The nation’s prison population has hit a new peak and the international business of private prisons is growing. Moreover, there is a convergence of this disturbing trend with the detention practices the U.S. government uses as part of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in its recent crack down against undocumented immigrants in the United States. The parallels go beyond the growth of each of these sorts of prisons. Some activists assert that the torture that has been revealed in Iraq and Afghanistan are used against U.S. prisoners. Likewise, just as enemy combatants disappear in our secret detention centers, so do undocumented immigrants in I.C.E. facilities.
This problem is ominous and philosophers, particularly those who work on the issues of gender and race, should be paying attention. Clearly, some of us are. There has been some discussion about prisons (beyond liberal theories of punishment) for some time and by significant philosophers. The two that come immediately to mind are, of course, Angela Davis and Michel Foucault. I recently came across an article by Eduardo Mendieta that draws on their work (see the link below for the article), and it got me to think about the relationship of philosophy to what some theorists call the “carceral society.” Particularly striking to me is the word “abolition,” which of course refers to the prison abolition movement which refers back to the antebellum movement to abolish slavery in the United States. Are contemporary philosophers, especially philosophers of race and gender, missing the boat on this one? Are we failing to see and address one of the biggest political and racial issues of our era? What is behind this lack of attention?
While there are political philosophers and philosophers of race working on the issue of prisons, it is not a subject at the center of the debate. For example, in the most influential recent analytic accounts of racism, prisons are hardly mentioned. Racial profiling and other such issues are mentioned, but prisons, surprisingly, are not! I suspect that philosophers, myself included, have seen prisons as symptoms, as outcomes of institutional racism and distributive justice at other levels of society. Thus, while educational and residential segregation are regularly addressed, prisons as a subject are neglected.
After reading Mendieta, I worry these standard approaches misses the full spectrum of how prisons function within nations and the political, really geopolitical significance of prisons. Drawing on Angela Davis, Mendieta lists 10 ways that prisons are racialized and serve to racialize population, and I think his list deserves some thought. For example, his claims that prisons, among other things, are “political machines that disenfranchise racialized others leading to their civic death,” and are “branding devices that lead to the accumulation of negative symbolic capital” are deeply intriguing and help us think about prisons beyond the idea that the are merely static symptoms of social injustice. According to Davis and Mendieta, prisons, in their own way, are resources in the perpetuation and production of social injustice.
Eduardo Mendieta, “The Prison Contract and Surplus Punishment: On Angela Y. Davis’s Abolitionsim,” http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/rrsundstrom/Mendieta_Prisons.pdf
New York Times, “Prison Nation,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10mon1.html?scp=4&sq=prison%20population&st=nyt
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