A Second Occupation

2020 ◽  
pp. 305-334
Author(s):  
Johanna Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Structural Violence ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Detention Center ◽  
Young Lords ◽  
Legal Defense

In Fall 1970, the Young Lords again occupied the FSUMC church, in response to the shocking death of one of their own, Julio Roldan, who after a false arrest was found hanged in the Tombs, NYC’s notorious detention center. The occupation happened against the backdrop of a prisoner uprising in the Tombs, a precursor to the Attica Rebellion. At the occupied church, the Young Lords mounted a precursor to contemporary movements against mass incarceration and for abolition. They launched a legal defense center to aid poor Black and Latino prisoners; challenged the politics of bail; denounced state repression of the left; the politics of law and order, and the hyper imprisonment of people of color. They identified structural violence, poverty, and racism as root causes of social problems and supported the redistribution of resources and wealth through the revolutionary overthrown of capitalism. The group’s radical actions led to the first official investigation of the death of a single prisoner, Julio Roldan. Roldan’s arrest and arraignment offered a window into the botched legal process that, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, exponentially increased the arrest and jailing of people of color living in urban centers.

The Post–Civil Rights Borderland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrisia Macías-Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Department Of Homeland Security ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Immigration Politics ◽  
Post Civil Rights

Arizona has played a historic role in national “law and order” policymaking and immigration politics. Today it has some of the highest levels of criminal arrest, prosecution, and sentencing for immigration offenses. Yet it is also home to one of the most dynamic border- and immigrant-rights movements in the country. This chapter explores linkages among civil rights, mass incarceration, and immigration enforcement to better explain the local political and economic context in which the Department of Homeland Security has diffused federal criminal enforcement priorities and institutionalized “prosecutorial” approaches to migration that aggressively punish while safeguarding “victims’ rights.”

Trumpism, Policing, and the Problem of Surplus Population

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Cedric Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Current System ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Corporate Elite ◽  
Blue Line ◽  
Surplus Population

This chapter tackles the issues of mass incarceration and aggressive policing, and their impact on low-income communities and people of color. It places Trump's defense of police and denigration of Black Lives Matter into historical context. The chapter connects the rise of the carceral state with an ideology that pathologizes poverty, blames working-class and unemployed people for their failure to get rich, and defines an urban “underclass” as the problem. In this context, the chapter analyzes Trump's reverence for police as the “thin blue line” that separates civilization from chaos. Focusing its attention on the intersection between class and race, the chapter unpacks the logic that has motivated a long-standing effort to shift power and resources away from the working class and toward the corporate elite. It argues that liberal antiracist arguments misunderstand the class relations that underlie the current system of policing. The chapter concludes that labor groups have a crucial role to play in fighting police abuse and mass incarceration.

Revolutionary Suicide

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-142
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Black Power ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Rhetorical Form ◽  
Black Agency

Chapter 6 examines how the absence of hope and the collapse into black pessimism were driven by the exposure of white liberalism’s collaborations with anti-black political rhetoric through the language of “law and order,” through the expansion of the FBI’s harassment and surveillance of Black Power activists, and through the expansion of mass incarceration. Using Huey Newton’s writings, this chapter charts how revolutionary suicide operates both as a Black Power meme as a well as a repository of feelings about black Being in a colonial state where blacks have been denied both thinking and feeling as avenues of expression. With specific focus on the rhetorical form of the eulogy, this chapter describes how Newton’s revolutionary suicide is an attempt to reconcile assassination and repression with possibilities for black agency through what Corrigan calls “necromimesis,” but it demonstrates how little room there was for black activists to politically maneuver by 1971 as the nation consolidated racial feelings around law and order politics and new conservatism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Anne E. Parsons
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Policy ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
First Century ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
Mental Hospitals ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Terms

The introduction reviews the relevant histories of prisons, mental health policy, and the social welfare state. It highlights how recent scholarship has not connected the history of mental hospitals to the broader history of imprisonment. From Asylum to Prison frames historic mental hospitals as part of a broader carceral state and charts how the rise of mass incarceration shaped the closure of mental hospitals. Law and order politics served to criminalize mental health conditions and substance abuse. New prison construction in the 1980s took money away from mental health services and prisons absorbed many functions of the former mental health system. Finally, this history of deinstitutionalization offers lesson for people working to reduce mass incarceration in the twenty-first century United States. The introduction closes with a discussion of people-centered language and key terms such as institutions, carceral state, and mental illness.

Introduction

Jailcare ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Sufrin
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Care ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Health Care Inequalities

This introductory chapter provides a snapshot of maternal care in jails and how it reveals two deeply entrenched crises in U.S. society: mass incarceration and health care inequalities. Jail and the broader system of incarceration, referred to as the “carceral system,” have become an integral part of U.S. society's social and medical safety net. The chapter illustrates a historical trajectory that is peculiar to the United States and that represents one of its greatest tragedies, defined by the whittling away of public services for the poor, coupled with an escalation in the number of jails and prisons serving as sites for the care of that same population. Statistics on the disproportionate number of incarcerated women and people of color are also discussed. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of jailcare conditions in San Francisco's jail, which serves as the case study for this volume.

