Writing Sample: Systematic Dehumanization in the American Prison System (Essay, 2018)

Statement of Purpose

The American criminal justice system is inherently flawed. This report will focus primarily on North American prisons, and on the ways in which those trapped in the recursive and toxic cycle of crime, imprisonment, and punishment are exploited and stripped of their humanity. In order to begin the process of implementing changes on a national scale, we must understand and accept three key points about our criminal justice system. First, we must acknowledge the purposeful dehumanization of prisoners by the American prison system, as well as by our criminal justice system as a whole. This includes the economic exploitation of prisoners who are used as a source of cheap manual labor while their human rights are neglected, and the willful physical and emotional abuse of prisoners by guards, wardens, and neglectful prison policy. Second, we must acknowledge that we as a society are culpable for the dehumanization of prisoners, given our willingness to label them as “other” or “deviant” in order to both excuse and profit from their mistreatment. Third, we must acknowledge the fact that our criminal justice system does not aim to rehabilitate and reform criminals, but instead aims to isolate and punish. In the context of each of these flaws that are ingrained so deeply within our country’s culture, and in direct contrast to the false notion that our version of a criminal justice system is the only option that works to prevent crime, this report will be arguing for the implementation of drastic changes in the way we treat incarcerated people and former prisoners. This argument will focus largely on the benefits of restorative justice over retributive justice.           

I. Dehumanization of Prisoners by the Criminal Justice System

Draconian Drug Laws / Race and Class Bias

Even before incarceration, our criminal justice system is rife with racism and classism and weighted down by countless outdated and draconian laws that serve little purpose beyond the oppression of poor people and people of color. This is most easily observed when examining law and policy relating to America’s infamous “war on drugs”—a movement that has historically been used as a poorly-concealed front for America’s war on POC and the lower class, ostensibly with the purpose of taking a hard stance against drug abuse. These oppressed groups are wildly over-prosecuted for drug related crimes, crimes that white and wealthy people are much more likely to commit and much less likely to be prosecuted for. After prosecution, oppressed groups are often severely punished for relatively small infractions. People of color are often given the maximum sentence whenever possible, and mandatory minimum sentences ensure that permanent damage is done even when this is not the case. A recent study performed by the United States Sentencing Commission has found that, on average, black men who commit the same crimes as white men receive sentences that are nearly 20% longer, and another 2014 study found that “all other factors being equal, black offenders were 75 percent more likely to face a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence than a white offender who committed the same crime.”[10] In America, being targeted for a drug-related offence is one of the easiest ways to have your life ruined.

These practices have a disproportionately damaging impact on the lives of people of color. White and black people use most drugs at about the same rate, but black people are “nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested for drug offenses.” [5] This, combined with aggressive policing tactics that are designed to profile oppressed groups, makes it nearly impossible to view the criminal justice system as impartial, unbiased, or just. Take the implementation of ‘stop and frisk’ laws, for example, which allowed police to stop and search people with no real justification, and resulted in a massive increase in arrests of people of color.  Research by Dr. Ashley Nellis, in collaboration with The Sentencing Project, has found that black people are incarcerated “at a rate that is 5.1 times the imprisonment of whites. In five states [...] the disparity is more than 10 to 1.” [5] This study found that, on average, black people are incarcerated at a rate of 1,408 in 100,000, while white people are incarcerated at a rate of 275 in 100,000 people. [5]

Abuse and Neglect Within Prisons

Once incarcerated, the mistreatment prisoners face within American prisons is no better than the mistreatment they faced within American courts. Our prisons are notorious for the abuse and neglect of prisoners—so much so that it has become expected that violence and danger are simply part of the prison experience. The abuse of prisoners is widely documented: wardens pocketing money intended for feeding inmates, guards ignoring violence between prisoners as well as verbally and physically abusing prisoners themselves, prisoners being placed in solitary confinement for extended periods of time as a punishment for minor infractions, and so on and so forth. Despite the fact that “21% [of inmates] say they’ve been assaulted by prison staff,” [3] it’s almost unheard of for a guard to receive any real disciplinary action in response to an allegation of physical abuse raised by a prisoner. In 2015, of the 120+ accusations of abuse brought against prison guards in New York State prisons, only eight of those cases resulted in a guard’s dismissal. [6] This remains true even in cases that result in the death of a prisoner at the hands of a guard. In June 2012, for example, two guards scalded a mentally ill prisoner to death [4] and were faced with no criminal charges or disciplinary action of any kind. The 50-year-old prisoner, Darren Rainey, was a black man serving a two-year sentence for cocaine possession.

