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Victoria Law, author of “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration calls the book, to be released by Beacon Press on April 6, “a beginners guide for people who are starting to think about mass incarceration and the reasons behind it.” Accessible and clearly written, the book analyzes contemporary ideas about crime, punishment, and community safety. It also includes a stunning but digestible array of facts, figures, and anecdotes about the criminal legal system.
The result is provocative, thoughtful, and compelling.
If I, as a small Asian woman, get punched by someone who wants to attack Asians, and I smack him in the head with a hammer, will my going to jail, or his going to jail, stop anti-Asian violence?
Law, a longtime advocate of prison abolition, author of Resistance Behind Bars, coauthor with Maya Schenwar of Prison By Any Other Name, and contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times, The Nation, Truthout, Wired, and The Progressive, tackles some of the most prevalent fallacies surrounding incarceration. Among them is the myth that prison serves as a deterrent to crime and that locking people up promotes rehabilitation.
I recently talked to Law about Prisons Make Us Safer. Here is our interview:
Q: One of the most prevalent ideas in the United States is that harsh punishment leads to redemption.
Victoria Law: People everywhere want to be safe. But the real issue is that most prisoners come home once their sentence has been completed. Should they return to the same lack of possibilities, the same lack of skills, they faced before they were convicted? Should they have no choice but to return to criminalized activities, or should they come home and be able to contribute to their communities and make amends for the harm they caused?
Even before COVID-19, tens of thousands of people left prison each year. No one benefits from being removed from their community and then getting dumped back without support. That’s not how transformation happens.
Q: The idea that some people are habitual offenders or “career criminals” has been promoted by mainstream media for decades. What does this idea ignore?
Victoria Law: The idea ignores the societal factors that cause someone to repeatedly violate the law. One of the people I interviewed for the book, Mwalimu Shakur, was first locked up as a twelve-year-old kid. When he was released after serving a six-month sentence for robbery, he returned to his grandmother’s house.
Nothing in his family’s circumstances or community had changed during his time away. The family was still Black. They were still poor, and they were still living in what Mwalimu called “the ghetto.” The only opportunities he saw were in criminalized activities.
Mwalimu’s subsequent arrest has to be seen as more than his individual failure. Imagine if he and other young Black children had been given a chance to thrive. Imagine if they had good educational and job opportunities. Imagine if, instead of police, resources had been invested in these things.
Too many young people don’t see any future outside of criminalized activities. And when criminalized activities, getting arrested, and incarcerated are normalized, it can start to seem like an inevitable trajectory. On the other hand, if they see meaningful opportunities to work, attend school, and build relationships, they develop very different ideas about what’s possible.
Q: You write that jails and prisons do not deter crime. Why is this?
Law: It’s important to remember that incarceration happens after a crime has been committed. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but with 2.3 million people in jail or prison, we hold nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. If incarceration deterred crime, we would be the world’s safest nation. But we’re not.
For instance, people who abuse children are clearly not deterred by the threat of prison. If they were, we would have ended child abuse a long time ago.
Ending child abuse, rape, and domestic violence more broadly will require an immense paradigm shift. This is not something that prisons help people to do.
Stopping child abuse requires teaching children of all genders about consent, bodily autonomy, and the right to say no. It requires teaching adults that “no” should be respected. At the same time, children need to be able to talk about what happened without fear that a loved one will be arrested and jailed. Abused children don’t want to see a family member locked up. They just want to stop being hurt.
Criminalization makes the situation even worse. The Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic did a study that tracked people who voluntarily came forward for treatment to stop sexually abusive behaviors. Although the number enrolled was never high, as soon as mandatory reporting to law enforcement became a requirement, the number of people who came for help dropped to zero. Criminalizing the behavior literally kept people from seeking help.
Q: Police shows and movies are extremely popular. What myths do they promote?
