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Ep. 4. Media Club: Are Prisons Obsolete?
69 Plays5 months ago
In this episode, Meghan and Taryn chat about “Are Prisons Obsolete” by Angela Y. Davis, as the first installment of “media club”! They summarise key concepts in this foundational text on prison abolition.
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Resources:
The Last Graduation documentary
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Transcript
Introduction to Media Club Episodes
00:00:00
Speaker
you
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello, welcome to episode four of the Anti-Captivity Podcast. I'm Megan. And I'm Taryn. And this is the first of our Media Club episodes. And I guess that's pretty self-explanatory, but for these episodes, we want to engage in any kind of media that can help us to gain a better understanding of anti-captivity related
Listener Engagement and Participation
00:00:52
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topics. So whether it's a movie, a documentary,
00:00:55
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um short form videos, books, whatever it is, and we'll tell you ahead of time what we're going to be doing so that you can watch or read with us or, you know, in advance of the episode. And if you want to, you can ask questions or give your input on whatever that piece of media is. And you're also welcome to suggest things that you think we should
Angela Davis's Book on Prison Abolition
00:01:17
Speaker
check out. So today we're looking at Our Prisons Obsolete by the incredible Angela Davis.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, and if you happen to not know who Angela Davis is, do look her up. She is a renowned American scholar, author, and political activist. She's famous for her radical work in feminism, prison abolition, and anti-racism. And she...
00:01:44
Speaker
I guess gained prominence in the 1960s as a Black Panther and Communist Party leader. So she is definitely someone to know about if you don't already. And before we get into the book, though, just two things. ah First of all, this book is over 20 years old.
00:02:05
Speaker
um We certainly acknowledge that. and But we chose we chose it because it's such an important read and it is an excellent reference when discussing prison abolition.
00:02:16
Speaker
And because of that, though, we won't be dwelling on the stats and dates and like... getting into details um like that that are in the book when we're chatting about it. And secondly, and maybe most important, is content and trigger warnings for this whole episode. There'll be um references to slavery and human exploitation, sexual assault, um just a whole gambit of shit. So...
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, so we've decided to go through the book kind of chapter by chapter so that you get a solid overview, even if you haven't actually read it yet. So Meg and I are just going to kind of alternate summarizing each chapter. and um we should obviously also note that the book is focused on the US specifically. So aside from its age, it's also not written from a global perspective.
00:03:13
Speaker
But as we go through it, it's worth keeping in mind just... um thinking about how the prison system plays a role in the broader social and political landscape. So just keeping that in mind, it is very US focused, but I think a lot of the content and concepts are going to be relevant pretty much everywhere.
Reform vs. Abolition Debate
00:03:33
Speaker
So chapter one is called Prison Reform and Abolition. And it's just an introductory chapter. But I think it's so important that the book starts off addressing reform versus abolition. And it does go into more detail later in the book. But um I think it's a good starting point because for many people, at least this is what I've seen, is the kind of reflexive response for a lot of people when we speak about abolition is that what we really need is reform. we need reform.
00:04:06
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better prison systems essentially. And Angela Davis really emphasizes the way that people find it difficult to even imagine a world without prisons. And she yeah challenges that idea and emphasizes that reforms don't actually challenge the institution, but they kind of imply the acceptance of prisons as a permanent fixture in society.
00:04:31
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So even though in most places, the death penalty is kind of considered a violation of human rights. To quote the book, the prison is considered an inevitable and permanent feature of our social lives.
00:04:44
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So I think this is really a key point of the chapter. It's interrogating the kind of naturalization and widespread acceptance of prisons, really.
00:04:56
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Yeah, and she, I don't remember her actually using this term, but when I was um just going down a bit of a rabbit hole around the book online,
00:05:07
Speaker
This concept came up of ideological naturalization. And that's a concept that describes how oppressive systems like racism and the prison industrial complex are made to appear natural or inevitable or normal when um they are not. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's why this book is still so important even now, because people struggle to imagine something different. And there was one quote that I thought was really pertinent where she says, prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best unrealistic and impracticable,
00:05:51
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and at worst, mystifying and foolish.
Media's Role in Normalizing Prisons
00:05:54
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So I think this kind of dismissal, it kind of precludes abolition from even entering the debate. And it allows people to avoid seriously engaging with these ideas at all. Because if it's if the attitude is, well, that's that's a completely idealistic, ridiculous notion that we could get rid of prisons. It allows people to get pass from talking about any of this stuff.
00:06:19
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And just on the point of reform, the logic of advocating for reform, I think is similar to what we see in like animal welfare versus animal rights, where a lot of animal welfarists will say, oh we just need reform in the agriculture system. We we need better cages. We need better systems for murdering other animals. And yeah it's essentially small wins for the individuals that are in the system at the moment, but it doesn't challenge the violence of the institution. That's the same logic as prison reform.
00:06:56
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It's nicer cages for people and nicer ways of enacting state violence, essentially. yeah So really what it does is it makes the system more palatable.
00:07:06
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It makes it easier for people to think it's not so bad. And also, like people don't want to know what's going on inside. It's kind of like we know they're there, but they're not there.
00:07:22
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And it um it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems that of our society, especially with regards to capitalism and racism and all of that kind of stuff. It just is like, okay, let's not deal with these people and their mental health or, you know, traumas or whatever it might be. Let's just put them in this box and then we won't have to deal with it.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's what I was going to get at next as well, is that the prison on one hand is treated as if it's inevitable. so it's just a fact of life. But I think we, especially like for us as privileged white people, we need to recognize that prison is a kind of normal, quote unquote normal, or at least normalized part of life for a lot of marginalized communities through no choice of their own. And despite the fact that a very small proportion of people globally in general, will ever end up in prison or experience prison.
00:08:23
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We see all the imagery and the portrayals and it's kind of normalized for us, but we don't have that direct experience, a lot of us. And In that sense, prison is kind of present and absent from a lot of our lives. It's present in the the portrayals we see and the images we have in our minds, but it's disconnected from our direct lived experience.
00:08:45
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And it's almost too painful to imagine the possibility of ever becoming a prisoner. You know, for most people, especially people in privileged positions in society, it's kind of this thing that's reserved for others, people who have been othered.
00:09:02
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and we don't really know the realities that happen there. um A lot of representations in like film and media give that sense of permanence, like they they're just always there. And we see repeatedly in like movies and c series that prisons often play to a lesser or larger extent a role in the storyline. So even if you think of things like, um i used to really like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, you know, it was like a chilled, funny comedy. And yeah when you're watching stuff like that, it's very easy to forget what you're actually watching. You know, it's like this
00:09:40
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backdrop to this very humanized, comedic kind of um fun show, even though there's nothing funny about the realities of cops and arresting people, but we shift our attention to these like lovable characters and these funny interactions between people who just happen to wear a badge. And we, in that sense, have this obscured image of the role of police in enacting violence.
00:10:05
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And there's also other series, I think it was mentioned in in the book, shows like Oz, younger listeners yeah probably wouldn't have seen that. But if you were around then and conscious, and shows like that kind of make us also believe we know exactly what goes on, even though it's this dramatized portrayal of the prison. So even if you don't want to, I think it's almost impossible not to consume images of the prison. Because even if you actively decide not to watch prison shows, there's just this like looming presence in our lives that we almost take for granted.