While not everyone is fully aware of the injustices that take place every day within the walls of our prisons, there is a near-endless amount of documentation of the mistreatment of prisoners. As such, the truth of this mistreatment is not what needs to be argued; it is objective fact. Instead, the fact that there is such an extensive amount of evidence readily available and still little to no action actually being taken is what matters. This inaction is a clear sign of our society’s total disregard for the safety and wellbeing of incarcerated people.

One of the primary goals of the American prison system is the dehumanization of prisoners. The act of treating a prisoner as something other than or less than human is a tried-and-true method of controlling prison populations, maintaining compliance, and creating a divide between prisoners and the rest of society that is extremely difficult to cross. Our prisons achieve this dehumanization through dozens of methods both major and minor: assigning prisoners numbers instead of names, enforcing uniforms, haircuts, and uniformity of behavior, and keeping prisoners isolated and disconnected from the outside world are just a few common practices. The end result of this treatment is a population of prisoners who no longer view themselves as people, and as such no longer need to be treated as people by the American prison system. This allows for the economic exploitation of prisoners and for the systematic oppression of anyone not wealthy and white.

The Architecture of Prisons

Another way we allow ourselves to neglect and dehumanize prisoners is through the physical nature of prisons. They are isolated, nondescript buildings behind high cement walls, and this physical separation of prisoners from the rest of the world aids in our habit of mentally dividing people between “normal” and “deviant.” One you enter a prison, you are stripped of your individuality and your humanity, in order to make it easier for the rest of society to stomach the way you are treated. You are kept out of sight, in order to make it easier for the rest of society to pretend that you do not exist, and kept in isolation to keep prisoners from acting as any kind of support system for each other. Prison architecture, as much as it is designed for efficiency and security, is designed to break the spirit of those living within its walls.

The nature of harmful prison architecture often skews to one of two directions. The first of these options is one in which prisoners are isolated from one another, and are kept in solitary confinement not as a punishment but simply as a method of control. In these prisons, mental illness and suicide risk skyrockets due to the devastating psychological impact of forced extended isolation, “a psychologically debilitating practice that the UN Human Rights Council condemned as torture in 2011.” [8] The second option is more common: prisoners are crammed two or more at a time into tiny cells, never allowed a moment of privacy, and put at constant risk of sickness due to the close proximity and lack of proper care.

Pelican Bay State Prison has become an infamous example of hostile prison architecture taken to the extreme, and manages to accomplish both of these methods at once. The central building in this prison complex houses “approximately 1000 inmates,” [8] Each of whom is confined to “8x10-foot, soundproof, poured-concrete cells with remote controlled doors and no windows” and spends “up to 23 hours a day” in complete solitary confinement. [8] Outside of this building are other, older cell blocks, described as “buildings that constitute human rights violations by their very existence.” [8]

The psychological impact of prison architecture, specifically of solitary confinement, cannot be overstated. In a 1993 study of Pelican Bay State Prison, a sample of 100 randomly selected prisoners reported much higher instances of mental illness, stress, and psychological trauma compared to both nonincarcerated people and non-supermax prisoners. 91% of those prisoners reported anxiety, 84% reported chronic lethargy, 70% reported “impending breakdown.” [12] Those results generally skewed about 20% higher than the results reported by non-supermax prisoners, and nonincarcerated reports (aside from 45% reported for anxiety) did not rise higher than 17%. [12] When testing specifically for the psychological impact of forced isolation, a staggering 77% of Pelican bay prisoners reported chronic depression, 88% reported irrational anger, 67% reported overall deterioration, and 41% reported experiencing hallucinations. 27% reported suicidal thoughts, and 61% reported violent fantasies. [12] To be clear, this is not unique to Pelican bay. While Pelican Bay’s practices have become well-known for their inhumanity, these results are consistent in all cases of solitary confinement. As of a 2003 publication in Crime & Delinquency, “there is not a single published study of solitary or supermax-like confinement in which nonvoluntary confinement lasting for longer than 10 days, where participants were unable to terminate their isolation at will, that failed to result in negative psychological effects.” [12]

