Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial Complex

Meridians ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (S1) ◽  
pp. 87-111
Author(s):  
Angela Y. Davis ◽  
Cassandra Shaylor
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Reproductive Control ◽  
Women's Prisons ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
Medical Neglect ◽  
Control Loss

Abstract Despite the transnational growth of the prison industrial complex and the rapid expansion of the carceral state in the United States and beyond, violence against women in prisons has remained largely invisible. Reports from people inside prisons, amplified by activists on the outside and international human rights organizations documenting prison conditions, highlight rampant violations of human rights behind walls. The gendered nature of racism, which fuels the growth of the prison industrial complex, results in experiences of violence, including medical neglect, sexual abuse, lack of reproductive control, loss of parental rights, and the devastating effects of isolation, that manifest in particular ways in women’s prisons. Advocates who are challenging conditions inside increasingly are connecting with activists across the globe and organizing their efforts to resist this violence in concert with a broader resistance to carcerality overall.

When Temporal Orbits Collide: Embodied Trans Temporalities in U.S. Prisons

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Trans Women ◽  
And Control

This paper explores trans temporalities through the experiences of incarcerated trans feminine persons in the United States. The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) has received increased attention for its disproportionate containment of trans feminine persons, notably trans women of colour. As a system of domination and control, the PIC uses disciplinary and heteronormative time to dominate the bodies and identities of transgender prisoners by limiting the ways in which they can express and experience their identified and embodied genders. By analyzing three case studies from my research with incarcerated trans feminine persons, this paper illustrates how temporality is complexly woven through trans feminine prisoners' experiences of transitioning in the PIC. For incarcerated trans feminine persons, the interruption, refusal, or permission of transitioning in the PIC invites several gendered pasts into a body's present and places these temporalities in conversation with varying futures as the body's potential. Analyzing trans temporalities reveals time as layered through gender, inviting multiple pasts and futures to circulate around and through the body's present in ways that can be both harmful to, and necessary for, the assertion and survival of trans feminine identities in the PIC.

scholarly journals Barriers to Sustainability in Poor Marginalized Communities in the United States: The Criminal Justice, the Prison-Industrial Complex and Foster Care Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muriel Adams ◽  
Sonja Klinsky ◽  
Nalini Chhetri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foster Care ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Care Systems

In the United States of America, 2.2 million people are incarcerated in public and private facilities and over 700,000 are released yearly back to their home communities. Almost half are rearrested within a year. These problems have been excluded from mainstream sustainability narratives, despite their serious implications for sustainability. This paper addresses how the criminal justice, prison-industrial complex and foster care systems negatively impact these communities and families. To comprehend the system links, a sustainability lens is used to examine and address interlinking system impacts obstructing achievement of sustainability and the necessary community characteristics for building sustainable communities. Communities characterized by environmental degradation, economic despair and social dysfunction are trapped in unsustainability. Therefore, a system-of-communities framework is proposed which examines the circumstances that bring about prison cycling which devastates family and community cohesion and social networking, also negatively affecting the ability of other communities to become truly sustainable. We contend that a fully integrated social, economic and environmental approach to a major, complex, persistent problem as it relates to poor, marginalized communities faced with mass incarceration and recidivism can begin creating sustainable conditions. Further, we articulate ways sustainability narratives could be changed to engage with core challenges impeding these communities.

Pastoral Maya and the Maya Project: Building Maya Civil Society in the U.S.

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lopez ◽  
Alan LeBaron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
State University ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Community Project ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
The Us

Guatemalan Maya living in the United States as refugees, migrants, or immigrants without official documents do not entirely escape the troubles they previously faced in Guatemala, such as political and social disadvantages, language barriers, and maintaining identity; moreover additional problems result from the complexities of coping with the US immigration system and the likelihood of incarceration and deportation. This situation becomes more ambiguous with the mixed reception they receive from the United States, where some segments of law and society constantly strive to make survival improbable, and other segments such as churches, employers, and human rights organizations strive to protect. Among the multitude of organizations created within this contentious field of "pro" and "anti" is Pastoral Maya, best described as a "self-help" organization for Maya immigrants; and the Maya Heritage Community Project (the Maya Project) at Kennesaw State University. These two organizations have distinct but overlapping goals and methods designed to defend Maya fundamental human rights to life, security, and well-being. Of course, achieving such lofty goals has been problematic, and with anti-immigration laws and high unemployment of recent years many people have had hopes for the future dashed. But positive signs for the Maya exist, for an increasingly sophisticated Maya leadership has emerged with experience and with the security of having obtained documents of residence. These leaders hope to take advantage of their relatively safe space in the United States to promote a force for change that will lift up the Maya in the United States and in Guatemala. The Pastoral Maya organization has developed a particularly strong leadership that strives for these goals.