Prisons and Racial Control in Society
00:10:45
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Yeah, and actually ah to go back to um Brooklyn Nine-Nine for a second, the final season was really acclaimed because it really touched on some really intense stuff. Like it had some pretty serious episodes, um which was great for the mainstream to kind of um consume that.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, and just speaking of how... um you know, media portrayals of the prison system, obviously not all of them, but a lot of them kind of water down the systemic issues with the prison system.
00:11:22
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We also need to remember that there's a disproportionate number of racialized folks who are incarcerated. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And that's not by accident either. No. So I think one of the the most kind of salient points of the chapter, if not the book for me, is encapsulated in this quote.
00:11:43
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Because of the persistent power of racism, quote unquote criminals and quote unquote evildoers are in the collective imagination fantasized as people of color.
00:11:55
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The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers.
00:12:13
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You know, racism is revealed in society when people refuse to interrogate the system and instead they come up with often these kind of like weird social Darwinist racial justifications.
00:12:26
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Like if you bring up the fact that marginalized folks or racialized folks are disproportionately targeted by the prison system, there's these racist justifications that, oh, some communities are more inclined to criminality rather than asking why are they disproportionately targeted? Why are they disproportionately vulnerable to getting in these situations?
00:12:51
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So i think that's kind of a thread that runs through a lot of the issues with the prison system. Yeah. Yeah. And then to kind of add to that, Davis goes on to highlight how the kind of explosive growth of the US prison system, especially between like the nineteen sixty s to the 2000s, he actually starts to introduce the influence of capitalism and these kind of misguided ideas that we would tend to assume that prison growth is linked to attempts at curbing crime, whereas the explosive growth of prisons is actually disconnected from crime rates because essentially it's more about profits, which we will also get into more a bit later. Yes. But another very pertinent quote here, the prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited.
00:13:46
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Yeah. That's a good one. ah Later on, she says, quote, mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth. And thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. I think that's so important as well. Like if you think of family members being removed from a community, that means that that family has lost an income potentially, a support system, you know, all of these things.
00:14:15
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I think people tend to think of a criminal as a one-dimensional wrongdoer instead of this multifaceted human being that is now removed from a community and, you know, that has so many ramifications for that community. So...
00:14:33
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She also highlights the fact that, and again, as Meg said earlier, we're not going into specific stats because it would be very outdated, but in the book, she mentions how the U.S. population in general is less than 5% of the world's total, whereas more than 20% of the world's combined prison population can be claimed by the United States.
00:14:57
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So she really just shows how this explosive growth of prisons in the U.S. is completely disproportionate to the rest of the world and is linked to all of these systems.
Impact on Marginalized Communities
00:15:10
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So, yeah, and then she she goes on to explain as well how when we talk more about reform than abolition, we kind of obscure the structural and systemic aspects of the prison system. And if we think about the fact that the system is actually geared towards profit and corporates getting involved and making profit off of the existence of prisons, then any inclination towards improvements, like genuine improvements for prisoner well-being or health or any of those things, it kind of runs counter to the objective of profitability.
00:15:48
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So talking about reforms doesn't really do anything. It just kind of strengthens the prison system instead of dismantling it. It just makes it, like we said earlier, more palatable and doesn't actually...
00:16:00
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Yeah, it makes it seem it makes it seem more humane and legitimate. um Yeah. And it accepts incarceration as inevitable.
00:16:12
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Yeah. And it stops people from being able to envision other the things. like Yeah. Just accepting that this is how it is. Let's just make the system a bit better. That blocks any option for looking at completely different ways of doing things.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah. You're like, okay, well, this is just how it is. And it stops people from kind of asking, is this practical? Like, is it just?
00:16:39
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Because that's not anyone's, um at least the hires up, it's not anyone's real focus or priority, obviously. Yeah, and then just to kind of wrap up the overview of chapter one, i think the questions we need to be engaging with that really lay the groundwork for the rest of the book.
00:17:00
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um She says, quote, how can we move to decriminalize drug use and the trade of sexual services? How can we take seriously Strategies for restorative rather than exclusively punitive justice. Effective alternatives involve both transformation of the techniques for addressing quote-unquote crime and of the social and economic conditions that track so many children from poor communities and especially communities of color into the juvenile system and then on to prison.
00:17:31
Speaker
Hmm. That's really the groundwork for all of this. To imagine a world without prisons, we really need to understand a little bit about the history and how they actually function and why they came to be and how they came to be and how they are operating in the communities that are most affected, which I guess brings us to chapter two.
00:17:54
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Yeah, and that's what the rest of this book is going to lay out for everyone.
00:18:03
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um So chapter two, thank you, Taryn. The title is Slavery, Civil Rights, and Abolitionist Perspectives Towards Prison. And basically, Davis argues that racial control has shifted forms over time, but remains central to punitive systems with prisons as descendants of earlier oppressive institutions. So she starts off the, I was about to say episode, she starts off the chapter
00:18:35
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Just discussing slavery, lynching, and segregation, and the abolition campaigns to ah fight against those things. And just the idea of in those times, just like we were just talking about about prison, like we can't imagine a life without it.
00:18:55
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That was how it was in the times of slavery slavery. lynching and segregation, like when folks were in those times, it just didn't seem like there was any way to get out of it. the Those abolition campaigns ended up being more or less successful.
00:19:16
Speaker
There are still obviously, you know, remnants of those things, but more or less, those abolition campaigns were successful. And in the book,
00:19:26
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To quote her, she says the reason why she was um bringing those those up was to make the point that social circumstances transform and popular attitudes shift in part in response to organized social movements.
00:19:42
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But she also brought these historical campaigns up because they all targeted some expression of racism to kind of bring that into the narrative.
00:19:56
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with regards to slavery as an example, it was thought of to be too big to end and it was permanent and would be part of society forever.
00:20:06
Speaker
And that's what it feels like, as I said, with regards to prisons today. And yet slavery was eventually dismantled. So one has to glean that this comparison challenges the idea that prisons are unavoidable. so yeah,
00:20:22
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to Even me saying this right now and thinking about it and have read this book, like it does seem just insurmountable how huge prisons are and just everything about them. It's just like, fuck, will this ever be abolished?
00:20:41
Speaker
But I guess that's kind of the difficulty with all... kind of social problems, right? When we look at capitalism, when we look at genocides happening, any of these huge problems, it's really easy to get deflated and think like, how do we tackle this? But that's always going to be the case, right?
00:21:01
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Yeah. And that's what they want. Yeah. Exactly. It's normal to feel like, well, this is a problem that's just, like you said, insurmountable. But that's the thing. That's why we have to embrace those kind of idealistic ideas because that's how we get out of it.
00:21:18
Speaker
It's the same as when people say, oh, there's no ways you can dismantle capitalism. Yeah, because we like living and breathing it. No wonder you can't think of another alternative because it's like encroached onto every part of life. And the prison is no different, I think. So it makes sense. Yeah, totally.
00:21:35
Speaker
Totally. Yeah. And so... She had two questions that she posed. The first one was, are prisons racist institutions? I would say check, yes.
00:21:49
Speaker
And is racism so deeply entrenched in the institution of the prison that it is not possible to eliminate one without eliminating the other? So that kind of that question brings it into an even bigger space, but it also kind of just lays out the fact that We can't just replace prisons with something else.
00:22:14
Speaker
We need to unpack and dismantle the institutions, like the racist patriarchy, like all of that, to get to a place where we can have something that is...
00:22:30
Speaker
not a replacement of prisons, but something different. And so to talk about how prisons are a continuation of slavery, um after slavery ended, new systems like Black codes and convict leasing and chain gangs emerged to control Black labor and freedom. And mass incarceration grew out of these practices, making prisons a modern extension of racial domination rather than a neutral institution.