This is how the American prison system destroys the lives and breaks the spirit of its prisoners. The use of solitary confinement as punishment and even as the default method of confinement is common in prisons all throughout the country, despite the fact that it has been shown to result in an overwhelmingly high population of severely mentally ill, traumatized prisoners. A system that increases the prevalence of suicidal ideation, violent fantasies, depression, hallucination, and irrational anger cannot possibly benefit any aspect of our society, even one designed to control and subjugate those it no longer believes to be human. When, if they survive, those prisoners are reintroduced to society, they are left with no resources and no support to help them cope with their trauma, and this combined with society’s rejection of the formerly incarcerated means that a prisoner’s punishment never really ends, even after release.

 

II

Society’s Othering of Prisoners

The Prison in Popular Culture and Media

Our view of prisons has been shaped by the way they are portrayed on tv and in movies, to the point where many people believe that every prisoner is a violent menace by sheer virtue of the fact that they are currently in prison. This myth, that either being in prison makes one violent or that only violent/dangerous people are sent to prison, is one of the primary ways in which we allow ourselves to believe that the way prisoners are treated is acceptable. It’s easier to convince oneself not to think about a problem than to try to fix it—and, in doing so, to accept one’s own complicity in that problem—and so we do everything we can to avoid thinking about or seeing prisoners.

The sensationalism that accompanies just about all prison dramas and movies is one of the key factors in our acceptance of the culture of violence and fear that persists within prison walls. It makes sense, sadly, that the prison genre is so popular; we as a society have a special place in our hearts for any story that tends towards darker, more violent themes—take Game of Thrones or The Walking dead, for example—because they show a different side of humanity that one never really sees in every-day life. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing; art is art, and if a story is compelling and interesting, then it should be told. What is a bad thing is the fact that, in the prison genre specifically, the negative stereotypes and highly sensationalized violence warps our view of a real population of people who are actually facing that violence. Rather than simply telling a compelling story, we are exploiting people who have no say in the matter, turning their pain into profit. If that were the end of the issue—if the only hard were simply that we were insensitively profiting from the misfortune of other people—then the prison genre might not necessarily be quite as harmful. However, the sensationalizing of prisons is only one part of the problem. Dawn K. Cecil writes on the subject,

Consider how prisoners are constructed in these narratives. While watching these films the audience experiences incarceration from the point of view of the new inmate, who has been wrongly convicted, received an unfair sentence, or has committed a crime under mitigating circumstances. They can relate to this character. He is in sharp contrast to the other prisoners, who are labeled murderers and rapists, and depicted as violent monsters who are immoral and unredeemable. Their otherness is further reinforced by their physical appearance (e.g., shaved heads, tattoos, weight lifting, etc.…) Imagery, music, and dialogue further emphasize the risk these inmates pose. [1]

There is a lot to unpack there. We don’t even notice it unless we’re looking for it, but just about every tv show and movie in the prison genre treats prisoners as hyper-aggressive, unapproachable monsters, criminalized to the point that they are no longer even human. It only takes a moment of consideration to realize that, no, prisoners are not inherently monsters. With the staggering number of people in prison for non-violent crimes such as drug use, it cannot be possible that all or even most prisoners are violent and dangerous. As a society, however, we do not want to consider this, because it complicates the narrative we tell ourselves. If the main character of the prison drama is not the only one who is “human,” if they are not the only one who does not deserve to be there because of some hidden characteristic that defines them as ‘criminal,’ ‘other,’ then we can no longer indulge in these portrayals of human suffering without guilt.

