Ironies of Imprisonment

Michael Welch

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781452237398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Ironies of Imprisonment examines in-depth an array of problems confronting correctional programs and policies from the author's singular and consistent critical viewpoint. The book challenges the prevailing logic of mass incarceration and traces the ironies of imprisonment to their root causes, manifesting in social, political, economic, and racial inequality. Unique and accessible, this book promises to stimulate spirited discussion and debate over the use of prisons.

1

Introduction

 

New York State has the most stringent and unyielding drug laws in the country—just ask Terrence Stevens. Stevens, an African American with no previous drug convictions, was busted for possessing five ounces of cocaine. Some say that he was lucky to draw the minimum allowed under the so-called Rockefeller statute. Still, that meant 15 years to life; that sentence is the same punishment for murder and kidnapping and longer than the minimum terms for armed robbery, manslaughter, and rape. Due in large part to his medical condition, there are many who question the wisdom of incarcerating Stevens, including the judge who sentenced him and the prosecutor who tried him. Stevens developed muscular dystrophy while growing up in a housing project in East Harlem. At the time of his arrest, he was confined to a wheelchair. In prison, Stevens relies on inmates to bathe, dress, and lift him onto and off the toilet. During a routine strip search, he told corrections officers that he was physically unable to remove his pants; for not complying with the order, he was disciplined by being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day for 40 days. He appealed the disciplinary charge and it was reversed, but only after Stevens had served the punishment. The man who was arrested along with Stevens was not sentenced to prison. He received probation for testifying against Stevens (Purdy, 2000).

Furthering his re-election campaign, New York Governor George E. Pataki delivered a toughly worded speech on crime, defending punitive policies he believes are necessary to ensure public safety. In many ways, his rhetoric mirrored that of other law-and-order crusaders. Pataki aimed directly at criminologists who take a deeper look at crime, and he ridiculed the idea that unlawful behavior stems from adverse societal conditions. The governor proclaimed that the “root causes of crime are the criminals who engage in it.” He also stated that, “In no uncertain terms—we, as servants of the people, are not charged with carrying out a sociological study. We are charged with maintaining public order and saving lives” (Nagourney, 1998). For those who do not share that conservative view of crime, Pataki’s address reeks of anti-intellectualism. Regrettably, political and public forums on crime are so rife with that way of thinking about crime that it has become difficult for criminologists to persuade policy makers and citizens to look beyond simplistic notions of crime.

Undeniably, the consequences of anti-intellectualism surrounding penal policy are real. Mass incarceration has transformed the United States into the world’s leader in imprisonment, producing an expensive prison system that fails to contribute to public safety, since much of the current influx of inmates is nonviolent drug violators (Austin, Bruce, Carroll, McCall, P. L., & Richards, S. C., 2003; Garland, 2002; Irwin, Schiraldi, & Ziedenberg, 2000). Race, ethnicity, and class figure prominently in the emergence of a nation of prisons. Correctional institutions continue to lock up more and more people of color along with the poor, who have few resources to defend themselves against an over-funded, overzealous criminal justice machine that does not hesitate to fill prison cells (Wacquant, 2000, 2001, 2002).

Moving toward a critical penology, this work attends to the ironies of imprisonment that have become defining features of the American prison apparatus. In doing so, careful consideration is given to key developments, problems, and issues that fuel the system’s contradictions, biases, and inconsistencies. Chapter 2 begins with a socio-historical look at the emergence of the penitentiary, a troubled institution whose problems persist today. In his analysis of early American institutionalization, David J. Rothman (1971, 1990) concludes that prisons—along with almshouses and insane asylums—represent state responses to growing concerns that crime and other social problems threatened the stability of the new republic. Rothman documents significant shifts in the conceptualization of crime and punishment that together created the belief that imprisonment was a legitimate, progressive, and humane form of crime control. Still, American penal history teaches us that the establishment of corrections has had less to do with crime control and more to do with social control (Blomberg & Cohen, 2003; Blomberg & Lucken, 2000). The chapter tracks the emergence of the term “social control” in critical criminology and the role that incarceration plays in perpetuating social, racial, and economic inequality.

The idea that prisons reproduce racism and classism is brought into sharper focus in the third chapter. There, the thrust of a critical penology exposes the linkages between the political economy and criminal justice system, creating a coercive prison apparatus serving the status quo. Situating social inequality at the center of analysis, a critical penology points to evidence of racial and socio-economic disparities in sentencing—along with a host of other injustices—that have become defining features of American penal policy.

Given its enormous impact on the soaring correctional population, Chapter 4 takes an in-depth look at the war on drugs. In this chapter, the American war on drugs is subject to the test of just war theory, a uniquely innovative framework. Both figuratively and literally, drug control policy in the United States has become increasingly criminalized and militarized. Left in the wake of those transformations is an array of self-defeating strategies. Most notably is the reliance on high-priced incarceration rather than cost-effective rehabilitation for a population that needs treatment more than punishment.

