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posted about this on IG yesterday and want to do the same here.
this is the tough conversation we were working through: what is crime? and how do prisons assist with ending crime?
i define crime as a response. a response to depravity and poverty; anti-Blackness and capitalism.
if roughly 94%-97% of the people who are in state and federal prisons are there not for their “violent crime,” but because they can’t afford a trial or are coerced into a plea deal, perhaps prisons aren’t how we solve crime.
and if roughly 98% of reported rapists never touch the inside of a cell, yet over ~80k+ people a year are sexually abused in prison (FOLLOWING the prison rape elimination act in ‘03), perhaps prisons also aren’t how we wrestle with sexual violence.
harriet tubman taught us that the plantation is no place for freedom, nor could it produce reconciliation. angela davis and ruth wilson gilmore have taught us all the same about prisons and rehabilitation.
how we shift and “reform” structures designed exactly to punish and abuse Black people; intended to fasten the Slave to chains and commodify their Being and their labor. that’s prison.
built into the very fabric of our society (through social institutions like religion, school, media, etc) is the idea that crime comes from no where but that “criminals” must go “somewhere.”
but all crime is birthed from something. lack, anger, bigotry, dismissal.
but all crime is birthed from something. lack, anger, bigotry, dismissal.
but what if where criminals go is precisely what recreates crime? what if “prison” is more than four walls? what if there’s a place out there where none of this exists, but to get there we must be committed to the end of prisons—even and particularly the ones not physical?
while individuals enact abuse like rape, the *idea* of power/subjugation/control is birthed through systems. systems like gender, masculinity, anti-Blackness. slavery.
in a just living space, these things no longer exist. and in the interim (and beyond), we have the means to actively hold people accountable—both to themselves/their actions and the community(-ies) around them.
that’s what mariame kaba tells us. i believe in it. journey with me.