Another side effect of this depiction of prisoners in the media is that, in a kind of butterfly effect, the prison genre will eventually begin to affect the lives of prisoners themselves. Dawn K. Cecil writes that, when we view prisons as being full of inhuman murderers and monsters, “the underlying message is that prisons are a needed and effective crime control method, which should focus on deterrence and incapacitation.” [1] Our fear of prisoners—a fear that we create and exacerbate all on our own through our gratuitous portrayal of prison violence in the media—causes us to put our own comfort over their humanity, which causes us to approve the implementation of stricter, less humane prison policies. When we begin to believe that prisoners have already lost their humanity, we no longer feel guilt over stripping them of what humanity they have left. When we begin to believe that prisoners are amoral, violent, or incapable of change, we no longer feel as though effort should be made to help or rehabilitate them, which perpetuates our society’s love of retributive justice.

Discrimination against the Formerly Incarcerated

Once released from prison, convicted people are never truly free. Ours is a system that punishes convicted people for a lifetime, rather than just the term of their sentence; it becomes nearly impossible to find a good job, to build credit, to do any of the things that our capitalist society demands in order to live a healthy and functioning life. This has a strong impact on the recurring cycle of imprisonment, as those who are unable to work are often forced or encouraged to turn to crime to survive. Discrimination against former prisoners is common in both policy and culture; we tend to view someone who has been in prison as inherently criminal and beyond redemption, which in turn allows us to build policy to keep former prisoners from fully re-entering society. This, combined with the devastating long-term psychological effects of imprisonment (and the lack of comprehensive rehabilitation programs to help deal with incarceration-related mental illness) makes life after prison extremely difficult to navigate, increasing the likelihood of homelessness, repeated arrests, or suicide in former prisoners.

In his work, Discipline and Punish, Foucault examines the punishment and imprisonment of criminals over the course of several centuries. He claims that our society’s fear and summary rejection of the formerly (and currently) incarcerated is similar to the way a society fears a plague. He likens our treatment of former prisoners to that of our treatment of lepers; a combination of fear and disgust that marks and exiles them from society.

On the one hand, the lepers are treated as plague victims; the tactics of individualizing disciplines are imposed on the excluded; and, on the other hand, the universality of disciplinary controls makes it possible to brand the ‘leper’ and to bring into play against him the dualistic mechanisms of exclusion. The constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which every individual is subjected, brings us back to our own time, by applying the binary branding and exile of the leper to quite different objects; the existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal brings into play the disciplinary mechanisms to which the fear of the plague gave rise. All the mechanisms of power which, even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter him, are composed of those two forms from which they distantly derive. [9]

Here, Foucault explains our desire to exclude those we view as a danger to ourselves and our society, and the way that—in doing so—we mark that person to be forever viewed as “abnormal,” cementing their rejection from society forever. He believes that this is a fear response that extends back to our earliest days as a species, removing sick members of the pack in order to keep the others safe. This, idea, however, reinforces the belief that all prisoners are inherently a danger to society. The exclusion of the leper implies that there is no hope to cure or save them, and that there is no reason to try; that the leper’s life has less value than the lives of others due to their new designation as ‘leper’ instead of simply ‘human.’ Similarly, the exclusion of the formerly incarcerated from modern society implies that we no longer believe rehabilitation is possible. We claim that prisons are supposed to make reintroduction to society possible, even seamless, but then we refuse to allow that reintroduction because we either no longer actually believe it to be possible, or are unwilling to accept that prisoners deserve to be allowed back into society.