Similarly, in the fifth chapter, problems facing correctional health care are examined in light of the huge proportion of prisoners suffering from drug addiction, compounded by various diseases including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Indeed, the war on drugs and its mandatory minimum sentences—even for first-time, nonviolent drug violators—has generated expensive tactics that do little to reduce drug dependency. Moreover, those ill-advised policies are contributing to a vast prison population growing old behind bars.

Institutional violence is the subject of Chapter 6, in which the sociological model proposed by Gary T. Marx (1981) is applied to corrections. That paradigm offers a systematic tool in discerning the ironies of social control, most notably the tendency for authorities to contribute to rule breaking. The brutal truth is that violence behind bars is reproduced by interdependent behaviors between keepers and the kept. Those dynamics manifest in escalation, nonenforcement, and covert facilitation, all of which feed the cycle of violence in prisons. Likewise, Marx’s theory of irony serves as the conceptual architecture for Chapter 7 on capital punishment. Relying on an expanding body of research, it is revealed that the death penalty paradoxically serves to promote lethal violence rather than deter it. Moreover, capital punishment widens a deadly net of social control laced with racial and socioeconomic biases; as a result, juveniles and the mentally handicapped as well as innocent people become trapped in the machinery of death.

The war on terror promises to remain at the forefront of criminal justice policies for the foreseeable future. While the events of September 11th, 2001, have given rise to new anxieties over national security, civil liberties and human rights groups are worried that recent counterterrorism legislation is endangering democracy. Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that government agents, in their quest to identify and prosecute those involved in terror-related crimes, have overreached their authority. Critics of the way the war on terror is being conducted point to well-substantiated reports that detainees swept up in post-September 11th campaigns were subjected to physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their keepers. Chapter 8 examines the controversy over ethnic profiling, along with detention practices shrouded in government secrecy.

Given the symmetry between economics and punishment, a critical penology does well to explore the inner workings of the corrections-industrial complex. By taking a hard look at punitive profit, the ironies of imprisonment become all the more apparent. Chapter 9 dispels the myth that a greater use of imprisonment deters street crime, turning to evidence that the prison population is being driven up by economic and market forces. The corrections enterprise is a phenomenon created dialectically by several interlocking machinations of the political economy. Under the conditions of postindustrial capitalism, there are fewer legitimate financial opportunities for members of the lower classes; therefore, some of them stray into illegitimate enterprises (e.g., drug trafficking) where they risk being apprehended, prosecuted, and sentenced to prison.

Once incarcerated, prisoners’ value in the commercial market increases as they are commodified into raw materials for the corrections industry. Privatization also contributes to the acceleration of prison construction because it operates on free-market principles that generate a high-volume, high-dividend system of punishment. Whereas the economic-punishment nexus is good news for financial players in the corrections enterprise, it is bad news for those ensnared in its net of coercive social control. The chapter finds that punishment for profit imperils communities, society, and American democracy.

The concluding chapter features a final glimpse at “prisonomics” and its influence on government spending on corrections. Critical thought also is given to the role of culture in shaping a society that embraces mass incarceration despite its blatant biases against the poor and people of color (Garland, 2001). The discussion hinges on key social constructions that produce both overreactions to crime in the form of moral panic, and underreactions to unfair and unjust punishments (Cohen, 2001). In its unwillingness to overtly condemn racist and classist penal policies, mainstream American society has attached itself to a culture of denial and disbelief.

This work views punishment through the critical perspectives of intellectualism and radicalism, thereby illuminating dominant aspects of social control and the ironies they produce. It is argued that the state’s increased reliance on penal sanctions marks an even greater commitment to coercive social control. Higher rates of incarceration, complemented by a growing roster of penalties (e.g., “three strikes” legislation, mandatory minimum sentences, the abolition of parole and prison amenities), indicate a degree of retribution rarely found in comparable democracies. There is disturbing evidence that political leaders, rather than simply treating lawbreakers firmly but fairly, are becoming increasingly intolerant and vindictive. In a sense, the state appears to have crossed the line from “getting tough” to “getting rough” by encouraging institutions and authorities to bully individuals lacking the power to defend themselves adequately against an ambitious and overzealous criminal justice system (see Bottoms, 1995). Those most vulnerable to the prevailing spirit of meanness are the impoverished and racial and ethnic minorities.

