Mass Incarceration (9/30/20)

 The assigned material this week takes a look at mass incarceration through a critical lens by calling into question America's skewed criminal justice system, it's foundations and the policies that continue to feed it, while maintaining ambition for positive change. 

Ava DuVernay's 13th argues that although the thirteenth amendment to the constitution abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude, the American criminal justice system exploits the clause that denies these liberties to those who have been convicted of a crime. Through this "loophole" those who seek to perpetuate racism and the spoils of a servitude driven economy continue to oppress black, Hispanic, and native American communities by portraying them as criminals, brandishing harsh sentences, stripping their humanity, and denying their civil rights upon release. Further, the film postulates that the modern criminal reform system is molded by legislature created by corporations who stand to sow monetary compensations from the practice of mass incarceration. 

The position of this film highlights how the American South sought to rebuild its economy in the wake of the civil war by criminalizing the actions of people of color, even if the actions were benign, in order to round them up to provide free labor. To keep these prisoners subservient, penitentiaries would subject inmates to sensory deprivation and abuse. When considering these practices I am reminded of another documentary, titled Fear of Thirteen, in which convicted prisoner, Nicholas Yarris, painfully describes the atrocities prisoners endure while incarcerated. Instead of receiving meaningful treatment from those who are qualified to provide it, these tactics, which are meant to dehumanize and control prisoners, are employed, vanquishing the potential for rehabilitation. Click the image below to view a video clip from this film with Nicholas' description of his experience. 

DuVernay's documentary also delineates the way the American system moved from first slavery, then to convict leasing, to Jim Crow laws, and finally mass incarceration. The beginnings of mass incarceration started with the election campaign of Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon was gunning for a law and order period and desired to push back against those who were seeking liberation from oppression. In order to do this, blacks were vilified and portrayed in the media as drug pushers and users. When speaking of this campaign initiative John Ehrlichman states “The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon white house had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. We knew we could not make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” In the following podcast by Marketplace , we are able to revisit some of the public service announcements criminalizing drug use and perpetuating the villainization of blacks. In one of the included clips, we hear a person of color transitioning from human to serpent form while tempting someone to try narcotics. A similar collection of  PSA's to portray drug use as heathenistic can be viewed in the youtube video below. 

After the 60's and 70's, the more prison populations rose, the more corporations stood to gain. Although political candidates gleaned votes from instilling fear and touting a stance that was tough on crime, they also benefited by consulting with lobbyists from corporations to pass legislation that suited their interests. Private associations like ALEC ( American Legislation Exchange Council) serve as a bridge from these corporations to policymakers, in order to facilitate the passing of policies and laws that enhance their financial gains. Examples include SB 1070 allows police to search anyone who looks like an immigrant, the 94 crime bill increased funding to incarcerate drug users, 3 strikes (serving life after 3rd crime), and truth in sentencing (min 85 percent of time sentenced should be served). These types of bills increase prison populations and keep those in the system there for longer durations. Privatization of bail, GPS bracelets, and plea bargains all serve to help corporations profit from punishment. 

In Goffman's work How We’re Priming Some Kids for College and Others for Prison, her argument focuses on the monetary costs of imprisonment and the way police make arrests in order to reach a quota. She emphasizes the challenges opposing young people who live in fear of illegal search and seizures at home and at school, as well as how poor kids can't afford court fees, and are scarred by convictions, experience parole restrictions, and forced into halfway houses, even after being apprehended under low-level warrants. They battle a permanent mark against them. Goffman points out how black and brown populations walk a thin line between right and wrong, while their white counterparts are not scrutinized or punished as severely. Further, she notes that crime rates will fluctuate regardless of the number of people in the prison population. 

Despite the current inequalities in the American penal system, Goffman has hope that one-day recovery prevention and civic inclusion will be the norm instead of punishment. She envisions a legacy of exclusion that does not promote and perpetuate current exclusions where society will hold a belief in blacks instead of painting them as the enemy. 

In Law and Order in School and Society: How Discipline and Policing Policies Harm Students of Color, and What We Can Do About It, Janelle T. Scott, Michele S. Moses, Kara Finnigan, Tina Trujillo, and Darrell Jackson purpose "alternatives to current ineffective and unjust educational and social policies." 

Their stance is that educational policies that can be developed and implemented at the local and state levels as a starting point to address these issues. One solution they put forward is to "require  teachers,  school  leaders,  and  all  police/security  staff  to  receive  intensive  preparation, trauma-informed professional development, and ongoing training on the causes of, and remedies for, racial inequality within and outside of school." This idea resonates with the work of Renee Watson in the book Rethinking Popular Culture and Media titled The Murder of Sean Bell: From Pain to Poetry. In this piece, Renee asks teachers to consider the community hopes of their students and to facilitate student-centered learning where they are allowed to explore their fears and seek non-violent outlets for their disdain. 

Law and Order in School and Society urges those who set policies from every level of educational and social systems to design stable support systems that address the various opportunity gaps that children of color and poverty face inside and out of school and synthesize new patterns of law enforcement with these populations. These ideas echo the ideas of Cammarota & Romero in Critically Compassionate Pedagogy for Latino Youth. In order to bridge these opportunity gaps, pedagogical processes must foster the liberation of students and break the mechanisms of silence that are prevalent in schools today.