How Books are Used to Perpetuate the Prison Industrial Complex

The jail industrial complicated is a time period you could have heard for those who’ve regarded into abolitionist considering or realized about the contexts round social actions like Black Lives Matter. It’s a time period that, as outlined by abolition group Critical Resistance, describes “overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.” While the idea of the jail industrial complicated covers an enormous variety of social constructions, you’ll most often hear it utilized in discussions about mass incarceration, for-profit prisons, and the way criminalising and imprisoning folks advantages the wealthy and highly effective (notably politicians and CEOs) whereas doing nothing to sort out or stop hurt that takes place inside society at massive.

The time period “prison industrial complex” was coined by tutorial, activist, and former incarcerated particular person Angela Y. Davis, creator of Are Prisons Obsolete? Other writers have additionally offered highly effective critiques of the jail industrial complicated, akin to Michelle Alexander with The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Elizabeth Hinton with From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America, and plenty of much less formalised writings from abolitionist teams and activists.

There has been a substantial amount of writing and literature about the jail industrial complicated — however are books one in every of the constructions supporting the system itself?

In many books, together with youngsters’s literature, jail is even performed for laughs. The Wind in the Willows sees Mr. Toad imprisoned for 20 years for anti-social behaviour, notably his harmful driving; he later escaped by dressing as a washerwoman. (You may argue that the most fantastical factor about The Wind in the Willows is the concept {that a} wealthy, socially highly effective playboy would face severe jail time for driving too quick, as an alternative of his wrongdoing being dismissed as “affluenza.”)

Throughout the majority of literature, prisons are represented as horrifying however crucial establishments that largely hold the public protected, solely dangerous when folks are incarcerated for a criminal offense they didn’t commit. There is little deal with, or look after, the hurt that prisons trigger to individuals who have dedicated crimes, or their hurt to society as an entire. The space of literature that has paid the biggest quantity of consideration to the harms of the jail industrial complicated is the jail memoir, however, as soon as once more, the most profitable examples of those are books by political prisoners, or folks incarcerated due to racism or different types of bigotry, akin to Nelson Mandela or the Exonerated Five. These tales are extremely essential, however additionally they present how incarcerated folks are typically solely portrayed as sympathetic if the particular person is “not a real criminal,” however somebody who has been achieved fallacious by the system, as an alternative of contemplating the risk that the system of imprisonment is itself fallacious. “Real criminals” don’t get the similar sort of sympathy or humanisation in literature, and it’s not often recommended that the jail industrial complicated itself could also be the true villain.

How Books Break Down the Prison Industrial Complex

Books can be an important a part of breaking down the jail industrial complicated. Abolitionist non-fiction is a crucial class of literature, stuffed with vital texts and memoirs that make the case for an anti-carceral future. Books like Angela Y. Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete?, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba, or We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown set out the case for various types of justice that deal with present hurt and forestall future harm to society and the individuals who inhabit it.

There are additionally many essential items of anti-carceral writing that are not printed as full-length books, a lot of which have been collated by abolitionist teams as studying lists. However, there’s far much less fiction on the market that imagines a world with out the jail industrial complicated. While nonfiction is a vital a part of constructing and growing any motion, fiction is usually a extra accessible approach for folks to entry concepts and alter their views. (On a private stage, I owe an enormous chunk of my inclusive and progressive beliefs to the fiction of Malorie Blackman and Terry Pratchett.) Some fiction creates worlds with restorative justice and non-carceral choices; Pet by Akwaeke Emezi is ready in a utopian future the place harms are addressed with group accountability and restorative justice. However, there are many extra fiction tales that revolve round the jail industrial complicated as the solely attainable possibility. In order to change this method, we first have to think about one thing higher.

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To study extra about the battle to guarantee incarcerated folks have entry to books, learn our article on The Ever-Growing Challenges of Getting Books Into Prisons. To develop your information on actions like abolitionism, strive Beyond the Basics: Books for a Political Education and Liberation.