which he was). Mobster is given 15-to-life for murdering a person in cold blood. So Mobster goes to jail. While in jail, mobster realizes he's got a very serious drinking problem. Mobster starts going to AA, even gets sober. Mobster stays sober for the rest of his stint. While in prison, Mobster starts working on himself; taking Anger Management classes, starts going to individual counseling once a week, even takes classes so he can finally get that GED he's never had. He hits the gym everyday, starts calling his son, even patches things up with his wife. Who knows. Basically, Mobster makes the best of his situation and utilizes every possible resource the prison system has to offer. His scheduled parole date comes up and is consequently denied because of the "egregious nature of the commitment offense" (which is actually the number 1 reason prisoners are denied parole, especially in the state of California thanks to Schwarzenegger). Well, that's never gonna change and seemingly, if you received 15-to-life the crime you've commited is probably pretty egregious. SO the public catches wind of this--MOBSTER UP FOR PAROLE! And outrage explodes. The public was not about to see the changes that mobster had made. The public still has memories of the cold-blooded killing machine Mobster that had enraged them 15 years prior. But this is no fault of the public. They are not assured that mobster will be a productive member of society because they were prevented from seeing the rehabilitation that the mobster had partaken in. Thus is a lose-lose situation. Mobster will not be believed and society cannot trust. So what is just about this situation? Where is the actual justice? Jail it seems can not be synonymous with justice because the doling out of punishment and discipline can not be witnessed or evident by the society that must take in the offenders post-conviction. So why? Why jail?
This question is much more deep-rooted than asking meekly, 'Well, what are we going to do about all the bad people?' First off, who isn't bad? Second, the question is more of an intrinsic rights question than an immediate action one. Prison Abolitionist Angela Y. Davis in Are Prisons Obsolete? encourages skeptics to look at the abolition of slavery. It was hard for many to imagine the United States as a successful country without utilizing slavery as a profitable institution. But before people figured out what to do in the literal sense, they had to realize that the notion and the theory of slavery itself was wrong. And slavery and the prison system, as institutions, are very different. Slavery was just unjust, there weren't any implications about if someone had committed a crime and so forth. But Angela Davis asks us to look at our current prison system as a kind of modern day slavery insofar as prisons have been privatized (yes, privatized, meaning that there are actual people making money off prison stocks. Therefore, the more people in prison, the more money you'll make. Sick) and something she describes as the prison-industrial-complex. The PIC, similar to the military-industrial-complex, uses the prison population as a labor force for producing things like cellphones, credit cards, school furniture, etc. with something like 60 cents an hour at most. Thus, our country and our society benefits from the incarcerated, as it helps keep labor wages low and labor force steady. I know this all sounds crazy, I thought so too when I first learned about it. But then I researched it and started actually thinking about the problem of prison and incarceration.
So this is the awkward issue of the month. Awkward because it sounds insane but it really isn't. Try to imagine a world without prisons. Question jail as an institution and challenge it by coming up with different and diverse methods of punishment. Because even if prison is the best we can do at the moment, that isn't saying much, especially with a crime rate that has remained neutral since the 80s in proportion to the population increase, and the expansion of prisons so that California, as a state alone, now contains approximately 75% of the world's prisons. And whether jail is right or wrong, just or not, that's just plain crazy. So this is the first installment (Prison Abolition 101) and for the remainder of the month we will be citing different stats, listing ways you can get involved in the prison abolitionist movement (if you care to do so) or just raise other questions surrounding the integrity of justice and jail in our country and abroad.
Because even Awkwardists can be activists.
Have an awkward issue idea for next month? e-mail us at onwardawkward@gmail.com.
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