The effect of this exclusion of prisoners can be devastating. The stigma of being a former prisoner seeps into every aspect of life, and is often reflected in actual law as well as societal norms. In a 2016 report examining the difficulties of prisoner reintegration into society, it was found that “77 percent of released prisoners are re-arrested within five years,” and “43 percent of released prisoners are rearrested during the first year.” [13] One of the primary reasons for this extremely high rate of recidivism is the fact that our current society makes it nearly impossible to find employment after release from prison. As of 2003, a white job applicant with no criminal record had a 34% chance of being called back after their interview, and a black job applicant of the same demographics had a 14% chance of being called back. The addition of a criminal record drops those chances to 17% and 5% respectively, meaning that white applicants with a criminal record are 50% less likely to receive a callback, and black applicants with a criminal record are nearly 75% less likely. [13] In the face of this discrimination, and given the high likelihood of mental and physical trauma sustained while imprisoned, it is unsurprising that recently-released prisoners have a noticeably high mortality rate. In fact, “in the first two weeks of their release, former prisoners have a mortality rate 13 times greater than their matched demographic cohorts.” [13]

This is the end result of all of the stigma, the mistreatment and neglect, and total dehumanization of prisoners in our current prison system. By the time a prisoner is finally released—after months, years, or decades of physical and psychological abuse and trauma—they are faced with a society that refuses to welcome them, refuses to allow them employment, and refuses to treat them for the way they have suffered during their imprisonment. Unable to work, unable to live, former prisoners lacking any support system are faced with three choices: a return to the cycle of crime and punishment, a lifetime of poorly-paid work with no hope of upward mobility, or death.

III. Restorative Justice vs. Retributive Justice

Retributive Justice

Our current criminal justice system is built on the concept of “retributive justice.” Essentially, the goal of retributive justice is to punish prisoners. Crime, under this system, is seen as a moral failing on the part of the criminal; one who commits a crime is therefore fundamentally flawed, and is considered to be deviant from society from this point on. Retributive justice—literally coming from the concept of retribution, meaning vengeance—is society’s way to exact revenge on criminals through punishment equal to or greater than the perceived severity of the crime committed. In the past, this punishment was carried out against the body, through capital punishment such as torture, branding, and execution. Now, of course, we have (supposedly) moved away from those practices, favoring an approach that removes criminals from society. The implication, now, is that our prisons no longer exist for the purpose of vengeance, but for the purpose of enabling reintegration and rehabilitation. This is not the case. Instead, we have simply evolved from punishing the body of the prisoner to punishing the soul. As Foucault writes, our goal has become “not to punish less, but to punish better; to punish with an attenuated severity perhaps, but in order to punish with more universality and necessity; to insert the power to punish more deeply into the social body [...] take away life, but prevent the patient from feeling it; deprive the prisoner of all rights, but do not inflict pain.” [9] Under the pretense of being more merciful, more humane, we use our prison systems to render criminals docile, easily exploited, and in just as much suffering as they have always been. The only real difference now is that the suffering is internalized, represented in the plague of mental illness and trauma that surrounds incarceration, and the fact that that punishment—the revenge of a society that cannot envision a prisoner as a human being—only continues after release, given the stigma associated with being a former prisoner.

 

Restorative Justice

Contrary to what the proponents of retributive justice believe, there is another option for the management of crime than just punishment and isolation. “Restorative justice”—essentially the polar opposite of retributive justice—is one that aims to actually rehabilitate prisoners by providing counselling, support systems, and "cognitive-behavioral programs rooted in social learning theory"[14] designed to help correct whatever led to the original crime in the first place. The goal here is not to punish the criminal, but to help them return to society as a well-adjusted and accepted citizen, hence the name “restorative” justice. This kind of criminal justice system has seen great success in lowering the psychological toll of incarceration and reducing the rates of repeat offenders in countries outside the US—primarily in northern Europe. The concept of restorative justice has been so successful in Norway, in fact, that Norway now has “one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%,” a mere fraction of the US’ 77% chance of recidivism within five years of release. On a smaller scale, Norway’s success with restorative justice is echoed by practices implemented by many other countries. America itself, for example, has begun experimenting with implementing restorative justice programs specifically for juvenile delinquents, although this is still in very early stages, and Germany has seen success in its decision to decriminalize addiction. Rather than treating drug addiction as a crime, as America does, addiction is treated as an illness, approached with treatment and rehabilitation before imprisonment. This allows people to receive actual help in changing their lives and their personal health, rather than punishing them. Similarly, the goal of restorative justice is to essentially “treat” the crime, rather than simply punishing it.