00:23:03
Speaker
So basically, they just pulled from things that were happening within slavery and in at plantations and all of that kind of stuff and just brought that into um prisons Yeah, exactly. And there was a quote that I had written down on that point that said, slave owners may have been concerned for the survival of individual slaves who, after all, represented significant investments.
00:23:31
Speaker
Convicts, on the other hand, were leased not as individuals, but as a group, and they could be worked literally to death without affecting the profitability of a convict crew. Yes. So that just shows like the insidious nature of the switch over. absolutely. Absolutely. You know, not to downplay the severity of slavery, but the logic is the same and the dehumanization is the same. Mm-hmm.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's quite shocking. like yeah There is a point that um Davis brings up a couple of times in this chapter referring to a global consensus from the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, is Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa.
00:24:19
Speaker
There was a consensus that happened there that was, I mean, especially with the downfall of the apartheid regime, In South Africa, this consensus was that racism should not define the future of the planet.
00:24:33
Speaker
And if we are already persuaded that racism should not be allowed to define the planet's future, Davis says, we can successively argue that prisons are racist institutions.
00:24:46
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This may lead us to take seriously the prospect of declaring prisons obsolete. I don't know, the consensus that racism should not define the future of the planet, like that seems like, yes, absolutely.
00:25:00
Speaker
But it also seems like... Is that going to happen? I don't know. But I guess I'm just repeating myself. like think Well, I think that and the the questions that you mentioned earlier that Angela Davis brings up asking whether prisons are racist and if so, you know, can you get rid of one without the other? And my kind of understanding of that and what I thought actually really simplified the whole debate, if we can call it that, is, you know, if we can agree
00:25:32
Speaker
that racism has no place in society, which seems obvious, right? Like you've just said. Yeah, totally. Yes. And then if at the same time we can acknowledge that prisons are inherently racist institutions, which I think is pretty reasonable to state that. Yeah, no doubt. So if we can say racism has no place in society and prisons are inherently racist, then it follows logically that prisons are obsolete.
00:26:00
Speaker
Because if we have no room for racism and this is a racist institution, we should get rid of it. So to me, that kind of sums up the whole argument. Like if anyone is arguing against abolition, I feel like that's the easiest way to get through to them potentially. Yeah, totally.
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah. I guess I'm um in my cynical way. vibe and saying, oh, to acknowledge that racism shouldn't be in the world, that's just too hopeful. Well, I guess there's a difference between acknowledging it and actually putting into practice what that implies. Yeah, true. Yeah.
00:26:41
Speaker
Because most people will be like, yeah, of course racism is wrong. But then when you look at, okay, what does that mean in practice that we should actually act on? Then suddenly people are quiet because then that's hard work.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, put those words into action and it's silence. So then going back to ah slavery and the links to imprisonment, there were crimes defined by state laws for which only black folks could be duly convicted, which was was passed down through black codes.
00:27:15
Speaker
But there was also one thing called chain gangs, which is a form of penal labor where prisoners are shackled together to perform physically demanding work, building roads or clearing land. It's basically very cheap public works labor. um Yeah.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, if you look at um the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, right, that essentially is a loophole that still Ballad today is still active today where slavery and forced labor were banned except as punishment for crime.
00:27:50
Speaker
So that's literally a loophole for prisons to be able to enact forced labor. So the ties are like really clear that it seemed like, okay, slavery is abolished. So everything's good.
00:28:02
Speaker
But a lot of it just shifted into a different system. Yeah. Yeah. So to throw out another quote, but not by Angela Davis, by ah she quoted historian Adam J. Hirsch.
00:28:17
Speaker
And he says, One may perceive in the penitentiary many reflections of chattel slavery as it was practiced in the South. Both institutions subordinated their subjects to the will of others. Like Southern slaves, prison inmates followed a daily routine specified by their superiors.
00:28:35
Speaker
Both institutions reduced their subjects to dependence on others for the supply of basic human services such as food and shelter. Both isolated their subjects from the general populations by confining them to a fixed habitat, and both frequently coerced their subjects to work, often for longer hours and for less compensation than free laborers.
00:28:59
Speaker
So yeah, there are so many similarities there. It's palpable. um yeah Prison regulations deprive inmates of virtually all rights. Both prisoners and slaves were considered to have pronounced proclivities to crime. And particularly in the US, s which this book is mostly about, race has always played a central role in constructing presumptions of criminality.
00:29:29
Speaker
Black folks and folks who have been in prison weren't and aren't really given like a fighting chance to like make up for the crimes that they committed And after emancipation, many black folks were in a situation where they had to steal in order to survive. So there are so many um variables with regards to why folks end up in prison and especially like even more so for people of color, right?
00:30:04
Speaker
And I mean, we still see that today, like social you know resource constraints and stuff like that. Leading people into situations where they have no other choice really. And then it's just the special cycle of imprisonment, punishment, you know, worse living situations. And it just continues like that.
00:30:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and just one more thing I wanted to touch on that was brought up in this chapter is the erasure of historical contributions by people of color. And basically, this has to do with Black convict labor, because it remains a hidden dimension of U.S. history.
00:30:46
Speaker
And it's extremely unsettling to think of modern industrialized urban areas as having been originally produced under the racist labor conditions of penal servitude.
00:30:59
Speaker
Obviously, just talking about how you know all of this penal labor that's happening when folks are in chain gangs, they're in chain gangs because they're out in the world, you know, building bridges or making roads or whatever. And these are roads that folks are, you know, driving on and walking on today.
00:31:21
Speaker
So just to end things out for this chapter, there's this quote, Here we have a penal system that was racist in many respects, discriminatory arrests and sentences, conditions of work, modes of punishment, together with the racist erasure of significant contributions made by Black convicts as a result of racist coercion.
00:31:43
Speaker
These are aspects of our history we must interrogate and rethink. So that was more or less chapter two. we kind of, before we started recording, we were just kind of joking around that this is a very short book, but it feels like our notes and our thoughts around it are longer than what the book is So we're trying to be, you know, ah succinct as possible, but it's ah it's hard to do. There's so much. Yeah, at this stage, it might be cricket to just listen to the audio book.
00:32:22
Speaker
Maybe. But anyway, here we are. Here we are, right?
00:32:32
Speaker
So chapter three is imprisonment and reform. So this basically just goes deeper into these concepts that we've kind of touched on. And it really goes into the sort of historical overview of how imprisonment became central to modern punishments and the kind of emergence of penitentiaries in the 18th and 19th centuries as a replacement for corporal and like public punishments.
00:33:01
Speaker
So I think a key point of this chapter is really highlighting how prison in its current form, i.e. the penitentiary, as opposed to like corporal or capital punishment, is in itself a reform.
00:33:16
Speaker
Yeah. So she critiques how institutional reform has actually failed to achieve kind of humane outcomes because modern prisons emphasize control and punishment rather than what you would think is the goal, which would be rehabilitation, it's really focused now on punishment.
00:33:39
Speaker
So as much as it might be less violent seeming than punishments of the past, it's still a violent institution. And um to quote the book, imprisonment was not employed as a principal mode of punishment until the 18th century in Europe and the 19th century in the United States.
00:33:59
Speaker
And I think important to remember here is that the kind of public corporal punishment sort of things of the past were more designed to affect the crowds.
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah. I guess as a mode of deterrence and there wasn't really much acknowledgement of the individual that was being punished or any kind of attempt at helping them to be better or anything like that. It was more just punish them as an example so that it you know the behavior isn't replicated by other people.
