The Truly “Other” America
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Dostoevsky famously remarked that "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons". Seeing as the United States has over two million of its citizens behind bars, the largest prison population in the world, both in relative and absolute terms, Dostoevsky's famous maxim seems all the more important.
The American "prison-industrial complex," as many pundits refer to it, has become so large that it has not only been imprinted on our budget and legislature, but on our national consciousness.
HBO's Oz, Joseph Hallinan's Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, and Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete? all speak to the impact that the US prison system has had on the American experience. Moreover, the sheer price tag for supporting such an "incarceral state," is starting to garner attention from the middle class.
Much of this is attention and cost is due to the enormous growth in the US prison population. Over the last ten years, the population of US prisons has grown by 10% a year, well outpacing the growth in the general population. A multitude of factors have been linked to this "prison boom," including poverty, the War on Drugs, and institutional racism. But to understand the flaws of the prison system, we must understand the system itself.
The form and function of prisons in modern democracies is often taken for granted as being simple and peripheral. But prisons are both unique and essential to law and order. In any society, conflicts, disputes, and outright tragedies are bound to occur; such is life. But our democratic institutions, rather than reinforcing a police state, sectarian anarchy, or outright fear for one's safety, allows for our citizens to articulate and resolve their disputes in a court of law. Prisons are essential in this endeavor; they are the only legitimate means of isolating and detaining a citizen of the United States.
Unfortunately, our conscious perception of prison is that it is a simple, brutish institution where the dregs of society are quarantined from the productive citizenry. But to believe this is to ignore the complexities of criminal jurisprudence. Sometimes a citizen may have to be detained before he is found guilty (if he is deemed a flight risk or a danger to the community), sometimes wrongful arrests occur, and of course, a wrongful conviction is not beyond the realm of possibility (I'll pause to allow the CSI fans to groan in disagreement). With this in mind, I would like to examine the actual architecture of the US prison system.
The best source I can point you toward is the Human Rights Watch report on sexual assault in the American prison. Needless to say, prison rape is widespread and brutal. The report gives the indication that inmate rape is an accepted facet of prison life, and that its emotional and physical consequences are enormous; some inmates contract HIV from being raped, while others contemplate suicide from the stress and shame of the ordeal. You would think that the protection of the Eight Amendment would insulate inmates from such degradation, but the Supreme Court found in Hope v. Pelzer that prisoners cannot plead their case unless prison officials can be identified in committing or condoning the act. Needless to say, this is a difficult case to make.
Another structural flaw in our penal system is the remoteness of many prisons. Even though studies have shown that inmate rehabilitation and mental health are bolstered by visitation from family and friends, many state prisons are in isolated, rural locations, while federal prisons may house inmates in an entirely different state from where their crime occurred. While I agree that building prisons near major metropolitan areas presents a NIMBY problem (not in my backyard), the difficulties families face in communicating with their loved ones must somehow be reduced. But complicating this effort is the fact that economically stagnant cities and counties in middle America are all too eager to build prisons, hoping the construction and investment may create job growth.
But perhaps the greatest obstruction to a healthy, functional penal system is the American cultural attitude toward crime and punishment. The War on Drugs, "tough on crime" rhetoric, and a cultural caricature cementing an image that prisoners are evil, merciless thugs, effectively logjams any constructive discussion or prisoners rights. Even prison rape, clearly an intolerable evil, has become a common trope in American humor, with the new comedy Let's Go to Prison using it as a plot device.
All of this stems from a burdensome pathology in the American civic consciousness. In letting this phenomenon continue, we hurt only ourselves: in mocking the plight of America's prisoners, we ignore the connection between poverty and crime. When we write prisoners off as evil or wretched, we ignore the fact that any citizen is vulnerable to wrongful arrest and "testilying". When we allow such an immense amount of human suffering to continue, rather than damning criminals, we damn ourselves.
But the American prison system is by no means without hope. In 2003, the United States Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but many in prison advocacy wait impatiently to see meaningful enforcement. At the forefront of this pressure is Stop Prison Rape, a UN-recognized NPO made famous by Stephen Donaldson who, while being jailed for a White House protest was arrested and imprisoned. During his stay, he was raped and subsequently contracted AIDS. This man, who was effectively given the death penalty for a minor crime, refused to let the misery of US prisoners go unnoticed. Donaldson died in 1996, and I hope that the next time you joke about the conditions of US prisoners, you think of him.
