Today and tomorrow (Sept. 18-19, 2014) at UC Berkeley we will be launching a new undergraduate course thread titled “Carceral Geographies.” Our launch will begin with a keynote address by the great Ruth “Ruthie” Wilson Gimore, scholar/activist extraordinaire who has given us the definitive study of California’s descent into mass incarceration, Golden Gulags: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, … Continue reading »
mass incarceration
Ferguson and human dignity
Michael Brown was buried Monday (August 25, 2014) in St. Louis, near his hometown of Ferguson, Mo. As the world knows by now, two weeks ago the 18-year-old recent high-school graduate was shot six times and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. Michael Brown was unarmed, and the reasons for Officer Wilson’s actions have yet … Continue reading »
The real problem with mass incarceration? Inhumanity
We may disagree on who belongs and who does not belong in prison, or on how long prison sentences should be, or what goals those sentences should be meted out to accomplish. But one thing we should not, must not disagree on, is that those prisons should be humane. What is humane? Humane means treating a … Continue reading »
Mass incarceration, mass deportation: Twin legacies of governing through crime
One afflicts mostly American citizens, disproportionately those of African American and Latino backgrounds from areas of concentrated poverty, but also many white and middle class citizens who fall into the hands of police and prosecutors. The other afflicts exclusively non-citizens living in the U.S. without federal authorization or in violation of the terms of their … Continue reading »
Put a fork in it: Paper of record declares mass incarceration dead
So forgive my mixing New York metaphors and class signifiers (I’ve never really lived in Gotham), but as cultural markers go today’s frontpage story in The New York Times, using the phrase “mass incarceration” and declaring it dead (or at least out of favor among everyone they know and like) is an important occasion in … Continue reading »
Penal trends: Strange weather or climate change?
The most important political storm in recent history (was it the storm or the meme?), “Super-Storm Sandy” helped not only President Obama but to re-raise the question of whether unusual weather is a sign of profound climate change, in this case global average temperature rises caused by human carbon effects. When it comes to our … Continue reading »
Realignment time: The prison crisis comes home
Norimitsu Onishi takes a sobering look at California’s emerging “realigment” policy in this morning’s NYTimes [ed: Aug. 6, 2012] (read it here). The state’s major response to the humanitarian disaster in its state prisons, and the Supreme Court confirmed order to reduce the prison population by approximately 40,000 prisoners, has been to channel many people … Continue reading »
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the spirit
If you need a little of both this mid-February, Zoe Williams in the Guardian carries a lengthy interview with the great scholar Stuart Hall at 80 (read it here). Hall attributes the title’s mantra to the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, but as William’s notes, it helps define Hall’s tonic effect on his readers since the … Continue reading »
The poor storm: Ending mass incarceration in America
“But every society has a poor storm that wretches suffer in, and the attitude is always the same: either that the wretches, already dehumanized by their suffering, deserve no pity or that the oppressed, overwhelmed by injustice, will have to wait for a better world. At every moment, the injustice seems inseparable from the community’s … Continue reading »
David Onek for San Francisco D.A.
California’s dramatic pivot toward giving counties primary responsibility for punishment over a wide swath of persons convicted of felonies, a policy known as realignment, is the most important move toward dismantling mass incarceration in this state in forty years. As I have argued here before, there is both great promise and peril in this experiment. … Continue reading »
Cupcakes, affirmative action and mass incarceration
Yesterday Berkeley’s College Republicans were generating big crowds on Sproul Plaza and big media coverage with a retread of an old bit of anti-affirmative action agit-prop; a cupcake sale in which prices were set by race (just like academic “preferences” for students of color in admissions, get it). (Read Nanette Asimov’s reporting in the SF … Continue reading »