Incarceration and Rupture: The Past in the Present

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Brace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Racial Slavery

This chapter focuses on the prison industrial complex in the United States to ask again about what gets remembered and how, to take us back to the question of what happens to a manumitted slave, and to revisit the figure of the slave as an uncanny object in the blind spot of modernity. It contests the sharp divide between past and present that lies behind the discourse of new slavery and focuses not on rupture, but on the continuities and persistent connections between the racial slavery of the past and the incarceration of the present. It looks at a past that refuses to pass away by exploring the meanings of imprisonment, the prison itself, the border regime and the status of felons and prisoners as outsiders, shut out of civil society.

Global Violence of Women in Cults

2019 ◽  
pp. 343-368
Author(s):  
Doni Whitsett ◽  
Natasha Post Rosow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
North America ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Attachment Trauma ◽  
Medical Neglect ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Experiences Of Women

This chapter focuses on the experiences of women in high demand groups, also known as “cults.” Despite the chapter’s regional focus on North America, particularly the United States, this is a transnational phenomenon with satellite communities throughout the world. The chapter provides a brief history of cults in the United States and highlights the various abuses to which women are subjected, from psychological abuses such as medical neglect, loss of reproductive rights, separation from children, and attachment trauma to physical and sexual violence. The chapter also discusses legal obstacles to remedying these human rights violations, provides resources for assistance, and makes suggestions for advocacy.

The Criminalization of Immigrants & the Immigration-Industrial Complex

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Manges Douglas ◽  
Rogelio Sáenz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Institutional Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Government Contracts ◽  
Detention Centers ◽  
Basic Functions ◽  
Private Corporations

Over the last few decades, and particularly after 9/11, we have witnessed the increasing criminalization of immigrants in the United States. Changing policies have subjected immigrants to intensified apprehension and detention programs. This essay provides an overview of the context and policies that have produced the rising criminalization of immigrants. We draw on the institutional theory of migration to understand the business of detention centers and the construction of the immigration-industrial complex. We link government contracts and private corporations in the formation of the immigration-industrial complex, highlighting the increasing profits that private corporations are making through the detention of immigrants. We conclude with a discussion of how the privatization of detention centers is part of a larger trend in which basic functions of societal institutions are being farmed out to private corporations with little consideration for basic human rights.

scholarly journals Out of Space: Securitization, Intimacy, and New Research Challenges in Post-2009 Iran

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirin Saeidi ◽  
Paola Rivetti
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Impact

In post-2009 Iran, not only is space gendered for a variety of reasons ranging from customs to state intervention, but also public space has become less accessible and secluded for security purposes. To securitize the state or replace a sense of trust with that of suspicion, states blend the gendering of space with the architecture of seclusion. In the United States, for instance, the separation of males and females in the prison industrial complex includes seclusion of bodies and often subjects gender-nonconforming people, immigrants, and those with HIV to disproportionate levels of physical danger. In Iran, architectural adjustments with the aim of seclusion have significantly increased since the 2009 protests. In Tehran, for instance, shisha shops in the mountains, which used to be common sites of leisure, are randomly raided by security forces. As a result, participating in such spaces means having to hide in the back areas to engage in an activity that not too long ago was legal. It follows that the combination of gendering and seclusion of space disrupts the formation of organic relationships and generates real, falsely stimulated, and contested intimacies. How we approach intimacies in this complicated situation determines in important ways the impact that this new spatial scheme will have on our research agenda, analysis, and perhaps even safety.

Carceral Trauma at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-85
Author(s):  
Cassandra D. Little
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
And Gender

This chapter will provide a firsthand analysis of one woman's journey through the prison industrial complex. The intent is to bring the readers proximate to how trauma intersects with incarceration, gender, and race. The goal is to challenge our criminal justice system's need to over-criminalize and over-incarcerate women at alarming rates. Since 1980 the number of women in United States prisons has increased by more than 700%. These rates of incarceration of women have outpaced men by more than 50%. By drawing upon lived experience interacting with the United States Criminal Justice System and empirical data, the author will provide evidence that will argue that the experience of being incarcerated is traumatic and dehumanizing for many, but even more counterproductive for women.

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