An Upstream Battle Against Centuries of Mass Criminalization
By Timothy Littau
“Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is just,” said Robert Smith, professor of history and director of the Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach (CURTO), at the Justice in Action (JIA) conference las month.
Smith, along with Marisola Xhelili Ciaccio, led a workshop that explored the history of mass incarceration in the United States. The workshop examined the discriminatory nature of the criminal justice system, particularly its impact on Black people and their communities.
“We matter. Everybody matters. But Black lives matter because they have been historically discriminated against in the United States,” said Xhelili Ciaccio, associate director of the Education Preparedness Program (EPP) at CURTO and a doctoral candidate in philosophy.
In his historical review, Smith argued that slave codes have shaped how Americans think and interact with others. Smith explained that, even after slavery had been abolished, Black people experienced violence and harsh penalties for minute infractions — and oftentimes nothing at all — at the hands of white people and police. Throughout history, the justice system also has disproportionately punished Black people with higher incarceration rates and increased prison sentences.
This points to the existence of a racially skewed punitive justice system. “Punitive justice intervenes when someone has broken a rule rather than caused harm. It’s based on punishments that are predetermined and the offended party is the state, including cops, courts and prisons,” Xhelili Ciaccio said.
Xhelili Ciaccio added that punitive justice isolates rulebreakers from the rest of society. This creates tension — and even conflict — between authorities and the people they are supposed to serve.
Transformative justice, an approach that prioritizes harm reduction and recovery over punishment, presents an alternative to the current system. For Xhelili Ciaccio, transformative justice requires imagination beyond the current punitive system and has the potential to become society’s greatest strength in solving these multi-layered, complex problems. She explained that racist systems are incredibly difficult to dismantle, but there are effective options that can keep citizens safe without oppressing them. Transformative justice focuses on the behavior that led to harm being committed, rather than labeling the person as the problem, and centers healing, according to Xhelili Ciaccio.
Innovative ideas that resonate with transformative justice are in action on Marquette’s campus. The Education Preparedness Program (EPP), for example, enriches the lives of current and formerly incarcerated populations by providing them with higher education opportunities.
In EPP courses, Marquette students and justice-impacted people take classes side by side. “We wanted to try to blend populations of students that don’t typically interact with each other,” said Theresa Tobin, director of EPP. As all students learn from their radically different life experiences, they gain a more nuanced understanding of justice.
Marquette undergraduate student and EPP intern Corena Smith highlighted the positive impact of these courses. “This is what changes courses from being informative to transformative,” she said.