00:34:32
Speaker
And it moved from that that kind of deterrent, to this notion of reflection and rehabilitation, but it also included the introduction of isolation and increasingly labor as we've discussed. so another important quote, I think, to kind of drive this home, we should keep in mind that this was precisely the historical period when the value of labor began to be calculated in terms of time
00:35:03
Speaker
and therefore compensated in another quantifiable way by money. She goes on to say, Marxist theorists of punishment have noted that precisely the historical period during which the commodity form arose is the era during which penitentiary sentences emerged as the primary form of punishment. So I think this is really key to understanding how capitalism works with the prison system, because here it shifts from a punishment focus to humans being treated like their behaviors are commodified. yeah So for example, like X bad deed equals sacrificing Y amount of capitalist hours. you know so you're losing income and you're forced to generate income and profits for corporations as a way to like repent for what you've done.
00:35:56
Speaker
so it shifts completely away from this idea of rehabilitation to you've done something bad. So now you need to pay us with your physical labor and your time. And therefore you're less able to use that labor for your own benefit kind of thing.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah. So my question, thinking about this and thinking about how time became the the mode of punishment and sacrificing that time and transferring that into like profitable labor for corporations and private prisons and all the things that came from that.
00:36:32
Speaker
I think we have to then ask ourselves the same way that earlier the question was, is the prison a racist institution? And if it is, do we accept racism?
00:36:44
Speaker
Similarly, I think, can we be anti-capitalist without being anti-prison? yeah If we look at capitalism as commodifying all aspects of life and the planet for profit, and the prison is an extension of that now,
00:37:00
Speaker
where we are literally transforming punishment into a commodification of labor as punishment, then in my mind, you cannot be anti-capitalist and still be pro-prison.
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Yeah. So a lot of animal rights people, animal welfarists, if you're listening, you will probably recognize the name Jeremy Bentham um from the famous quote, the question is not, can they reason or can they talk, but can they suffer?
00:37:32
Speaker
oh my gosh. Yes, I know that quote. Yeah. So that's Jeremy Bentham. I think I did multiple posts with that fucking quote, but I didn't connect that he is the panopticon guy. Yeah, same guy. So the guy that many of us have quoted highlight that it matters that other animals suffer and not just whether they can reason or whatever, he's a utilitarian. So his role in animal liberation, at least, is also somewhat debatable, although he has obviously said things that were useful.
00:38:06
Speaker
But he also, 1787 and 1791, he
00:38:11
Speaker
He published letters on a prison model that he called the panopticon. And if you haven't heard of the panopticon, it's basically this kind of cylindrical design where the prison cells kind of go around in a circle and the prison guard would be posted in the center somewhere in a way that the prisoners wouldn't be able to see the guard, but the guard could see the prisoner at any given time. So the theory was basically that criminals could only internalize productive labor habits if they were under constant surveillance.
00:38:45
Speaker
So the whole idea behind the panopticon was prisoners would feel like they were being constantly watched, even if they weren't, because they couldn't see when they were being watched. They had to just kind of assume that they always were, which, you know, it just shows how focused the The prison system was and reform movements were on labor and not rehabilitation because it was all about productivity, being a good, obedient worker. Yeah, very much so.
00:39:16
Speaker
And just to to add to that, there was a quote in the book that says, the conditions of possibility for this new form of punishment were strongly anchored in a historical era during which the working class needed to be constituted as an army of self-disciplined individuals capable of performing the requisite industrial labor for a developing capitalist system.
00:39:40
Speaker
So that kind of says it all. who And then she goes on to explain more of the history of like the development of the penitentiary. I'm not going to go into all the details, but basically there were two kind of models of imprisonment. This was like 1970 was the first jail in the US that was converted to a penitentiary. So the two modes were basically, on the one hand, complete isolation, silence, and solitude. So essentially solitary confinement.
00:40:09
Speaker
And then The other was solitary cells, but then doing labor tasks in common together, but in silence. So again, you're isolating people, which is an incredibly unhelpful, unhealthy, you know, not a great system for improvement. in any sense of the word, and then shifting towards also doing labor tasks together. So again, it's all geared towards productivity for profit and zero emphasis on actual rehabilitation or skills development or education or anything like that.
00:40:49
Speaker
me And then came the supermax, right? Yeah, and that's where solitary confinement becomes such a big deal because the supermax prison, my understanding is that it's pretty normal for people to be confined in isolation for like 23 hours a day.
00:41:11
Speaker
There's no ways that that's healthy. But um one quote from the book says, no one, not even the most ardent defenders of the supermax would try to argue that the absolute segregation, including sensory deprivation, is restorative and healing.
00:41:27
Speaker
The prevailing justification for the supermax is that the horrors it creates are the perfect complement for the horrifying personalities deemed the worst of the worst by the prison system. In other words, there is no pretense that rights are respected, there is no concern for the individual, there is no sense that men and women incarcerated in supermaxes deserve anything approaching, respect and comfort.
00:41:51
Speaker
So basically the justification is you have the most dangerous people, you know, the outcasts of society who people would justify deserving of this torturous punishment.
00:42:05
Speaker
And there's no pretense anymore of even trying to help them be better. Yeah, because that's how it started, right? In like 1983 at a federal prison, it was locked down.
00:42:17
Speaker
and all of the folks who were in the system that were deemed most dangerous were all sent there and confined to their cells for 23 hours. And eventually that whole system that became permanent and thus furnishing the general model for the control um unit and like a supermax prison for what it is today. Yeah.
00:42:43
Speaker
And um early in the book, David says, today, aside from death, solitary confinement next to torture or as a form of torture is considered the worst form of punishment imaginable. Then, however, it was assumed to have an emancipatory effect. the body was placed in conditions of segregation and solitude in order to allow the soul to flourish.
00:43:05
Speaker
So there was some kind of justification that idea that this complete solitude would allow some kind of reflection or whatever. Right.
00:43:18
Speaker
But she also includes ah quote from Charles Dickens. Yes, yes. ah He prefaced a description of his 1842 visit to Eastern Penitentiary with the observation that, quote, the system here is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it in its effect to be cruel and wrong.
00:43:38
Speaker
And later, i believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony that this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers.
00:43:51
Speaker
I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it, which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature.
00:44:04
Speaker
So it's so nonsensical to me that people... will even consider this to be rational, that the worst of the worst, you know, are in supermaxes. So that justifies, you know, their horrible, horrendous, heinous crimes justify their treatment like this. But in my mind, I'm thinking like, even if that was theoretically true, that these people were like irredeemable, violent individuals, this kind of like torturous isolation, if you think of the
00:44:37
Speaker
the traumatic effect on a person's brain, someone who's already unstable, violent, troubled in whatever way is just going to get worse being treated like this. So on what planet?
00:44:52
Speaker
Is that a good idea? Like let's take the most dangerous volatile people and torture them until they come out even worse, if they come out at all.
00:45:03
Speaker
threehehe And she also mentions in this chapter about like education programs being removed and that again, i mean, obviously there are still education programs and different prisons do different things, but the removal of these kinds of programs,
00:45:21
Speaker
also highlights the real motives of the prisons. Yeah, the the prohibition of the Pell Grants. The Pell Grants ended in 1994 with a crime bill and has dismantled this educational program that I mean, we'll get into it in with regards to the prison industrial complex, but if the folks in prisons are educating themselves and bettering themselves and basically doing what they are supposed to be doing in jail to make amends for their behavior and then come out you know better and more able to function in society,
00:46:05
Speaker
then like, of course, they took these grants away because then they wouldn't be able to fill their prisons. And they want these folks to just keep coming in, get out and come in, get out and come in.
