The only way we have made improvements to our previous society is by questioning the moral obliquity present in certain aspects of our lives. From radical thought arose the renaissance and from the audacious rose civil rights. Now we must be both bold and inquisitive in our analysis of prisons because, just as Jim Crow was rarely questioned by whites who tacitly enjoyed the privileges and powers they had in a segregated society, we too have become taciturn in matters concerning criminal rights.
In the rare occasion that a criminal rights issue is brought up, although they are rampant, you will often hear echoes of execration in that these people deserve every injustice brought onto them. However, these loud do not consider two things: first and foremost forgeting the humanity of prisoners, instead detaching themselves from sympathising with individuals and viewing them as statistics and outcasts; secondly, ignorantly ignoring that it is mutually beneficial that our prisoners exit ready to be rehabilitated into society. Jerry Metcalf, a convict himself, puts it best – “better people exiting prisons means a better society.
But what are these criminal rights issues, I may hear you ask. Well, let’s begin at what is becoming the fulcrum of too many of such issues: America. At the zenith of its incarceration rates, America has made prisons capitalist. Due to the 13th Amendment, an adage of the Southern redemption, slavery is technically legal in America if it is as a punishment. This has enabled America to profit from the prison system, earning money from the huge corporations paying for their prisoners’ labour. Just as convicts were leased during the southern redemption and slaves made to work for free (and this time, the owners cared little for their health since they were much more dispensable), so once again we return to a system of slavery that is arguably much more accepted than the last, but shrouded with more secrecy. This sordid matter is scarcely spoken of, but the 2.2 million incarcerated in america can attest that the majority of the work they do is for these major corporations for free.
Similarly to the 1860s, where anti-abolitionists justified slavery through the idea of polygenesis which claimed that African-Americans were genetically inferior and accustomed to such work, nowadays people use the moral turpitude of a prisoner against his right to respect. Of course, the conditions of prisoners now is incomparable to the horrors of slavery but the parallel I am trying to make is one of control since both have just as little freedom. It is also important to note that the increase in mass incarceration is largely attributed to ingrained racism from the aftermaths of slavery – in fact it can be said that prisons are simply a new and accepted version of slavery against minorities, including the poor, but this point will take some context to understand.
America has followed a pattern in its history; slavery was used to distinguish the poor whites from African-Americans in order to stop a united revolt against white elites; the southern redemption and Vagrancy Act a similar reaction to Reconstruction (a golden period in which a boom of equal rights occurred); Jim Crow was a deliberate attempt by the conservative party to drive a wedge between black and white populists. Finally, civil rights protests were criminalised in mass media and rising crime rates in areas that accepted the civil disobedience were used to prove the malicious nature of such protests. This was done despite the fact they were actually rising up due to increased unemployment.
The media attack on these protests were the roots of the War on Drugs. It should be noted now that crime and punishment rarely see any historical correlation – for example, from 1960-1990 the US incarceration rate went up by a factor of 4, the Finnish decreased by 60% and the German percentage remained the same even though in all of these countries the crime rate remained the same. In reality, punishment increases in times when the government needs to extend control. In response to the delinquency of the 70s and the hippie movement of the 60s, the Reagan government announced the start of America’s War on Drugs in 1982 despite the fact that cocaine did not infiltrate black neighbourhoods until two years later. Even more surreptitiously the CIA admitted to to funding guerilla armies in Nicaragua that they knew were smuggling drugs into the US, however, they did not investigate the drug networks. While this sounds conspicuous, this is not to say that the US government purposely brought cocaine into black neighbourhoods in order to arrest them, but only to prove that the War on Drugs was about control just like the media’s attack on civil rights was an attempt at this.
After this War on Drugs, the penal population increased by 1.7 million, up to 80% of black men in inner city areas have criminal records and there are now approx. 30% more black women than black men – making it the race with the largest gender disparity in the US. This all comes after a time when leading experts such as the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice predicted that “no new institutions for adults should be built” and that “the prison has achieved a shocking record of failure”. It is clear that, just like slavery, the War on Drugs was all about control and attacked minorities the most, hitting them the hardest.
Let us, for a moment, compare the rights of a black man living under segregationist laws of Jim Crow to the rights of convicts. Both are eligible for housing discrimination, job discrimination, jury discrimination. Both were most importantly restricted in some aspect from voting with voter suppression displayed in poll taxes and literacy tests and now with the fact that prisoners are not allowed to vote. Voting is something that many Americans consider to be a constitutional right, something that separates them from the many oppressive dictatorships scattered abroad. Yet, they allow 2.2 million of their adult voters to be disallowed from this civil liberty due to a crime that could have easily been a minor possession charge. They allow these prisoners to be dehumanised by their guards which call them out by their ID numbers and strip search them immediately after visits with their families, allowing them no humility.
As a final note, in the 19th century, a slave could not vote because they were considered three fifths of a man, in the 21st century, a prisoner cannot vote because he is not considered a man at all.
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