There is also an economic incentive to pursuing a restorative-justice system. Recidivism is expensive, and a program that both reduces the chances of re-arrest and implements rehabilitation that takes place outside of prisons would save millions of dollars. In the UK, a 2001 study found that “providing restorative justice in 70,000 cases involving adult offenders would deliver £185 million in cashable cost savings to the criminal justice system over two years, through reductions in reoffending alone.” [15]

Conclusion

The fact that this is the way our prison system has always been does not excuse the fact that it does not work. America has one of the highest rates of incarceration and recidivism in the world, and our prisons are so poorly maintained and corrupt that the idea of dangerous, ineffective prisons has simply become part of our identity. We no longer question the way we treat our prisoners, we no longer question why we have such a high prison population, and we no longer question why we have allowed a system that bloated with racism, classism, corruption and abuse to thrive for as long as we have. These are questions that need to be asked, because their answers hint at the existence of a criminal justice system that is thoroughly broken.

If we can begin to attempt to view prisoners as the people that they are—not as criminals, not as deviants, not as sources of gruesome entertainment in the media and borderline slave-labor, but as people—then we maybe eventually begin to start treating them like people. If we can manage that, then we will have made the first steps towards becoming a country that treats all of its people with humanity and respect, not just those that it deems worthy.

           

Works Consulted

 

1.      Cecil, Dawn K. “Prisons in Popular Culture.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology, 18 Apr. 2018, criminology.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264079-e-194

 

2.      Drake, Deborah H. “The Dangerous Other in Maximum Security Prisons.” oro.open.ac.uk/31225/2/The_Dangerous_Other.pdf

 

3.      Gilson, Dave. “Assault and Sexual Violence in America's Prisons.” Mother Jones, 23 June 2017, www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/attacks-and-assaults-behind-bars-cca-private-prisons/

 

4.      Luscombe, Richard. “Inmate Locked in Scalding Shower Died 'by Accident', Medical Examiner Says.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 26 Jan. 2016, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/26/miami-dade-prisoner-shower-death-ruled-accident-darren-rainey

 

5.      Nellis, Ashley. “The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons.” The Sentencing Project, 14 June 2016, www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/

 

6.      Robbins, Tom. “Guarding the Prison Guards: New York State's Troubled Disciplinary System.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Sept. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/nyregion/guarding-the-prison-guards-new-york-states-troubled-disciplinary-system.html

 

7.      Weisberg, Robert, and David Mills. “Why No One Really Cares about Prison Violence.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 1 Oct. 2003, www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2003/10/violence_silence.html

 

8.      Zara, Janelle. “The Problem with Designing Prisons.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Dec. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/artinfo/prison-design-and-its-con_b_3616864.html

 

9.      Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. Print.

 

10.  Ingraham, Christopher. “Black Men Sentenced to More Time for Committing the Exact Same Crime as a White Person, Study Finds.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 16 Nov. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black-men-sentenced-to-more-time-for-committing-the-exact-same-crime-as-a-white-person-study-finds/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.11e95d195493

 

11.  Wenzel, Michael, et al. “Retributive and Restorative Justice.” Law and Human Behavior, vol. 32, no. 5, 2008, pp. 375–389.

 

12.  Haney, Craig. “Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and Supermax Confinement.” Crime and Delinquency, vol. 49, no. 1, 2003, pp. 124–156.

 

13.  Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore, et al. “Incarceration and Prisoner Reentry.” Brookings, Brookings, 21 Oct. 2016, www.brookings.edu/research/twelve-facts-about-incarceration-and-prisoner-reentry/.

 

14.  Sterbenz, Christina. “Why Norway's Prison System Is so Successful.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 11 Dec. 2014, www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-so-successful-2014-12.

 

15.  Restorative Justice Council. “Evidence Supporting the Use of Restorative Justice.” Evidence Supporting the Use of Restorative Justice, restorativejustice.org.uk/resources/evidence-supporting-use-restorative-justice.