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Before I get to my thoughts on the book Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences, by Howard Zehr, I’m going to forego my reading recommendations for this week to talk about this one article from Prison Policy Initiative. The title is 10 ways that mass incarceration is an engine of economic injustice and it covers some myths about incarceration while connecting the poor conditions criminalized people face with the economic conditions of all workers.
Not only does this article detail the cycle of poverty and imprisonment (I touched on this in my post Slavery by Another Name), but it is also a concise overview of the many, many additional punishments that we impose upon incarcerated people and their families that are often not directly connected to their crime or sentence. In spite of the fact that so many people have written about this before, I write because I believe that there are many people who don’t look too closely at our punishment bureaucracy. Until issues are brought to light, many folks don’t realize how harshly we treat our neighbors. For example, lawyers for the January 6th insurrectionists highlighted the awful conditions they faced in a D.C. jail while awaiting trial. Michael Cohen, who was formerly detained there and is now an advocate for criminal justice reform had first-hand experience with these conditions.
When Cohen, who is Black, saw that the Jan. 6 detainees’ complaints finally sparked change, he wasn’t surprised.
“It’s America. They’re not going to do anything unless white people say it’s a problem,” he says. “If the insurrectionists can be treated like humans, the people who’ve been in this city can be treated like humans.”
Back to the Prison Policy Initiative piece, we punish people (primarily poor folks who can’t afford bail) with pre-trial detention, meaning even if proven innocent, they can lose their jobs or have to pay bail bond premiums that they don’t get back. “About 83% of people in local jails are legally innocent and awaiting trial, and many of them are too poor to make bail.” Then there are often arbitrary court fines and fees.
We also punish people with dirty, dangerous, and unhealthy conditions inside prison. They often have limited access to education and other supportive programs which give motivation to do better and open opportunities for a future outside prison. When able to access them, these programs can be taken away as punishment for not following arbitrary rules enforced by prison guards (who may be responsible for half of sexual assaults in prison, and yet are rarely imprisoned themselves). They pay exorbitant fees to communicate with loved ones (the FCC is pushing back on this, but facing court challenges), or buy necessities from the commissary , and are forced into prison labor. And once they are released, we punish them by taking away their ability to participate in our political system, making it harder for them to get jobs, and leaving them and their families in debt.
I am constantly reminded when I talk with folks about the U.S. punishment bureaucracy that their understanding could be summed up in the trite adage, “do the crime, do the time”. Which completely ignores the massive series of punishments and obstacles I just described. The fundamental question we should be asking ourselves and others is, “knowing that the vast majority of incarcerated people are eventually released, why punish them before, during, and after imprisonment?” What purpose does it serve to make every part of our society tell someone they are irredeemable besides turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy?
PPI notes how conviction punishes the family members with debt, weakening communities:
According to a survey by the Ella Baker Center, roughly 65% of families with a loved one in prison were unable to meet their basic needs because court-related fines and fees sent them into debt over $13,000 on average.
They also note that prisons often deepen poverty. The vast majority of prison jobs go not to local people who are often most in need of employment, in spite of the claims of policymakers and prison operators, but to long-serving prison system staff. Prisons also depress new business openings and outside investment, cost communities a lot of money in tax incentives to bring them in in the first place, and attract large stores which pay low wages and take profits out of the community.
All of the above only describes ways 1-3 that “mass incarceration is an engine of economic injustice.” Ways 4-10 cover the many ways that incarceration depresses wages, prevents unionization, and is basically a bludgeon that employers can use, explicitly or implicitly, to prevent workers from agitating too much for fair working conditions and wages. As I noted previously, this system of punishment tends to only work in one direction, with wage thieves facing lenient punishments, if any, while small-scale theft can earn severe penalties especially in states with three strikes laws.
The Prison Policy Initiative article is a call to solidarity with our incarcerated neighbors. The harshness with which our society treats them is a massive barrier to better working and living conditions for all people. As long as we create policy out of fear, we will create the conditions we fear and the cycle will continue.
Review of Doing Life
Recently, an acquaintance condescendingly argued with a quote from Doing Life that I had posted, saying that I was misleading folks by presenting humanizing quotations from prisoners serving life sentences. His contention was that anyone who was given a life sentence must be heinous and deserved their punishment for their “antisocial behavior”. Setting aside the number of false convictions and later exonerations (see for example this man who was recently exonerated after spending 42 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, or this one who spent 21 years in prison for a wrongful conviction), some states, like PA at the time Doing Life was written, give people life sentences for participating in a crime in which someone was murdered, even if they themselves did not kill anyone. Additionally, it is an inhumane and immoral world view that determines that no human being is capable of change, that every person is defined by their worst moment. As one lifer, Charles, put it
“What a guy’s in jail for probably only took a few seconds. That’s not the whole person. That’s just a couple of minutes out of the person’s life. I think we’re wasting thousands and thousands of people by just writing them off as no more good. (p78)
Of course, no one truly believes all people are irredeemable. When it’s their family or friend they are the first to defend them and argue mitigating circumstances, it’s only people they don’t know who are evil. Only by turning inmates into abstractions and monsters can they maintain this mindset.