Conclusion: “It was not a story to pass on”

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-196
Author(s):  
Nancy K. Bristow
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
The World ◽  
Police Shootings ◽  
History Of

The May 1970 shootings at Jackson State had an enduring impact for many of its victims. Many dedicated themselves to fighting the racism that had killed James Earl Green and Phillip Gibbs. others ensured the story would not be forgotten. For some the injuries and trauma were long-lasting. Their tragic experiences were not unique, but part of a long history of state violence against communities of color, a history routinely absent from most white Americans’ educations and consciousness. Ongoing state violence against people of color—both police shootings and the growth of the largest prison system in the world—has required evading the history of white supremacist violence and an ongoing embrace of the law and order narrative. The conclusion illustrates how the role of race in the shootings at Jackson State provides context for understanding more recent police shootings and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Against ‘law and order’ lockup: the 1970 NYC jail rebellions

Race & Class ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toussaint Losier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Preventive Detention ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Local Jail ◽  
Young Lords ◽  
Young Lords Party ◽  
Shed Light

The article focuses on a series of rebellions that occurred within the New York City jail system in 1970 over problems of overcrowding and inhumane conditions and the resurgent practice of preventive detention. While championed in the Nixon administration’s vision of ‘law and order’, preventive detention was carried out by John Lindsay, the liberal Republican mayor of New York City, not only against political dissidents, but also against working-class citizens too poor to afford bail. During the course of the October revolts in five facilities including the Tombs, Branch Queens, and Rikers Island, inmates called attention to this practice, winning an unprecedented set of bail review hearings during the course of their takeover of a local jail. These radical prison movements, which were influenced by inmates from the Black Panther Party and Young Lords Party, drew upon discourses of human rights, multiracial unity, and national liberation and also joined calls for broader social transformation. Though short-lived, these events shed light on the contested legacy of preventive detention, a crucial strategic reminder amidst today’s resurgence in ‘law and order’ rhetoric and practice.

Dante, fatherhood, and starvation behind bars

2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582110226
Author(s):  
Ron Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
First Century ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Incarcerated Men ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Incarcerated Fathers

This article documents the responses of incarcerated men to Dante’s story of Ugolino in canto 33 of Inferno. Reading Dante’s poem in prison theater workshops the men are inspired to write about the ways in which their own children, like Ugolino’s, have suffered because of the incarceration of their father. Interweaving fragments of Dante’s text into their stories the incarcerated readers generate narratives that explore the multiple meanings of starvation. While Ugolino’s children die starving for food, the children of incarcerated fathers are starving for love, family, and community. Like the majority of men in American prisons the participants in these Dante theater workshops are people of color and their writing highlights the impact of mass incarceration on black and brown communities in America at the same time that it demonstrates the continuing relevance of Dante’s poem to readers confronting issues related to justice and its absence in the twenty-first century.

Queering Smart Decarceration: Centering the Experiences of LGBTQ+ Young People to Imagine a World Without Prisons

Affilia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 358-375
Author(s):  
Jane Hereth ◽  
Alida Bouris
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Lgbtq Youth ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
People With Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Legal System

Addressing mass incarceration through smart decarceration initiatives is one of the Grand Challenges for Social Work named by the American Academy of Social Work Welfare and Research. The exponential growth of the U.S. prison system is largely due to legislation that targets marginalized communities, including people of color, poor people, people with mental illness, and those living with disabilities, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people of all ages. In this article, we seek to complicate the current conversation on smart decarceration by arguing that social workers committed to addressing mass incarceration should engage abolitionist theory, politics, and organizing in their work in order to effectively address the root causes driving the buildup of the prison nation. We engage feminist and queer theories as two theoretical interventions that can guide this work. We next describe how LGBTQ+ youth enter the criminal legal system, highlighting how normative systems of gender and sexuality subject LGBTQ+ youth to punitive policing, surveillance, and discipline. Finally, we share three models of prison abolitionist organizing led by LGBTQ+ people of color as case studies. By examining how these organizations embrace queer and feminist abolitionist frameworks, we identify concrete ways that social workers can adopt abolitionist principles and practices in their work to address mass incarceration.

Custodialism Reborn

2018 ◽  
pp. 98-122
Author(s):  
Anne E. Parsons
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
New Era ◽  
Work Release ◽  
Halfway Houses ◽  
Sentencing Reforms ◽  
The 1960S

By the end of the 1960s, anti-institutionalism had extended beyond mental health and bled into prison reform. This chapter tracks the rise and fall of efforts to find alternatives to prisons. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, changes in psychiatry, politics, and the law led to a deinstitutionalization in both mental health and corrections policy making. Not only did politicians and advocates look for alternatives to mental hospitals, they also sought alternatives to prisons. They expanded probation, parole, and furlough and created community corrections initiatives such as halfway houses and work-release programs. The number of people in prisons and jails fell, even during a time of increased policing. These reforms came under attack, however, as politicians depicted people in prison as dangerous criminals and ushered in harsh sentencing reforms. A law and order politics that relied on racial discrimination halted efforts to deinstitutionalize prisons. By the mid-1970s, after more than a decade of decline, new prison construction began and the number of imprisoned people nationwide rose. These changes had a devastating effect on individuals with mental health conditions. Many of them were caught in the web of this new era of mass incarceration.

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