Maya Schenwar - Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

PRISON BY ANY OTHER NAME

Also by Maya Schenwar

Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesnt Work and How We Can Do Better

Also by Victoria Law

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

PRISON BY ANY OTHER NAME

THE HARMFUL CONSEQUENCES OF POPULAR REFORMS

MAYA SCHENWAR AND VICTORIA LAW

WITH A FOREWORD BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER

CONTENTS

by Michelle Alexander

FOREWORD

THE BOOK YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS REQUIRES YOUR FULL ATTENtion. On the surface, it seems to be a book about ending mass incarceration in all of its forms. It is that, but it is also more. At its core, this book challenges us to think more deeply and carefully about what we mean by justice and what kind of world we aim to co-create.

We are now living in a moment in which large numbers of people are suddenly paying attention to the United States astronomical incarceration rate and alternatives to incarceration have become a topic of mainstream debate. This was not the case just ten years ago. Much has changed in the world and in our collective consciousness during the past decadesome for the better, some for the worse. Some of the things that seem to be changing for the better might actually be leading us to a place thats even worse.

Prison by Any Other Name investigates the kinds of reforms that initially appear to be a step in the right direction but are, in reality, leading us somewhere we dont ever want to go. Unfortunately, many of the alternatives to incarceration being embraced today will likely worsen the lives of the very people and communities that many reformers aim to help. In my view, most concerning is the rapid spread of technological fixes to our supposedly broken system. In our zeal to make some progress in the fight against mass incarceration, many well-intentioned reformers are wittingly or unwittingly converting homes, neighborhoods, and entire communities into high-tech digital prisons.

Humanity has reached a stage in its development where our technological capacity has greatly outpaced our moral strivings. This seems especially true in wealthy, grossly unequal capitalistic societies like oursplaces where the conditions for wealth accumulation and technological progress have been (and continue to be) inextricably linked to slavery, genocide, and the exploitation of people and resources around the world. As a nation, weve learned how to send people into outer space and how to shrink a powerful computer into a device that fits into the palm of our hand. But have we learned how to face our racial history, or how to tell the truth about the devastation wrought by colonialism and global capitalism? Weve learned how to develop powerful surveillance systems and how to build missiles that can reach halfway around the globe. But what, exactly, have we learned about the true meaning of justice?

As we desperately seek solutions to crime and alternatives to incarceration, its all too easy to be seduced by technology and to imagine that there must be a technical fix to the deep moral and structural challenges we face. Maybe, we wonder aloud, if police officers are forced to wear body cameras, that will help. Maybe if people who cant afford bail are released from jail with electronic monitors strapped to their ankles, that will help. Maybe if people are sentenced to house arrest for ten years rather than three years in prison, that will help. After all, isnt house arrest better than prison? Isnt an electronic monitor strapped to your ankle better than a jail cell? Wont police behave better if a camera is attached to their vest filming everyone they interact with? Even if body cameras are more likely to collect evidence against the people they film than against the officers wearing them, arent the cameras worth it if they help to catch even one bad cop? Isnt it progress if some people are able to give birth or raise their kids at home under house arrest rather than being locked in prison (even if their kids are now living in a digital prison, too)? This is the logic that is driving much of the current criminal justice reform debate. But what does it meanreallyto celebrate reforms that convert your home into your prison?

As momentum builds for some kind of reform, its worth pausing to consider what truly counts as meaningful progress. In this groundbreaking book, Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law invite us to wrestle with this difficult question and to consider the profound challenges we must face if we are to do more than simply re-form the system of mass incarceration into another version of itself. Through interviews with victims of mass incarceration, criminal justice practitioners, and abolitionists, and drawing on extensive research, they demonstrate that we can end mass incarceration without perpetuating harm, destroying lives, and controlling entire communities. However, we must be careful not to embrace every policy advertised as a progressive reform, since they often contain hidden dangers. In the words of Schenwar and Law:

Innovation, in itself, is no guarantee of progress. In so many cases, reform is not the building of something new. It is the re-forming of the system in its own image, using the same raw materials: white supremacy, a history of oppression, and a tool kit whose main contents are confinement, isolation, surveillance, and punishment.

This book is especially instructive for new (and old) converts against mass incarceration who are eager to move past condemnations of the current system and begin the work of reimagining what justice should look like in their own communities.

Unfortunately, today, when most people discuss the growing bipartisan consensus to end mass incarceration they are typically defining the problem of mass incarceration in the narrowest possible terms, focusing only on reducing the number of people who are currently behind bars. Yet if we limit our field of vision in this waymeasuring progress solely by the number of people who are no longer locked in prisons or jailswe inevitably fail to take into account the millions of people who can be found in immigrant detention centers or mental health facilities, as well as the tens of millions of people on probation or parole.

The term mass incarceration makes it easy to forget the majority of people who are under some form of carceral control arent even in prisons or jails. More than twice as many people are currently on probation or parole as are held behind bars. We could cut the number of people in cages in half and still have entire communities under surveillanceplaced on probation, parole, or electronic monitorsand perpetually hunted or harassed by the police. They would still be labeled criminals or felons and subject to legal discrimination for the rest of their lives in employment, housing, and access to basic public benefits.

In fact, we could slash the number of people in state and federal prisons but still manage to increase the size of the carceral state. We could reduce the number of people behind bars but, at the same time, double, triple, or quadruple the number of people who are on probation or parole. These people who are free from their cages may be sentenced to their homes, placed under house arrest for years or even decades, or confined to their neighborhoods through electronic monitoring (EM) devices that will summon the police if they dare to leave their invisible cage even for a minute. In short, we could successfully cut the number of people locked in, while another caste-like system is quietly born. This is not the stuff of sci-fi fantasy or teen dystopian fiction; this is the world that many of us are co-creating right now even as we claim to be working to end a system of racial and social control.