Law: Cops shows and movies reinforce many of the inaccurate ideas people have about the criminal legal system. People see these shows and think that if something bad happens to them, the police will thoroughly investigate, prosecutors will fully prosecute, and they will get justice and closure. This is far from reality. According to the Department of Justice, only 230 of every 1,000 sexual assaults are ever reported to the police. That’s three in four that go unreported. Of these 230, only forty-six, or 20 percent, are referred to prosecutors, and only five ultimately result in a felony conviction.
This is also true for murder; one-third of murder cases are never solved. Prisons don’t keep us safe, but these shows make policing and prison seem like the only avenues toward safety.
Q: What supports exist for kids who have a parent in prison?
Law: Depending on where a child lives, programs or groups might exist to help them. For example, the Brooklyn and New York public libraries have programs that help children video-call parents who are incarcerated far from home. But these don’t exist in every state or even in every city.
There’s constant talk about the well-being of children, but if the criminal justice system really cared about children, it would develop ways for children to communicate with their incarcerated parents, or better, set up programs that either allow parents to stay home with their children or come home earlier.
Calls from jail or prison can run $10 to $15 for fifteen minutes, and because prisons are often far from home communities, it can be too expensive and time consuming to visit. And, not surprisingly, the stigma of having a parent inside can have long-term impacts on a child’s development.
Q: The need for cheap labor is often blamed for swelling the prison population. Why is this trope untrue?
Law: Prison labor helps keep the cost of incarceration down. If the prisons had to hire people at an outside wage, with benefits, to prepare thousands of meals, cut the grass, clean the toilets, et cetera, it would be astronomically more expensive than it is now. If the prisons can incentivize a small portion of the prison population to do this work for free or for pennies, it keeps costs low. It also keeps taxpayers from stomping their feet over the high price tag of keeping people in prison.
I want to stress that most people in prison do not have jobs, but are kept in an enforced state of idleness. Fewer than half work while incarcerated and less than one percent work for private corporations that have set up shop within facilities.
Q: You wrote that the trans community is a constant target of law enforcement, resulting in a disproportionate rate of incarceration.
Law: The targeting of trans people, especially trans women of color, occurs at the intersection of gender, policing, and racism. Law enforcement polices women’s bodies, and this is especially true of trans women. Their disproportionate policing—from excluding them from women’s sports to policing where they pee—reflects society’s ideas about white supremacy, gender norms, and the need to punish anyone who steps out of bounds.
Q: Probation, parole, and electronic monitoring are usually presented as alternatives to incarceration, but you report that they’re far from ideal.
Law: We should be careful of alternatives like these because they are still a method of state surveillance, and violations can result in people being sent to jail, or back to jail, for things that are not illegal for those outside of these systems, like missing a meeting or being out past curfew.
Q: Restorative and transformative justice are presented as a means of helping victims of crimes feel safer and giving perpetrators a way to be accountable for the harm they’ve caused. How does this work, and how are the two different?
Law: Restorative justice, as I wrote, is a process that centers on the victim’s needs, not only allowing him or her to have a voice in the proceedings, but also addressing ongoing trauma. Restorative justice also includes people who have been indirectly affected by the harm, such as loved ones, neighbors, or the community. The process typically involves a series of facilitated meetings, or a peace circle, and typically requires the person who caused the harm to make amends. It’s not a quick fix.
Incarceration typically fails to address the root causes of crime—poverty, racism, sexism, transphobia, and lack of educational or job opportunities. As it stands today, the United States places the onus for crime and violence on the individual. Restorative justice attempts to make the perpetrator accountable, but transformative justice attempts to integrate personal responsibility and more broad-scale social change into the healing process. It puts the social, political, and economic roots of crime into context, with the goal of transforming the conditions that generate or enable harm to happen.
For instance, if I, as a small Asian woman, get punched by someone who wants to attack Asians, and I smack him in the head with a hammer, will my going to jail, or his going to jail, stop anti-Asian violence? The conditions that emboldened my attacker, or that prompted me to carry a weapon, would not be addressed by incarceration.