Link
Link
The American "prison-industrial complex," as many pundits refer to it, has become so large that it has not only been imprinted on our budget and legislature, but on our national consciousness.
HBO's Oz, Joseph Hallinan's Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, and Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete? all speak to the impact that the US prison system has had on the American experience. Moreover, the sheer price tag for supporting such an "incarceral state," is starting to garner attention from the middle class.
Much of this is attention and cost is due to the enormous growth in the US prison population. Over the last ten years, the population of US prisons has grown by 10% a year, well outpacing the growth in the general population. A multitude of factors have been linked to this "prison boom," including poverty, the War on Drugs, and institutional racism. But to understand the flaws of the prison system, we must understand the system itself.
The form and function of prisons in modern democracies is often taken for granted as being simple and peripheral. But prisons are both unique and essential to law and order. In any society, conflicts, disputes, and outright tragedies are bound to occur; such is life. But our democratic institutions, rather than reinforcing a police state, sectarian anarchy, or outright fear for one's safety, allows for our citizens to articulate and resolve their disputes in a court of law. Prisons are essential in this endeavor; they are the only legitimate means of isolating and detaining a citizen of the United States.
Unfortunately, our conscious perception of prison is that it is a simple, brutish institution where the dregs of society are quarantined from the productive citizenry. But to believe this is to ignore the complexities of criminal jurisprudence. Sometimes a citizen may have to be detained before he is found guilty (if he is deemed a flight risk or a danger to the community), sometimes wrongful arrests occur, and of course, a wrongful conviction is not beyond the realm of possibility (I'll pause to allow the CSI fans to groan in disagreement). With this in mind, I would like to examine the actual architecture of the US prison system.
The best source I can point you toward is the Human Rights Watch report on sexual assault in the American prison. Needless to say, prison rape is widespread and brutal. The report gives the indication that inmate rape is an accepted facet of prison life, and that its emotional and physical consequences are enormous; some inmates contract HIV from being raped, while others contemplate suicide from the stress and shame of the ordeal. You would think that the protection of the Eight Amendment would insulate inmates from such degradation, but the Supreme Court found in Hope v. Pelzer that prisoners cannot plead their case unless prison officials can be identified in committing or condoning the act. Needless to say, this is a difficult case to make.
Another structural flaw in our penal system is the remoteness of many prisons. Even though studies have shown that inmate rehabilitation and mental health are bolstered by visitation from family and friends, many state prisons are in isolated, rural locations, while federal prisons may house inmates in an entirely different state from where their crime occurred. While I agree that building prisons near major metropolitan areas presents a NIMBY problem (not in my backyard), the difficulties families face in communicating with their loved ones must somehow be reduced. But complicating this effort is the fact that economically stagnant cities and counties in middle America are all too eager to build prisons, hoping the construction and investment may create job growth.
But perhaps the greatest obstruction to a healthy, functional penal system is the American cultural attitude toward crime and punishment. The War on Drugs, "tough on crime" rhetoric, and a cultural caricature cementing an image that prisoners are evil, merciless thugs, effectively logjams any constructive discussion or prisoners rights. Even prison rape, clearly an intolerable evil, has become a common trope in American humor, with the new comedy Let's Go to Prison using it as a plot device.
All of this stems from a burdensome pathology in the American civic consciousness. In letting this phenomenon continue, we hurt only ourselves: in mocking the plight of America's prisoners, we ignore the connection between poverty and crime. When we write prisoners off as evil or wretched, we ignore the fact that any citizen is vulnerable to wrongful arrest and "testilying". When we allow such an immense amount of human suffering to continue, rather than damning criminals, we damn ourselves.
But the American prison system is by no means without hope. In 2003, the United States Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but many in prison advocacy wait impatiently to see meaningful enforcement. At the forefront of this pressure is Stop Prison Rape, a UN-recognized NPO made famous by Stephen Donaldson who, while being jailed for a White House protest was arrested and imprisoned. During his stay, he was raped and subsequently contracted AIDS. This man, who was effectively given the death penalty for a minor crime, refused to let the misery of US prisoners go unnoticed. Donaldson died in 1996, and I hope that the next time you joke about the conditions of US prisoners, you think of him.
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