Karen G. Williams

Welcome to the publication, “Representations.” This is a project designed to bring the perspectives of a wider variety of groups to the forefront of the anthropology classroom. To celebrate Black History Month, we are covering the accomplishments of 28 Black anthropologists across 28 days. Learn more about our project, and read on for the amazing accomplishments of Karen G. Williams.

Karen G Williams is an American anthropologist who focuses her research on the wide-reaching prison industrial complex that touches all areas of American life. Williams emphasizes the experiences of historically marginalized communities across America throughout her research, she calls attention to social policy as she highlights the interconnectedness between all the parts that make up our rapidly moving society. Illicit policies and immoral legislation that have sought to disenfranchise marginalized communities throughout American history constitute for these parts, allowing for the consistent preservation of a system that bolsters some and hinders many others.

In addition to her ethnographic research at Midwest state prisons, Williams has also advocated for mindfulness and meditative practice as a means to cultivate compassionate engagement with the challenges facing society. Having led workshops in building sangha to better understand the relationships that individuals share with systems of oppression, race, gender, and class, Williams provides alternative avenues in which people of color can explore to better respond to their dissatisfactions with societal inequalities.

Serving as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Guttman Community College, Williams also chairs the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee at New York Insight where she continues to inspire the diverse communities in which she has always primarily taught.

In her work, “From Coercion to Consent?: Governing the Formerly Incarcerated in the 21st Century United States” Williams investigates the intersections in which mass incarceration and prisoner reentry cross with Williams providing a framework to better mitigate the structural inequalities responsible for the ongoing proliferation of mass incarceration.

Considering the quadrupling of America’s prison population since 1970, Williams centers evidence-based policies and practices (EBPs) that correctional facilities implement to highlight the ways they influence the influx of prisoner reentry. If we are to dissect such evidence-based policies within a broader context we must ask: are these practices working for the greater good of the institutions? Is the institution prioritized over the well-being of individuals? We must consider the fact that most correctional facilities utilize these EBPs to manage their populations in manners most cost-efficient (Williams 4–10).

This fixed focus on monetary budgets sanctions correctional institutions to cut vital corners in regard to inmate rehabilitation, compromising the competencies of released individuals to properly self-govern once outside the facilities. The lack of such crucial skills upon reentry to society impels these individuals back into harmful habits until the system sees their rearrest, adding to the alarming contemporary rates of prisoner reentry on behalf of America’s carceral system.

Bibliography

Williams, Karren G., and DaRa Williams. “Now Online: Free At Last — Identifying Our Suffering Around Race.” New York Insight Meditation Center, 14 May 2020, www.nyimc.org/event/free-at-last-identifying-our-suffering-around-race/.

Williams, Karen G., “From Coercion to Consent?: Governing the Formerly Incarcerated in the 21st Century United States” (2016). CUNY Academic Works.https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/717

Edited by Amanda Zunner-Keating, Los Angeles City College District.