00:46:19
Speaker
And sorry, just to interrupt you, Meg, just for people who don't know, Pell Grants are kind of like scholarships, right? It's like educational programs that are funded, for people to do like university degrees or whatever qualifications.
00:46:33
Speaker
Yes, they were they were started in 1972 by a US senator named, I think, Claiborne Pell was his name. And it was originally called the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, but then it changed to be under his name. And Actually, Pell Grants are back. They were reinstated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. the summer of 2023 after the ban. But there are still, just from reading a little bit, just skimming about them, there are still like you know hiccups and things, like folks higher-up places trying to smush them because they don't want they don't want it to be a thing.
00:47:20
Speaker
ah There's this documentary called The Last Graduation that talks about all of this, about the Pell Grant and being taken away and what that means for folks in prison and how bleak it is to have had. and it kind of shows them taking all the books away from the prison. And it's like, what the fuck, man? you know yeah it's it's It's really bleak.
00:47:45
Speaker
But it's a really good um documentary. We'll put a link in the show notes. Yeah. And then also in this chapter, Davis talks about the kind of gendered aspects of the prison system. And this is discussed in much more depth in the next chapter. So I'm not going to go into any detail really, but just to kind of mention the historical context and the kind of patriarchal remnants that were perpetuated in prison and through punishment. So,
00:48:17
Speaker
In like 17th century Britain, for example, women would be punished at home by their husbands. Right. Because they didn't have the same rights to take away. So they would even be punished for things like being quote unquote quarrelsome, you know. and um she says to quote, the deeply gender biased structure of legal, political and economic rights. Since women were largely denied public status as rights bearing individuals,
00:48:46
Speaker
They could not be as easily punished by the deprivation of such rights through imprisonment. And she goes on to say, it's not fortuitous that domestic corporal punishment for women survived long after these modes of punishment had become obsolete for white men.
00:49:02
Speaker
The persistence of domestic violence painfully attests to these historical modes of gendered punishments. So... I wanted to highlight this before we go into the next chapter on gender, because I think this is an important point to bring up that domestic violence has roots in corporal punishments, essentially, and how that was enacted for women. And i think we should also just be mindful of the nuance here. And i might just go on a small rant.
00:49:36
Speaker
Okay, please. Not directly part of the book, but I think if we think about the power that was given to men to enact punishment at home, it's no wonder that most people know, even today, that domestic violence still gets ignored. a lot of the time, it's like, what happens behind closed doors, you know? Mm-hmm.
00:49:57
Speaker
And it's a widespread problem in society in general that not only is it often ignored or it's defended, a lot of men especially will defend their friends who are abusers or perpetrators of sexual assault or whatever because it's uncomfortable or they just prefer to think they're not part of the problem.
00:50:16
Speaker
And i think especially in leftist or progressive spaces, which I think is probably the majority of people listening to this podcast, I think in these spaces, it's generally less ignored and victims and survivors are more likely to speak up and want accountability.
00:50:34
Speaker
And there's sometimes, and I've seen this multiple times actually in different kind of leftist spaces, but you'll get these like pseudo-feminist bros who will run to the defenses of their friends who are called out for abuse or violence against women or marginalized folks.
00:50:53
Speaker
And they'll be kind of crying about carceral logic and people acting like cops. so you know, you'll have a woman speaking out about domestic violence and she'll be accused of acting like a cop. And essentially what they're doing is weaponizing abolitionist frameworks to silence and belittle survivors of abuse. And of course, we don't actually want carceral logic to be played out in our community spaces, but that's often not what's happening.
00:51:21
Speaker
It's more a call for accountability or transformative justice or something. And people will weaponize abolitionist talking points or abolitionist frameworks to silence people.
00:51:34
Speaker
And in reality, going back to the point I just made about, you know, women being punished at home, this kind of defense completely ignores that gender-based violence is a relic of that punishment and abuse enacted by men in spaces of unchecked patriarchal violence.
00:51:53
Speaker
So the point I'm trying to make, or the kind of aside, is ACAB includes your abuser. Mm-hmm. and all of their apologists.
00:52:04
Speaker
The kind of control, the violence, the power trips, the threats, all of that that comes with gender-based violence represents the same kind of violence that was enacted in the past. And abusers and their supporters can get in the bin because you're literally all policing and prison personified. That's my rant. And a very good one, an important one.
00:52:27
Speaker
I remember reading somewhere and amongst all of this about how, say, a man kills his partner in like an abusive rage, that...
00:52:42
Speaker
form of punishment is, and maybe this is something I'll get into in the next chapter, that form of punishment is deemed equal to a woman who is protecting herself and ends up killing her male partner in self-defense.
00:53:03
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yeah. It's kind of like a baseline, oh, well, that's they're both murderers. It's like, well... it's both the same thing when it's obviously not.
00:53:17
Speaker
So chapter four is... titled How Gender Structures the Prison System. And just a little synopsis of it, the prison industrial complex is deeply gendered and treating women differently through domestic style control, high rates of sexual abuse and intersectional racism is kind of what this chapter, what Angela Davis kind of talks about.
00:53:46
Speaker
And she highlights how women's prisons become repressive, They overlook specific needs and render female experiences invisible. So we'll get into that. But I also just, um because the time of this book, that when it was published and written, this chapter talks about gender, but it's a very binary male-female read on it. There's no discussion of trans folks in prisons immigrants.
00:54:17
Speaker
anything like that in this chapter or in the book. So I just wanted to kind of acknowledge that before I get into this It's more of a separation of what is expected from men and women when it comes to receiving punishment or like how they can find retribution and you know things like that.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's just very much definitely like a binary of man-woman vibes. So let's get into this. So...
00:54:50
Speaker
Basically, like masculine criminality has always been deemed more normal than feminine criminality. ah Those women who commit crimes or are incarcerated are significantly more abhorrent and far more threatening to society than their numerous male counterparts.
00:55:10
Speaker
This is kind of the thoughts and the vibes of these times. like You're betraying your womanhood by things. criminal activities or whatever it might be.
00:55:22
Speaker
um Women's prison regimes were based on the assumption that criminal, quote unquote, criminal women could be rehabilitated by assimilating correct woman lee womanly behaviors into the system, like becoming experts in domesticity, like cooking, cleaning, sewing, all of that.
00:55:41
Speaker
But this is like, it's very different for this idea for middle class white women, this produced better wives and mothers, but for women of color or poor women, it would just churn out skilled domestic servants, right? The class and race was not acknowledged at all.
00:56:04
Speaker
There was a part that Davis talked about where sometimes crimes for women, specifically racialized women, I think, that the prison sentences were longer for these women than it would be for men for similar offenses. And this differential was justified on the basis that women were sent to reformatories not to be punished in proportion to the seriousness of their offense, but to be reformed and retrained.
00:56:38
Speaker
And that takes time, right? That takes time. So yeah, that's just, oh God, it's so fucked. Yeah. And if male criminals were considered to be public individuals who had simply violated the social contract, female criminals were seen as having transgressed fundamental moral principles of womanhood. There it is. Mm-hmm.
00:57:04
Speaker
um And then there's also the piece of the like eugenics movement within this whole system. And it sought to have, quote unquote, this is disgusting, genetically inferior women removed from social circulation for as many childbearing years as possible. Yeah, that's so gross. Yeah.