Regrettably, the state seems to have transformed the criminal justice system from a shield designed to protect all citizens to a sword used to intimidate and control the less powerful. Those unfortunate trends in American punishment suggest chilling prospects for social and economic justice. To quote a high-ranking corrections official who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from conservatives who dominate his agency, “zero tolerance means zero thinking.” Indeed, the culture of control undermines critical analysis by resorting to various forms of criminal justice propaganda, including signs, slogans, and sound bites that are publicized in order to justify increases in penalties, police, and prisons.

End-of-Chapter Questions

1. What is meant by an anti-intellectual approach to crime?
2. What are the key features of mass incarceration in the United States?
3. What is meant by “getting rough” in the realm of criminal justice?
4. What are some of the components of criminal justice propaganda?

2

Discovery of the Penitentiary

At Auburn, we have a more beautiful example still, of what may be done by proper discipline, in a prison well constructed. The whole establishment from the gate to the sewer, is a specimen of neatness. The unremitted industry, the entire subordination and subdued feeling of the convicts, has probably no parallel among an equal number of criminals. In their solitary cells they spend the night, with no other book than the Bible, and at sunrise they proceed in military order, under the eye of the turnkeys, in solid columns, with the lock march, to their workshops; then, in the same order, at the hour of breakfast, to the common hall, where they partake of their wholesome and frugal meal in silence. At the close of the day, a little before sunset, the work is all laid aside at once, and the convicts return in military order to the solitary cells; where they partake of the frugal meal, which they are permitted to take from the kitchen, where it is furnished for them, as they returned from the shops. After supper they can, if they choose, read the scriptures undisturbed, and then reflect in silence on the errors of their lives.

—The Reverend Louis Dwight,
secretary of the Boston Prison
Discipline Society (1826, pp. 36–37)

Offering a sophisticated look into a complicated past, socio-historical works contribute tremendously to the study of prisons. In The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, David J. Rothman (1971) expands our understanding of key normalizing institutions, namely, penitentiaries, asylums, and workhouses. Whereas Rothman’s book is not usually catalogued as a work of critical penology, advocates of the perspective find his analysis useful in sharpening our awareness of the emergence of institutionalization (Welch, 1996a). Embarking on a critical exploration of punishment, attention is turned to Rothman’s work in an effort to demonstrate how conceptualizations of incarceration have changed over time. As we shall see, The Discovery of the Asylum segues nicely to truly critical insights into the emergence of imprisonment as a measure of social control.

Rothman’s chief task in The Discovery of the Asylum is to examine the underlying rationale for the construction of prisons, insane asylums, and reformatories during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Emphasizing the role of the Jacksonian vision in reconceptualizing the social order, Rothman reveals not only the immediate impact of the rise of institutionalization but also its lasting legacy, the uncritical acceptance of wide-scale incarceration. Due to its continued influence on the literature, The Discovery of the Asylum was reprinted in 1990. In the revised edition, Rothman issues a new introduction but leaves the book in its original form, saying, “Since the book has earned a life of its own, I have refrained from making any changes in the text” (1990, p. xii). Indeed, many penologists agree that The Discovery of the Asylum has earned a life of its own, having been standard scholarly reading for more than 25 years. This is not to suggest that Rothman offers the last word on the history of institutionalization, as shall be discussed later; his contribution is only one of several historical interpretations.

The Discovery of the Asylum has helped shape contemporary reflections on the history of corrections. Rothman notes that before 1970, there were only a handful of studies in the area; by the 1990s, hundreds of articles and books devoted to the social history of institutionalization had been published. Perhaps more than at any other point in time, contemporary scholars are pursuing their fascination with institutions and those confined to them. Equally important, intellectuals are attending to the significance of the larger social forces on institutionalization, including historical, political, economic, cultural, religious, and technological forces (see Welch, 2004a). The merits of Rothman’s analysis of insane asylums and almshouses notwithstanding, the scope of this chapter is limited primarily to the penological segment of The Discovery of the Asylum and its capacity to shed light on the emergence of social control.

Punishment in Colonial America

Rothman offers repeated lessons as to the importance of viewing corrections socio-historically. The Discovery of the Asylum simultaneously traces the rise of a new republic and the rapid development of its penal practices; that sequence of events is most pronounced in late colonial America, continuing through the Jacksonian era. During the colonial period, notions of crime and punishment differed fundamentally from those of the Jacksonian period. Comparing those two time frames shows how the penitentiary emerged from changes in ideas about crime along with broader perceptions of social disorder. Those developments interacted with other advances in society, particularly in the realm of politics and economics. In colonial America, crime was not viewed as a critical social problem. “They [the colonists] devoted very little energy to devising and enacting programs to reform offenders and had no expectations of eradicating crime. Nor did they systematically attempt to isolate the deviant or the dependent” (Rothman, 1971, p. 3).

The colonial perspective on crime contrasted sharply with that of the Jacksonians, who like their contemporary counterpa...