anti prison blues
In ten essays I’m marking on Aboriginal deaths in custody, not one student has questioned whether prisons should exist at all. In class we watched The Death of Malcolm Smith, which paints a dramatically horrific picture of conditions inside most Australian jails and reformatories. The essay I’m marking right now suggests that if adequate and fair treatment was provided for Aboriginal prisoners, then everything would be fine. It’s incredible. I can’t quite believe that they accept the necessity of incarceration so calmly.
On this note, Cruciferous links to two remarkable resources on the treatment of queer/trans people in prisons, and why queer/trans anti-incarceration work is so important. Go read them.
I always used to presume it would lose me marks for mentioning such ideas, but it never stopped me. Shit, it’s University, right. If you can’t say it there, where can you say it?
Comment by datakid — September 14, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
Most people are not only accepting of the need of incarceration, but hostile to the idea of alternatives, or of prisoners given any rights at all.
I asked a colleague once if he thought that prisoners should have a right to vote, and he was like ‘Absolutely not!’ and started ranting about how they had ‘removed themselves’ from society, so why should they get to vote/influence society?
I was somewhat appalled.
My brother is a criminal and will eventually end up in prison… its remarkable he isn’t there already.
He’s been let down by the system over and over again for years.
I once tried to find out if there was a program or SOMETHING we could get him into that would help him before he ends up doing something really awful.
There’s nothing unless you have the money to pay for it.
And so the lower classes chalk one more kid up as a lost cause, and the ruling class throw another mentally ill and poorly socialised poor person into jail to cast the illusion of ‘protection’ of the ‘innocent’.
Comment by TheCommonRyan — September 15, 2008 @ 1:08 am
i think it comes back to the fact that many of these students would most likely not have experienced incarceration (i.e. being imprisoned or knowing someone who has been). Many might also be naive to the ongoing and systematic oppression of Australia’s Indigenous population (In writing this, I am not aware whether any of your students are Aboriginal.)Even apparently well-meaning folk are still often quite unaware of the extent of racism in Australia.
You can’t change everyone’s mind, but perhaps the issue of incarceration could be the topic of a future tute discussion?
Comment by jay — September 15, 2008 @ 8:03 am
Jay, I haven’t even been arrested and I don’t know that many people who have been, either. And yet I can’t watch that particular documentary without feeling nauseous, and wondering if I shouldn’t re-dedicate my life to prison abolition work. Maybe it’s not that simple? The students come from various backgrounds, and in fact the depth of their political awareness often surprises me. This is why I am surprised no-one said “This is a problem, but prisons are also part of the problem.” We study Indigenous deaths in custody as part of an extended consideration of Indigenous history, and the material they are given rightly locates deaths in custody within a politics of racialisation. And yet I worry that focusing only on the connection between racism and police violence, or the racial profiling of the justice system, allows the broader terrors of the justice system itself to go uninterrogated.
And datakid — yeah, if you can’t say anything at university, there is little point. But most of the students would know I approve of them articulating as radical a politics in my classes as they would outside.
Ryan, yes, it’s jaw-dropping to hear people talk about how prisoners shouldn’t be allowed to vote. I’m sorry that this is such an immediate issue for you, that must be really hard.
Comment by Az — September 15, 2008 @ 8:24 am
Oddly, this just dropped in the inbox:
Comment by s0metim3s — September 15, 2008 @ 11:41 am
Also, I think in AU, there is an obviousness to prisons - I mean, it was constructed as a penal colony … and emphasis needs to be given to both ‘penal’ and ‘colony’ …
Comment by s0metim3s — September 15, 2008 @ 11:43 am
hey az, sharon daniel has interesting things to say about prisons:
“Currently, prisons function as both monument and repository- in the very worst sense of each term. They are monuments to the criminalization of poverty in capitalist America and human repositories where the secrets of economic and political power are kept safe.” From http://arts.ucsc.edu/sdaniel/bordertech/improbable/improb.html
and have a couple of her other projects:
need_x_change
palabras_
xo g
Comment by gaylourdes — September 23, 2008 @ 4:09 am
its nice to hear… hehe
Comment by Parantar — October 13, 2008 @ 1:27 am