00:57:27
Speaker
So in amongst all of this stuff happening, like women's prisons have begun to look more like men's prisons, like the prison's presumed goal of rehabilitation and like the whole domestic vibe of it. Like, let's learn how to be a good wife and mom in prison.
00:57:47
Speaker
That has been thoroughly displaced by the incapacitation as the major objective of imprisonment. And in the late 20th century, the reform around this was separate but equal, like the separate but equal model, because um to me, it sounds like in the back of their minds, they're like, okay, we need to make this more like men's prisons, you know, so for profit and all of this kind of stuff, right?
00:58:19
Speaker
And there was a huge example of this with this one specific former warden, Tecla Miller, who wrote her memoir called Warden Wore Pink. And I actually looked her up and she has wrote written she has written numerous books around this.
00:58:39
Speaker
And she usually does talks. um about things and it ah like it's giving me the vibe that you know she's like a good feminist. like I didn't go down too much of a rabbit hole looking her up to try to find more critique on her thoughts and ways of thinking but She basically demanded for parity with women's prisons, having it be like equal, equal, um...
00:59:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's like the most the most twisted way you could have a sort of quote-unquote feminist stance is to be like, treat them equally badly. yeah like I think there was ah one of the examples in the book was there was ah female prisoner who tried to escape and they i think they caught her, she If it was a man who was escaping and they would call and say, stop, you know, or whatever, to try to get her to stop.
00:59:47
Speaker
If that male prisoner didn't stop, they would shoot him. But they didn't shoot this woman prisoner. And so Tecla Miller was like, what the fuck?
01:00:00
Speaker
You should shoot her. Yeah, it's so bizarre. Was it her? I remember reading, i don't know if it was her or just reformers in general, that... Unsuccessfully, thankfully, but didn't they also try implement chain gangs with women to make it more like quote unquote equal? Yes.
01:00:17
Speaker
So instead of questioning the ethics of the chain gang, let's just, you know, fight for equality and have everyone do this horrific thing.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, and like the demands for parity, as I said before, like with men's prisons often have led to more repressive conditions for women. And so using these formalistic notions of equality and allowing male prisons to function as the punishment norm is so...
01:00:50
Speaker
fucked. Like it's like, okay, well, this is the norm. So let's just bring it to that. And the norm is so backwards and oppressive and gross.
01:01:04
Speaker
And another huge part of this, as the influence of domestic prison regimes regimes recedes, sexual abuse has become an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls.
01:01:21
Speaker
And there is just widespread leniency for the guards with regards to sexual abuse. And it's just, I don't want to get too much into the weeds of this because it's really, it's really fucked and it's really intense. And yeah,
01:01:41
Speaker
I'll just mention one of the examples that Davis said about a Nightline interview in 1999, where women that were interviewed complained that they had received frequent and unnecessary pelvic exams.
01:01:59
Speaker
And one woman um had said that she had an exam, a pelvic exam, when she had just gone in to the infirmary because she had a cold. And in an attempt to justify this, a chief medical officer explained that women prisoners had rare opportunities for male contact and that they therefore welcomed these superfluous gynecological exams.
01:02:25
Speaker
So disgusting. Yikes. And I mean, at the same time, at this point, just like I mentioned about, you know, there are no examples of trans folks in this book.
01:02:38
Speaker
It also doesn't touch on LGBTQ folks within prisons. Like it's a very het normative time, I guess. I don't know. But it was very much like still that binary of Just like this medical officer said that, you know, well, they must love it because they don't get male contact. So here we go. gross. So gross. um And, you know, when people say strip search, they're just like, oh, they're just naked and that's that. But that's still very intrusive. And yeah there's a lot more to it. And it's an everyday routine in women's prisons. Yeah.
01:03:20
Speaker
All of this is so bleak. I can't wait to get to chapter six. But just to kind of close out this chapter, i just wanted to mention this action that was held by the prison-based organization Sisters Inside.
01:03:40
Speaker
This was at a 2001 conference. I'm not sure where it was in the world. But basically, it was performed before a national gathering of correctional personnel working in women's prisons.
01:03:52
Speaker
And so I don't know if it was known that it was going to happen, or they just kind of stormed the stage. But several women went up on stage, some were playing guards, and others took on the being prisoners, and they dramatized the strip search.
01:04:10
Speaker
And so Davis, in describing this, said that many folks in the audience were so repulsed, they had to disassociate and insisted that this was not what they did.
01:04:21
Speaker
when they did strip searches. Like, this is not this is not what we do. What are you talking about? um Some of the guards cried upon watching these representations of their own actions. Like, this is what they knew that this was what they were doing. But because it was outside of the prison, and to quote just this last sentence,
01:04:45
Speaker
Without the uniform, without the power of the state, the strip search would be sexual assault. So that must have been just so intense and powerful.
01:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, and that just goes to show as well how the system kind of bolsters these horrific acts of violence, and it almost... provides this like cloak of anonymity, even for people working in prisons and dehumanizes them as well, because they get kind of swept up in the system where it's so normalized that they don't even realize what they're doing. Not to yeah in any way excuse the behavior or, you know, taking on that role, but it just shows how the whole system is just like normalizing the most horrific stuff.
01:05:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:05:37
Speaker
Okay, so I think we'll move on to chapter five, which is the prison industrial complex. And I'll try keep it relatively brief because we have been talking for a while and this episode might be three years long. yeah But basically, this chapter pretty much introduces the concept of the prison industrial complex.
01:05:59
Speaker
where Davis argues that the rise in incarceration is less about crime rates and more about economic and political incentives, which we've kind of covered already, and that perpetuate mass incarceration.
01:06:11
Speaker
So she talks about how corporations profit from prison labor And not only that, but also supplying goods and services to the prisons, which I think a lot of people, myself included, often overlook. yeah Like the millions of prisoners in the world need to be fed and housed and clothed and all things and have health care.
01:06:31
Speaker
So there's a lot of money to be made by corporations and private businesses. you know, stakeholders. um And all of these structures also benefit from the quote unquote tough on crime narratives, because i guess everybody in any society wants to feel safe.
01:06:51
Speaker
And I think that need for safety is often weaponized by the prison system to justify what's going on and tapping into people's fears and being like, well, this needs to be here to keep you safe. And people want to buy into that because They don't want to be victims of crime or whatever.
01:07:09
Speaker
So yeah, basically she just goes into how prison labor is exploitative and how private corporations profit, but importantly how a lot of these different parts of society are linked in this kind of network that becomes the prison industrial complex. So you've got private corporations, you've got government, you've got correctional facilities and communities, and you've also got the media.
01:07:35
Speaker
And we've spoken a bit about like media representations and all of these different relationships between these different parts of society, I guess, constitute the prison industrial complex.
01:07:47
Speaker
So She says, quote, the term prison industrial complex was introduced by activists and scholars to contest prevailing beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause of mounting prison populations.
01:08:01
Speaker
Instead, they argued, prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these new structures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit.
01:08:11
Speaker
So again, we've kind of covered a lot of this. It's just really understanding how all of these different aspects are interconnected to uphold the whole system and again reinforce its permanence or sense of permanence.
01:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, she argues that the rise in incarceration is less about crime rates and more about economic and political incentives to sustain prisons. So it's like they just want the prisons to be there so that they can make money and they need to fill them.
01:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And, um you know, the whole efforts to curb crime narratives, I think we see pretty commonly in that crime is often portrayed as this like individual moral failing, instead of the result of institutional, structural, social ills. that leave people without adequate resources to cope, never mind thrive.
