Barred By Society

Sabrina Hatch draws a shocking and insightful connection between the early horrors of slavery and today’s similarly oppressive prison-industrial complex. Noting the universality of the falsely-accused Calvin Duncan’s story, they bring attention to the widespread destructiveness of our country’s prison system and incisively argue in favor of its abolishment. With inspiring tones of hope and empathy, Hatch invokes a sense of empowerment in the reader, urging them to channel their inner agency and make small rebellions to ultimately upheave an unjust system. –Claire Kenny ‘23, editorial assistant

Barred By Society 

Sabrina Hatch ’25

“They take us from our land, our country, which, in this case, is New Orleans, and they put us on a boat — only now, that boat is a bus, and they ship us to jail, until we go to the auction block” (Shelby). Calvin Duncan of Louisiana served over 28 years in federal prison for a crime he didn’t commit after a fifteen-year-old eyewitness made a cross-racial identification nearly a year after the crime had occurred. Now a well-established graduate from Tulane University working towards a law degree, Duncan shares his story to all who will listen about the ways the American prison industrial system dehumanizes millions of citizens each year and exploits them for labor. Duncan vividly paints the picture of modern slavery through this metaphor in which policing has replaced slave laws and court sentencing has become the new “auction block”. Now, instead of traditional slave plantations, prisoners are sent to tiny concrete cells to spend the rest of their lives doing tedious and labor-intensive work for barely any pay. 

What’s most disheartening, and the sole reason why Duncan is putting the painstaking effort into earning his law degree, is that his experience is not an anomaly. Between targeting minorities, exploiting vulnerable groups for monetary gain, and treating prisoners of all backgrounds as subhuman, the prison system in America has grown to become a massively destructive byproduct of the capitalistic society the rest of “free” America so desperately praises. Through personal exploration both within my own life and within texts such as Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis, The Emerging Movement For Police and Prison Abolition by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist by Mariame Kaba, and Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival by Dean Spade, I’ve come to realize that prison abolition is not only possible, but imperative. The modern prison system as we know it subscribes to racist, sexist, and overall oppressive ideology and implementation. And while the movement is constantly being flagged as “irrational”, “radical”, and “unrealistic”, a future without prisons is more than feasible by setting reasonable goals born out of empathy and reverence for humanity. As all of the aforementioned texts have laid out, if our government and society put as much energy and resources into rehabilitative programs and addressing the complex social issues that are rooted within the framework of American culture as they did into expanding the prison system and punishing, the world would be a much safer place. 

And that’s just the issue. The prison system is based on a fallacy in which it promises “Us” safety from “Them”. With large arching fences lined with barbed wire, concrete looking boxes of buildings, and armed officers surrounding the perimeter, Americans are led to believe these concrete jungles are what keep criminals off the streets. But the reality is, this system does not actually prevent rising crime rates. 

Aside from the efficacy and statistics, what drew me most towards prison abolition were the unethical and ineffective practices implemented within these systems. While the average person may believe we should imprison those who are deemed “dangerous to society” or “rule-breakers”, if you examine this thought process, you will realize it is flawed. When we stop to think about who is incarcerated, it paints a clearer picture of the motivation for the large scaling of the prison system since the 80s. Of the most notable statistics, one in four black men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine will have been paroled, imprisoned, or on probation. And the most haunting part? It was found that, “larger prison populations led not to safer communities, but, rather, to even larger prison populations” (Davis 12). If this system was created to keep America safe, then why are only a fraction of the population, whose absence does not benefit public safety, being policed? This protocol for “damage control” creates a paradox in which the rules set in place to keep Americans safe destroy the lives of many and make them scapegoats for much deeper and systematic issues plaguing the population. 

After this careful consideration, I found myself attempting to answer the question we are all asking: How can we start to dismantle the prison system then? As mentioned before, this question is one of the main argumentative points for the opposition to prison abolition. They call abolitionists “radicals” “ridiculous” or “dreamers”. But the thing is, the idea of purging America of prisons is no less “irrational” than the systems already set in place. Kaba herself deconstructs this idea of jailing people to correct social issues: “If we want to reduce (or end) sexual and gendered violence, putting a few perpetrators in prison does little to stop the many other perpetrators. It does nothing to change a culture that makes this harm imaginable, to hold the individual perpetrator accountable, to support their transformation, or to meet the needs of the survivors” (Kaba 3). Kaba emphasizes that the concept of punishment centers is built around the belief that people are inherently bad, incapable of learning from their mistakes, or singularly responsible for global issues. As we have learned historically, this type of response to a desire for social change and a safer country is both ineffective and powered by an exponential growth of paralleled hatred and derision. Instead, we must, “build up another world that is rooted in collective wellness, safety, and investment” (Taylor). 

