Let’s Talk about Incarceration
How we treat people in prison says a lot about how we (de)value their humanity.
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Walking into Unit 25 at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Parchman Farm, changed my perspective on justice forever.
I entered the unit as an instructor with the Prison to College Pipeline Program that my friend and fellow historian, Dr. Otis Pickett, co-founded out of the University of Mississippi. As a graduate student doing my PhD there, I had the privilege and sobering responsibility of serving as a Teaching Assistant in the prison for several semesters.
Once a week, I would settle into my brown 2003 Nissan Altima and cruise the straight flat Mississippi highways to Parchman.
From the outside, it still very much looks like the work plantation it was founded as in 1901. It is surrounded by farmland which the incarcerated men were forced to work for no pay while guards armed with shotguns oversaw them from horseback.
Inside Unit 25, the men were some of the most eager students I’ve ever encountered. They afforded me an unearned deference as an educated person and an outsider who chose, ever so briefly, to join them on the inside.
They asked probing questions, laughed and joked with each other, worked hard on their assignments.
They were rewarded by the prison system with lunches that routinely came one or two hours late. The air conditioning often broke, and prison officials wheeled giant industrial fans into the hallways to shuffle the hot air from one end of the building to the other.
Even though the rank-and-file staff did their best, they were enmeshed in a dysfunctional system. Many times it seemed like our class may have been one of the few occasions any non-incarcerated person called the men by their first name instead of the purposely generic and dehumanizing moniker—“inmate.”
The carceral system is what slavery became after the Civil War. It is what Jim Crow became after the Civil Rights movement. It is our national shame.
I have not talked extensively about my views on incarceration. I am not a policy expert. Much of my historical research is not on the prison system. But I have taught in two prisons now, and I’ve seen the real human beings who exist there. I have much to say.
I hope you’ll join me for an important conversation with Sam Heath of EJUSA on Tuesday, August 16 at 12 pm CT. Join us on your lunch break or register so can watch later.
So sorry I missed this. Is it possible to register to receive the recording. Thanks!