01:09:10
Speaker
So this also gets reinforced, as she explains, with the kind of perpetual repetition of the phrase crime and punishment. So crime is always linked to punishment and it keeps getting repeated in our minds, crime and punishment, crime and punishment, whether it's in media or literature or whatever it is.
01:09:31
Speaker
And that becomes so normalized that We just see them as inextricable things. and And we see it as like this individual moral failing makes a person a criminal and crime leads to punishment. So we need to punish them.
01:09:47
Speaker
So, yeah. She also notes that when prisons really began to proliferate, this was also at a time where official studies actually indicated that crime rates were falling.
01:10:01
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it makes no sense that there should be an explosion of prisons when there was actually a reduction in ch crime rates. um Yeah. And then she also, again, reiterates that the notion of a prison industrial complex insists that the racialization of prison populations is not an incidental feature.
01:10:25
Speaker
So basically to acknowledge all these interconnections is to acknowledge that prison is a racialized institution and that a lot of the critiques by abolitionist activists were linked to critiques of global racism.
01:10:42
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah. One thing that she brought up, you know, ah you think about prison labor, okay, making roads, making, you know, sewing underwear or doing all of these things that, you know, we are relying on.
01:11:00
Speaker
penal labor four But one thing that doesn't pop up like right away in my head is, or that I didn't know, did I know this? I don't think I did, ah that some ways for profit were through medical research, like the humans in prison were like tested on.
01:11:20
Speaker
Oh, yes. Yeah. I had a quote saved about that where she says, in the post-World War II period medical experimentation on captive populations, helped to hasten the development of the pharmaceutical industry.
01:11:33
Speaker
So I think this also kind of reminds us that there are a lot of industries and a lot of corporations that actually benefit from prisons that you wouldn't necessarily think of. And Speaking specifically about this example, um i think one of the the doctors that did these experiments had actually said it's an ideal situation because of the captive population. It's like a very controlled environment.
01:11:56
Speaker
Yeah. And can you hear the rain? No. Oh, okay. Anyway, sorry if you can hear the rain in the background. oh no. But I'm so grateful because it's been so hot here.
01:12:08
Speaker
and now it's pouring. So, yay. But... Anyway, to go back to the medical experimentation, and it just made me think about how, in general, it's so much easier to engage in like really unethical research or labor practices on marginalized others. And prisoners are a population that have been completely dehumanized in the minds of people who see punishment as being just and deserved. So as soon as a person is labeled a criminal,
01:12:38
Speaker
you know, the context of that behavior or whatever happened that led them to that point is kind of removed. And they're just so dehumanized and othered that it almost becomes acceptable for these really unethical practices to be inflicted on them. Yeah, I found the quote.
01:12:54
Speaker
When Dr. Kligman entered the aging prison, he was awed by the potential it held for his research. In 1966, he recalled in a newspaper interview, all I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.
01:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, how disgusting. And then she she also links the prison industrial complex to the military industrial complex and how the two mutually support and promote each other and actually share technologies.
01:13:26
Speaker
And she says, both systems generate huge profits from processes of social destruction. And that kind of sums it up. Like the the prison system literally causes social destruction and people profit off of it.
01:13:42
Speaker
I mean, that in itself should make every everyone want to abolish prisons in my mind. Yeah. So I think the gist of this chapter is really just highlighting how like political and capitalist interests exist.
01:13:55
Speaker
dictate far more than just ethics or justice or the pursuit of like a safer, healthier, cohesive society. It's political and capitalist interests really above all. Yeah.
01:14:07
Speaker
But I think we've covered like a fair amount of the main arguments in the book. But chapter to six is a little bit more positive because it's, I think, addresses a lot of the answers to questions people have. about abolition, like what are the alternatives? Like, where do we start?
01:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, and it's aptly called Abolitionist Alternatives. And yeah, Davis turns toward visions of a decarcerated society in this chapter, and she argues that abolition isn't about immediate elimination of all prisons overnight, but about imagining and building alternatives that make prisons less central.
01:14:53
Speaker
These include decriminalization of behaviors like drug use and sex work, robust social welfare systems, education, healthcare care access, and restorative justice practices.
01:15:07
Speaker
She stresses that abolition must address the broader social conditions like racism, poverty, and inequality, because these things fuel incarceration. And by investing in community-based supports and addressing root causes, society can move toward justice models that don't rely on confinement. Mm-hmm.
01:15:28
Speaker
Like, I think there's when there is talk of prison abolition and the end of prisons, it's all kind of just all or nothing, like very black and white, instant, like, okay, so what?
01:15:42
Speaker
We just get rid of prisons? You know, like, just like I've had people ask me in the past with regards to animal rights and animal agriculture, like, what, we just let loose all of the captive cows and pigs and they're just going to be running free all over the place like no this is yeah it's so funny how people tend to jump to these like overnight solutions and if you don't have an overnight solution then you're labeled an idealist and there's no like middle ground or lateral thinking about how society could look it's just well what do we do tomorrow to change this yeah i understand the the inclination for that because
01:16:25
Speaker
People tend to want instant gratification and they tend to want instant solutions, which is rarely, if ever possible in complex like social issues. But I can understand it because there's fear involved when it comes to abolition as well. you know A lot of people, if I look at like the South African context, we live in a very violent society for a number of reasons. you know Remnants of apartheid and the kind of continued racism and inequality. it's understandable that people are afraid because there is a lot of violence, there is a lot of social destruction and all of these things. So it's it's normal, I think, for people to be inclined to say, well, okay, well, if we just shut down all the prisons, what's going to happen? It's going be a free fall and everyone's going to be murdered. And you go into this like panic mode. Yeah. What about all the murderers and rapists?
01:17:15
Speaker
Exactly. And of course, as abolitionists, we don't want to just let everyone run free and wreak havoc and have no respect for the dignity or rights or safety of each other. Of course, we want societies where everyone is looked after and safe.
01:17:31
Speaker
And that's kind of the point of abolition is that prisons are not doing that. Prisons have been around for long enough to know that they're not doing that for society. They're not making people safer. They're not necessarily rehabilitating people.
01:17:45
Speaker
Obviously, there are probably some great stories of rehabilitation and people turning their lives around, but that's not the norm. And if prison was a good idea, society would be in a lot better space right now. And it's not.
01:18:00
Speaker
Yeah. Two things to jump off of what you just said. i listened to this podcast. Why is this happening with Chris Hayes? It's from 2019, but it was with Mariam Kaba. And i think you and I talked about this before recording, that she gave an example around the question of, well what do we do with all the murderers and rapists and things? And she gave the example of, say, there are
01:18:33
Speaker
a thousand rapes that happen. The number of folks that will report is about 200. And from that, um going down to 20 that will actually go to a prosecutor and then Down from that, five convictions will happen.
01:18:52
Speaker
But then really realistically, and I hope I'm getting these numbers right, but one person out of those, how many did I say? a thousand rapes. One person will actually go to prison for that crime.
01:19:08
Speaker
And she was just talking about that and how, you know, what do we do with all the rapists? Like, they're all out among us already. like And we could go into a deep dive around the Epstein files, like, with regards to pedophiles. Like, they're all out there. We need, obviously, the system is not fucking working.
01:19:31
Speaker
And so we need to come to a space where figure out a different way of dealing with this kind of thing. Just as you were talking, I was thinking similar thing as well. But ah firstly, in relation to the example that you made, regardless of the specific numbers, we know that underreporting is a massive thing, especially for sexual assault. Yes. And that prosecution rates are low. So as you said,
01:19:55
Speaker
If people are going to make that argument, you have to ask them, do you really think that the quote-unquote bad people are actually in prison right now? Because most of them are not. And as you say, we just need to look at the genocide in Gaza. We need to look at the ice raids in the U.S. right now and the absolute power trips that these...
