The Main Takeaway

What? Rachel Kushner’s “Is Prison Necessary?” delves into the thoughts and beliefs of Ruth Wilson Gilmore — a renowned geography professor as well as an important figure in the prison-abolition movement. Gilmore was and is a strong advocate for the removal of prisons, which gave her much backlash from the community. The question at hand was, why did she want to remove a source of punishment for those who have severely wronged society? When approached with this counterargument, Gilmore’s answer to this is that she wanted to provide a more holistic approach to correcting convicts. “‘Instead of asking whether anyone should be locked up or go free, why don’t we think about why we solve problems by repeating the kind of behavior that brought us the problem in the first place?’ She was asking them to consider why, as a society, we would choose to model cruelty and vengeance.” (Kushner, 2) We have built a society with a foundation of intolerance and separation which, in a way, has become the norm to solving these problems. Gilmore wanted to reform the system and use methods that were more humanistic and effective. She examines the quality and efficacy of the criminal justice system with little to no evidence of positive progression. “If prison, in its philosophical origin, was meant as a humane alternative to beatings or torture or death, it has transformed into a fixed feature of modern life, one that is not known, even by its supporters and administrators, for its humanity. In the United States, we now have more than two million incarcerated people, a majority of them black or brown, virtually all of them from poor communities. Prisons not only have violated human rights and failed at rehabilitation; it’s not even clear that prisons deter crime or increase public safety.” (Kushner, 4) Prisons were meant for the individual to reflect and rehabilitate in order to go back in to society with a reframed outlook. However, this does not explain why the the prison rate keeps climbing and why the racial disparities in the system get wider and wider as time goes on. It is clear that there is a bump in the road somewhere. According to the National Institute of Justice, around 44% of prisoners who were released would return within their first year of release. In California only, the rate of recidivism — the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend a crime they’ve already committed — has stagnated at roughly 50% in the past 10 years. If prisons were truly meant to rehabilitate, then the rate of recidivism is starkingly high for a program that intended to do so.

Gilmore also takes into consideration the reasons why people are incarcerated— many of which being drug-related offenses. “Gilmore takes apart these narratives: that a significant number of people are in prison for nonviolent drug convictions; that prison is a modified continuation of slavery, and, by extension, that most everyone in prison is black; and, as she explained in Chicago, that corporate profit motive is the primary engine of incarceration” (Kushner, 13) There is quite alot of stigma relating to the types of crimes that lead people into jail. In fact, according on the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 45.4% of innmates are currently incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses while 19.4% of inmmates are for crimes that involved weapons, explosives and arson. There is an abnormally high number of people who are incarcerated for non-violent crimes compared to those that were violent. Gilmore points out that the system is paying attention to the wrong types of crimes and finds this problematic. Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” is also mentioned, which focuses on the the relationship between mass incarceration and the war on drugs. When interviewed, Alexander mentions that people are seemingly “‘approving of mass incarceration for violent people. Those of us who are committed to ending the system of mass criminalization have to begin talking more about violence. Not only the harm it causes, but the fact that building more cages will never solve it.’” (Kushner, 13). We have become desensitized to people being put in to prisons because it makes us believe that the problem will be solved as soon as they’re out of the picture. In reality, criminals are being put in to prison with no true effort to conform prisoners in the right direction. As Gilmore stated, the main motive of prisons is for corporate profit, not rehabilitation, which is why there only more and more prisons being built and less restorative justice programs in action.

So What? American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Smart Justice is a group that fights to reduce the US incarcerated population by 50% as well as fix the racial disparities within the criminal justice system. As of 2019, there are roughly 2.3 million people within the criminal justice system — which is a 500% increase within the last 40 years. We’ve started to send more people to prison and have developed more advanced and strict policies, making it more difficult to receive parole. In addition, African American men are six times as more likely to become incarcerated than White men. It is important to first recognize the large racial disparity — critical consciousness — within the criminal justice system before we can take steps to intervene and improve it.

I believe that this organization is quite sustainable, as this is only one of many issues that they deal with. They also assist in other issues such as immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and the list goes on. The variety in resources allows for others to join based on their own motives and opinions. Once a member, they are exposed to additional underlying issues, such as prison reformation in this case, and have the chance to group together within the same sphere. Similar motives, but just different paths. Additionally, the group provides timely and relevant information to the issue at hand which allows for their members to remain current and create projects that are pertinent to the movement.

Now What? The current Covid-19 crisis has broadened my perspective on the privileges that have been gifted to me and have had many changes to reflect on my current position many times during this quarantine. While I am lucky enough to have a roof over my head to stay in, to have internet and continue classes online, to be able to afford meals everyday, there are people out there who have been severely struck downward due to this crisis. As a result, it is important for us to show some more love and and compassion to others, and not precipiate hate stemming from the racial discrimination of this crisis. It appears as if a new disturbance occurs in the Asian community everyday since news of the virus began to spread globally. I remember waking up to an article about a elderly Asian man being harrassed by a group of people because they believed he was at fault for the virus. However, the truth is that he, as a sole person, could not have possibly been at fault for this — it was his Asian background that sparked these unjust beliefs. These acts of violence and discrimination break my heart. Being part of the Asian community, it saddens me to hear that such stunts still occur in the 21st century.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Ideas That Won’t Survive the Coronavirus” pleads for a society that is based on growth and reflection — one that nurtures instead of harms. Education is needed more than ever in these unprecendented times as there a million misconceptions that could lead to the rise of radical thoughts. “The way to eliminate this is to evaluate our responses. Our real enemy does not come from the outside, but from within. Our real enemy is not the virus but our response to the virus — a response that has been degraded and deformed by the structural inequalities of our society” (Nguyen, 3). How we choose to acknowledge the tribulations that this crisis has brought up will influence how the rest of society reacts. It is crucial that we show some more understanding for others during this time, as many of us do not know what happens behind closed doors.