Doing Life sets out to break down the abstractions and change this mindset. For those familiar with Humans of New York, Howard Zehr plays a very similar role (many years earlier) to Brandon Stanton. He allows the subjects of his photographs to tell their stories how they would like to tell them and he presents the complexity of their thoughts, wants, and needs. As Zehr says in the introduction:
in most of our discussions about these issues we talk about abstractions; we tend to use stereotypes and symbols. Offenders are faceless enemies who embody our worst fears. Victims - if we think about them at all - become planks in our campaigns, pawns in the judicial and political processes. We tend not to see victims or offenders as real people. We seldom understand crime as it is actually experienced: as a violation of real people by real people. Rarely do we hear the experiences and perspectives of those most involved. (p3)
Zehr highlights how “victims often complain of being twice victimized, first by the offender, then by an unresponsive justice system which ignores their interests and needs.” (p118) While he notes that not all lifers attain the maturity and level of self-reflection of the people he interviewed for the book, a common theme among their reflections is that the system actively prevents them from repairing the harm they did. Besides the prison system not being conducive to learning and growth, once an inmate does manage to reflect and change, they are then thwarted in their common realization that they should do as much as possible to repair the harm they did. They are often kept from speaking to victims and many look for other ways to give back by mentoring young people, or starting nonprofits and advocacy groups from behind bars.
This book first came out in 1996 and thanks to the efforts of Zehr, among many others, some reforms have allowed a more restorative form of justice where, if both victim and offender are willing, they can come together to figure out how to repair some of the harm done. Unfortunately, in my experience both with the legal system and school systems that have “officially” implemented restorative justice, we are a long way from the investment needed in time and personnel to actually implement restorative justice. It is not just something you can put in a policy book and say “everyone do this”. It needs active understanding and participation from all involved, and requires a huge commitment of time, energy, and empathy. This last piece is key. Working with people, especially people who have hurt and been hurt, requires a personal commitment to understanding other people and a belief in their ability to change, tempered by an understanding that some people will lie to avoid consequences.
We are a long way off, but with continued effort, a cultural shift is possible. Instead of demonizing other people, we need to work to create supportive communities. As I mentioned in my previous post on Prison Abolition, we need massive changes in how we structure our society to be able to implement the biggest reforms to our punishment bureaucracy. To anyone who argues against prison reforms, whether they have concerns about safety, or anything else, I challenge them to first read about the many harms to public safety caused by policing and prisons, and then to actually take steps to deal with the underlying issues. The issues of economic inequality, lack of healthcare, unequal primary and secondary education, and exorbitant cost of higher education all contribute to the cycles of poverty and violence that mass incarceration exacerbates. A better world is possible, but only once we recognize that “solutions” like prison won’t be a part of it.
Purchase the Book
If you’d like, you can purchase some of the books mentioned in my blog from bookshop.org. This is a way to support local bookstores (or me if you use the link below), and avoid the Amazon monopoly.
Here is the link to my store page, with all of my recommendations.
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I thought this was a very thoughtful and relevant piece - thank you. I agree with huge portions of it.
Regarding detention pending trial (they call it remand in England & Wales): I was very impressed by the fictional story told in a mini-series a few years back with John Turturro, called “The Night Of”. The story concerns a man who has no recollection of whether he killed a woman or not - with that fact we as audience are deprived of prejudgment on the rest of the story, over the course of which the accused is remanded to Riker’s Island Prison in New York. There, his prime task is to still be alive when his trial date comes. Not only his demeanour, but his appearance slowly but surely take on that of a hardened convict. He shaves his head, smokes meth, befriends a protector, works the commissary system, learns not to wear orange for court appearances, all after his bed has gone up in flames. In summing up at the trial, Turturro gives a stirring and very well constructed piece of monologue, part of which addresses this fact: that the accused, having been held on remand for so many months, has had to change, to assimilate to Riker’s Island and its population, in order to survive the prison system, and now he stands before the jury to be judged - looking every bit the hardened criminal that the prosecution would have them believe he is, and innocence of which it is now his formidable task to persuade them.
I expressly mention the scriptwriter’s technique of the accused’s lack of recollection. We believe him, even if, at least initially, like his counsel, we can barely credit it. Ethically, counsel may not plead the innocence of an accused whom they know is guilty as charged. But they may validly challenge the state’s case as brought in support of the charges. They may question the evidence and they can profess theoretical innocence, provided they have not been informed of the accused’s position on the matter. The English case of Lucy Letby, a nurse convicted of the murders of a series of newborn babies, may yet prove to be food for thought: the most incriminating evidence against her was that she was on duty when each of the babies died. As were many other people, on an understaffed postnatal ward. However, she is in for life, whole life. The Texas case of Robert Roberson III is likewise interesting. He has been granted remission of 30 days as from 17 October - on which day he had been scheduled for execution. Letby supposedly incriminated herself by writing a frantic note to herself asking why she had done “it”, and recriminating against herself for her “evil" acts. I’m not sure that her acts, as impelling these notes, were acts of murder in the first degree, but I’m not directly involved. Roberson has served 21 years in prison, not for a crime he didn’t do, but for a crime that was never done, at least so all the current comments would seem to indicate. Yet his lawyer acquiesced in the charge of murder at first instance, and effectively pled only mitigation. He never questioned the fact of his client’s guilt, and that set the die for the next two decades.
If only we could handle the accused truly on the basis of “innocent until proved guilty” prior to incarceration, and could absolve the guilty of their debts, once their day of release is come. Give them their voting rights, embed them in the society within which we now want them to reintegrate. The problem with the correctional system is that those who benefit most from it, at least theoretically (being the general public), on the whole don’t give a hoot how it operates, as long as it operates; and those who operate it on our behalf really don’t know what it is they want out of it, because, essentially, nor do we.