01:20:13
Speaker
fucking scumbags are on just like arresting people, shooting people, doing whatever they want. All the people involved with this Epstein files bullshit and the horrific things that people in incredible positions of power, these rich fucking billionaire scumbags, all the horrific shit they've done.
01:20:34
Speaker
And where's the justice there? We just have to look at all of these examples to see how ineffectual the prison system is. And not only that, but how wealth, class, and racism determine what criminality actually is and who gets impunity. yeah Because if you look at someone like Luigi Mangione, taking out like a medical corporation CEO who is potentially caused innumerable harm and potentially many deaths through like disgusting capitalist policies for healthcare, he gets immediately arrested for taking out one guy.
01:21:15
Speaker
But then you've got Benjamin Netanyahu traveling around as if he's not a fucking war criminal. And people think that the prison system is somehow keeping us safe. I mean, come on.
01:21:27
Speaker
I don't mean to get ranty, but it makes me So angry. no it's disgusting. And just ah in the book, Davis says that a more complicated framework may yield more options than if we simply attempt to discover a single substitute for the prison system, not look for prison-like substitutions.
01:21:52
Speaker
So positing decarceration as our overarching strategy would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment, like demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health care system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and violence.
01:22:22
Speaker
And she says also the first step then would be to let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of punishment that would occupy the same footprint as the prison system.
01:22:34
Speaker
yeah i think that's really important. you know Mentioning all those different aspects, it's not going to be like one-for-one replacement. That's where I think a lot of people fall short in trying to envision like what is the one thing that replaces punishment.
01:22:47
Speaker
the exact structure. It's not going to be like that. It's going to be multiple changes. Yeah. Like she she said, we would recognize that punishment does not follow from crime in the neat and logical sequence.
01:23:00
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And also, you know, we're talking about like the Epstein files and all of that kind of stuff. And it also brings up how we label criminality and who is labeled a criminal.
01:23:14
Speaker
One thing that she mentions, and obviously, again, you know, this was at the time of the book, but I'm sure it's similar now. She said, there are currently more people with mental and emotional disorders in jails and prisons than in mental institutions. Yeah. And obviously mental institutions, that's also ah another conversation to have about the kind of carceral aspects to some of those. But the point really is, it just shows the lack of care and providing the best and most supportive solutions for people. Because a lot of those people clearly are not supposed to be in prison. They need to be helped with what they're going through.
01:23:49
Speaker
so yeah, I feel like each chapter of this book, and even going into more details, you know, going into more nuance into each chapter could be a whole episode that we can do. Yeah.
01:24:04
Speaker
It's so funny how we were when we were planning this, we're like, it's such a short book, it'll probably be 30 minute episode. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. She also says, though, which I think is also kind of a ah good bow on top of everything, really, is that alternatives that fail to address racism, male dominance, homophobia, class bias, and other structures of domination will not, in the final analysis, lead to decarceration and will not advance the goal of abolition. Mm-hmm.
01:24:34
Speaker
And that's so true. Like we have to tackle all of these things concurrently to come up with good solutions. yeah There's still a lot of other things that we didn't really go over, or go over in detail at least.
01:24:48
Speaker
But I think we've covered the main concepts. And um one thing that maybe we didn't mention and that I was thinking about earlier is when you're looking at the impact on the communities that people are essentially taken from when they're imprisoned is that, you know, the capitalist influence where a lot of corporations are using quote unquote cheap prison labor, not only desert it degrade and dehumanize that person and exploit that person, but it also devalues the work of people in society. So like o using quote unquote cheap prison labor means that work outside of prison is being devalued like the same kind of work. yeah
01:25:34
Speaker
And it then puts more strain on already resource-constrained communities, both through the absent family member that is in prison and through the devaluation of labor outside of prison.
01:25:47
Speaker
So i think even if you don't really care about prisoners, we all need to recognize that this is a system that impacts the broader community as well. Mm-hmm.
01:26:02
Speaker
The point I was really getting to as well is that when we're thinking about all these things and thinking about the bigger systems, one quote that I think kind of sums it all up is that having no alternative at all would create less crime than the present criminal training centers do.
01:26:19
Speaker
And second, and this is to me the most important, the only full alternative is building the kind of society that does not need prisons. Yes.
01:26:30
Speaker
I think that's the key of it. If we have a society where people have the resources they need, where they have housing, clean water, food, health care, that includes mental health care, where they have all the resources they need to thrive and have a happy, healthy life, that is the society that's not going to need a prison because everybody's going to be cared for.
01:26:52
Speaker
Yes. Well, I'd say that's the perfect place to wrap this up. I think so. I think we've delved into enough detail.
01:27:03
Speaker
If you've read the book, let us know your thoughts. Let us know if you think we got anything wrong or if you think there's an important point we didn't mention. it would be cool to hear from folks. And yeah, hopefully this was useful.
01:27:18
Speaker
Yeah. The whole point of the media club is to foster more engagement and dialogue between us and you guys. And yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed reading this book. I'm so glad it has been on my shelf for a very long time. So i And grateful to us for doing this. I'm grateful to us too. Oh, No, but it really was it really was good to actually engage. And selfishly, I think that's why...
01:27:50
Speaker
this podcast is and I think I speak for both of us here, Meg, is important to us because like I read this book years ago and going over it again now in preparation for the podcast, I realized I'd forgotten a lot of what was actually in there.
01:28:03
Speaker
And I mean, you you retain concepts obviously, but it was good to really like deep dive into this stuff and really like contemplate how it's relevant today and yeah hopefully we've kind of created a space where people can do that as well to like slow down and engage with this stuff because it's important Yeah. And we, I mean, I know that I found a couple different resources, like a TED Talk and some other videos and that podcast I talked about and the documentary that I will add to the show notes just for you guys, if you want any further things and to see what we also looked further into. But
01:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, please do let us know your thoughts and feedback, any stories you have or thoughts around the book. If you like, our email is anti-captivitypod at gmail.com.
01:28:58
Speaker
You can also follow us and or message us on Instagram at anti-captivitypod. Please give us a review of five stars only. If you're going to give a review, that would be great. And also sharea share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit or be interested in it. That would be super duper rad and we would very much appreciate it. But yeah, if you got this far, thank you for listening and sticking around through longer than expected episode.
01:29:33
Speaker
And until prisons are obsolete, we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.
01:30:03
Speaker
Should I? oh my God. like Can you hear the kitty? Sorry. it bad That was Fred jumping down. You should tell Fred. Zoe is sitting here with her little paws crossed in the cutest way and being oh the best podcast cat.
01:30:25
Speaker
So Fred needs to take notes. Oh, fuck. Is that Franny barking? Yeah, it's Franny. Penitentiary. penitente cheery Penitentiary.
01:30:37
Speaker
Penitentiary. What the fuck? Penitentiary. How do you say it? Penitentiary. Penitentiary. penit teniary Penitentiary? Penitentiary? Penitentiary. Okay.
01:30:52
Speaker
Fuck. Not quote unquote. They are. That's what they're called. A name. Fuck. Okay. Whew. and they fuck okay then This different... and nope No, Fuck, I had such a good point that I was just going to be like, hey, this is so natural. Look at this coming out of my mouth.
01:31:18
Speaker
And Franny's like, fuck that. yeah