Are Prisons Obsolete?
By Juan Moreno Haines
Solitary confinement in U.S. prisons is traceable to Eastern State Penitentiary in Cherry Hill, Pennsylvania during the 1800s. Its standard practice resulted in a torture, so profound, that it became fodder for the era's leading scholars to advocate against its use. Yet, two centuries later, solitary confinement is still commonly used in American prisons.
With an undeniably nefarious history, I find it troubling that conversations about why solitary confinement in prison exists are rare. It's more troubling that there are no meaningful discussions about who winds up in prison in the first place or the complexities of why. It took Angela Y. Davis 115 pages (in a 5x7" book) to give the public an instructive history in order to debate the topic.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) is a candid look that traces American prisons to slavery, white supremacy, a literal bamboozling of taxpayers by playing to their fears to justify the use of prisons for public safety. Davis explains how socio-economic inequities created by private interests turned into a need for prisons. She highlights various discriminatory practices that seeped into government policies, resulting in people of color filling prisons across the nation.
Davis challenges the philosophy that touts extreme isolation and physical incapacitation as acceptable responses for people who violate "perceived" social norms.
"We should therefore question whether a system that was intimately related to a particular set of historical circumstances that prevailed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can lay absolute claim on the twenty-first century," Davis writes.
The chapters, well documented, contain relevant sources for research. "Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?” and “Slavery, Civil Rights, and Abolitionist: Perspectives Toward Prison” give readers insights to the roots of American prisons. Referring to modern prison policy, Davis notes “...the prison's presumed goal of rehabilitation has been thoroughly displaced by incapacitation as the major objective of imprisonment."
“Imprisonment and Reform" informs readers about the false promises that prison builders and politicians give to the public—that prisons will keep communities safe from crime. During the prison building boom of the 1980s–1990s, the prison industrial complex was born. The PIC represents corporations with global markets that depend on more prisons being in existence as a source of profits. It supports narratives that crime is a rising societal problem; however, it should be noted that between 1990–1998, homicide rates dropped by half, nationwide. Meanwhile the Center for Media and Public Affairs reported that homicide stories on the three major networks went up almost fourfold giving TV viewers a skewed sense of reality.
"How Gender Structures the Prison System" reveals how the criminal legal system is sustained by patriarchy.
“The Prison Industrial Complex" is the most insidious chapter as it explores the huge corporate profits reaped from prison labor and prison operations through a "process of social destruction."
Finally, “Abolitionist Alternatives” offers readers strategies for better outcomes from the criminal legal system that are rooted in restorative justices and equity-based practices.
Davis asks readers if they could imagine a world without prisons. Then, she reminds us that, "Slavery, lynching and segregation are certainly compelling examples of social institution that, like prisons, were once considered to be as everlasting as the sun."
It is with that mindset that I pondered the correctness of Davis’ theory. Then, I thought about the thousands of free people who have ventured inside San Quentin to see parts of themselves in its incarcerated population. What did they think about incarcerated people before stepping into San Quentin's uniqueness? I asked myself, is offering incarcerated people humane living conditions enough?
I struggle to answer this question as I see incarcerated people strive for betterment in this toxic environment, while at the same time, a significant number of free people who see humanity in San Quentin turn their visit into action by coming back inside as volunteers, advisors and advocates in the movement for decarceration.
I'm going on my 26th year of incarceration. With that experience, I am reflective when I talk about the worthlessness of prisons to law-abiding citizens. Moreover, I have witnessed the hopelessness interjected into people by merely being here. Here's what prisons actually do to most people: it's like taking someone who is already broken, breaking that person some more, and then releasing that person into the community without any glue.
Meanwhile, more than 2.3 million people are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails.
As we're a long way from significant reform that would end mass incarceration in the U.S., I suggest that readers take seriously Davis' realization aimed at abolitionists:
"A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system."
Prison reform ought to begin by all Americans studying Are Prisons Obsolete?
Juan Moreno Haines is a journalist incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison; senior editor at the award-winning San Quentin News; and member of the Society of Professional Journalists, where he was awarded its Silver Heart Award in 2017 for being “a voice for the voiceless.”