By D. Razor Babb
The cruelest abuses witnessed during slavery, through post-Civil War Reconstruction and the Jim Crow South, continuing with class and racial oppression throughout the twentieth century and extending to the present day, are most starkly exemplified by staggering racial disparity in mass incarceration rates. In the US, Black people are incarcerated at five times the rate of whites, with the US responsible for nearly a quarter of the world’s incarcerated population. This exceedingly high rate of imprisonment has significant social effects. Prisons are places of oppression and censorship. The weaponization of the legal system and practice of persecution through over-policing and hyper-zealous prosecutorial practices and penal policies fosters extreme inhumanity, race and class stratification, moral and philosophical failing, misery and waste. Any form of oppression has debilitating effects, not only on those directly subjugated but on society as a whole. The ripple effects of tyranny cascade outward, infecting individual relationships, families, communities, and entire cultures. Since its inception, the nation has grappled with its collective humanity, questioning the ideals of democracy itself, with those confined in its prisons–over two million souls–understanding better than most that how we treat the least of us defines the rest of us, as slavery continues in the penitentiaries of the twenty-first century.
Mass incarceration is a system based on race and class stratification, oppression, and carceral economics, executed in the shadows, and hidden from public view. Prisoners and their families are targeted and monetized as commodities as the justice system preys on the most “despised populations,” as pointed out by Professor David Pellow in his academic article, “Environmental Struggles in Prisons and Jails.” These marginalized minorities are targeted at every turn to fill prison beds, chattel for an ever-expanding Prison Industrial Complex, with the imprisoned forced to work or lose privileges, in effect, paying for their own incarceration. According to YES! Magazine, the value of goods and services generated by incarcerated workers is over $11 billion annually. Base economics appear to be at the core of the Department of Corrections’ objectives. After implementing the Prison Industries Authority (PIA) in the 1980s, prisons nationwide began providing low-skilled factory-like positions such as sewing, meat processing, lunch packaging, dairy, and health facility maintenance. Prisoners work for slave labor wages and are confined in modern-day plantations under the governance of overseers synonymous with the antebellum South. The capitalization of incarceration has turned punishment into profit and prisoners into federal and state corrections departments’ most prized profit base. Just as the foundation of colonial slavery was economic and capital-based, financial incentives drive mass incarceration, and those subjugated and exploited are kept in check through intimidation and fear.
Immersed in a culture of fear, where correctional officers and staff assume the role of overseers, those in power have unlimited control over those held captive. In this atmosphere of autocracy and tyranny, in the shadows of prison walls, abuses occur and are kept hidden from scrutiny. Absent are the voices from this shadow world–those 2.2 million incarcerated Americans who exist behind walls and fences. Public discourse on the debilitating effects of mass incarceration, its legacy in slavery, the devastating impact on entire racial and cultural swaths of society is incomplete. We can’t have meaningful, purposeful discussions on these topics and expect improvement if we exclude the voices of those impacted the most. A St. John’s Law Review article reads, “The marketplace of ideas does not function properly when government impedes prisoners from participating in public discourse, especially concerning criminal justice and mass incarceration matters.” The article explains that when the power of prison officials to restrain free speech is unimpeded and prisoners’ voices are prevented from entering the public domain, the democratic process is subverted. Just as democracy and community is best served by free speech and a vibrant and free press, so too is a prison community. Ideals built on honorable premises will be tested just as the grit and will of the individual spirit are tested in the face of the storm. The frailty of the human condition is exposed when subjected to tyranny and oppression from those who wield power by force and intimidation. If fear is my master, truth is my victim. If I am motivated by fear, if what I do and the choices I make are driven by fear, then I am not being led by or influenced by truth. Truth becomes the victim of my fear. In the sweltering heat of the cauldron of adversity, up against the forces of tyranny and injustice, those who refuse to be silenced gain strength with staunch adherence to truth and resilience to threats and coercion. Margaret Brennan of CBS’s Face the Nation stated, “Information is the currency of democracy.” A legitimate democracy relies on the free exchange of information. Silence is the best friend of tyranny. Free speech is its worst enemy.
Unrestrained prison censorship excludes prisoner voices from the discussion of political and public issues that are central to facilitating democratic decision-making. As for checking the value of free speech, if there are no restraints on the power of prison officials who have the authority to keep complaints about their conduct and prison conditions from ever leaving the prison’s walls, then free speech is a constitutional right unrightfully abridged in the illegal act of censorship. As mass incarceration spreads its toxic contamination across the country, free speech becomes even more important as more souls than ever before are subjected to speech restrictions. Poor people, people of color, whole communities, and cultures are affected. Silencing prisoners’ voices has the insidious ability to exclude those incarcerated from the conversation of incarceration itself. Prison censorship robs the incarcerated of their power of expression and distorts public discourse. Those locked up–the 2.2 million who are blacker, browner, and poorer than the population at large–are excluded from the conversations and debates that affect us most radically. Thus, those conversations are skewed in favor of wealthier, whiter, non-incarcerated participants. Criminal justice concerns are being conducted by those least impacted, leaving out those most impacted. The marketplace of ideas, the purpose of which is seeking truth, cannot function wholly in this vacuum, and in this scenario, the open exchange of ideas is not open to everyone.
Mass incarceration and social acceptance of the carceral beast is a way of admitting that some people are expendable, that some are lesser than, and that it is acceptable to extract the undesirable elements from society. It is a plantation philosophy that permeates society 160 years after slavery was abolished. From these dark places, where the light of humanity rarely shines, incarcerated voices call out from the shadows.