I’ve found this same idea deeply true in my own life. While I did grow up in a relatively affluent suburb of Massachusetts, I wasn’t naive to the frequent injustices that happened only one town over, or even in my own family. Time and time again, a family friend struggled with drug addiction and found themselves in a jail cell rather than in rehabilitation or therapy. Not only did this become a pattern, but it almost always ended in an overdose, familial exile, or homelessness. Nobody benefits from our most vulnerable populations being targeted, discriminated against, and stigmatized. 

Yet, despite my bleak tone, I cannot express enough the true power for change: hope. We must all have hope; we must all be able to envision a future in which these systems no longer oppress us, and find the strength within ourselves to enact small rebellions each day. And while it’s easy for me to say this while I sit here at my prestigious university with all of the privilege in the world, one must recognize the immense strength this takes. It’s hard to spur even an ounce of optimism when the majority of who are affected have only known oppression and despondency their entire lives. As stated before, minorities are the largest populations to be targeted by policing, and as Davis puts it, “Black, Latino, and Native American communities now have a far greater chance of going to prison than of getting a decent education” (Davis 10). The increase of imprisonment does not increase safety, but rather, the privatization of exploitative industries who, “reap profits from the system that manages prisoners and acquire a clear stake in the continued growth of prison populations” (Davis 8). So, we must have hope. We need to have hope. 

In terms of infrastructure, a clear response to the question of “how?” would be funding and reconstruction of these impoverished and historically disadvantaged populations; but instead, the welfare state has completely been defunded. People don’t have what they need to survive. And yet, the military and prisons keep growing (Taylor). We now live in a paradox in which America can be both the richest country, while millions of its own citizens revert to crime because they cannot afford to eat or care for themselves and their loved ones. And while this crime is directly produced from the inadequate social welfare programs, more funding is sent to prisons, policing, and militarization which, “which sow the seeds of more poverty and alienation” (Taylor). 

Of course, this again brings us back to our opposer’s inflamed response of “this is crazy. ” But the thing is, abolitionists aren’t asking for heinous crimes to go unaddressed or to start reconstruction without a plan. We just want, “a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more things that are foundational to our personal and community safety” (Kaba 1). Abolitionists want to return the focus to the so-called “objective” of prisons: to safety, to beneficence, to community. 

So, if we cannot fix the bigger infrastructural and resource issues, how can we, as individuals, strengthen these targeted groups, support them, and build a unifying force capable of reconstructing our future? Realistically, all we can do is walk through life practicing deep empathy, hopefulness, and gratitude. We can start by looking inwardly and recognizing the roles that we play in these oppressive systems. Because “if oppression were to end tomorrow, we would be likely to reproduce previous structures” (Kaba 4). We can no longer sit back and cry out for change or wish for better policies. A true prison abolitionist will realize the urgency and recognize that reconstruction is simply not plausible. Everything we know, each day we live our lives, we somehow (whether intentional or not), participate in oppressive systems. The only solution is to build from the ground up. And so, we must look inwardly, radically accept these ugly and evil parts of ourselves and begin to ask, “‘What can we imagine for ourselves and the world?’ If we do that, then boundless possibilities of a more just world await us” (Kaba 3). It is not enough to just want change. Being an abolitionist is scary, vulnerable work. You must first realize your own flaws only to be open to accepting them, unlearning them, and working hard for the future you and the rest of humanity deserves. 

But, if you find yourself overwhelmed by this introspection, understand that there are little ways you can start to work towards liberation. More directly, we can start participating in mutual aid. Historically, by bringing agency to both the individual and the systems as a whole, marginalized communities become more empowered to work towards their liberation. Something as simple as supporting local initiatives to feed the homeless, passing legislation to provide healthcare funding to low-income families, or even just creating a space where these populations can be heard is so important. When getting, “support in a context that sees the systems, not the people suffering in them, as the problem, [it] can help combat the isolation and stigma” (Spade 140). Suddenly, the focus switches from “let’s-solve-every-problem-ever-the-world-is-such-a-mess” to “what is one small thing I can do to participate in the collective unwinding of this harmful system?” And with each small step we take, we can really change the world and learn to love our fellow humans, to want to help heal each other, and most importantly, finally liberate ourselves from the oppression out of which we are all born.

Works Cited

Brown, Patricia Leigh. “What Would a World without Prisons Look like?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Mar. 2020,  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/design/prison-architecture.html. 29 Sept 2022.

Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003. 

Kaba, Mariame. “So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist.” Medium, 30 October 2020, https://level.medium.com/so-youre-thinking-about-becoming-an-abolitionist-a436f8e31894. 30 Sept 2022.

Kaba, Mariame. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Haymarket Books, 2021. 

Selby, Daniele. “How a Wrongly Incarcerated Person Became the ‘Most Brilliant Legal Mind’ in America’s Bloodiest Prison.” Innocence Project, 17 Sept 2021, https://innocenceproject.org/calvin-duncan-angola-wrongful-conviction-jailhouse-lawyer/. 29 Sept 2022.

Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next). Verso, 2020.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition.” The New Yorker, 7 May 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-emerging-movement-for-police-and-prison-abolition. 29 Sept 2022.