If you haven't read Part One of this conversation, I suggest you do before continuing. Thanks for hanging out with us today!
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Danielle:
I think there's another way to go about thinking about law enforcement, thinking about how we provide consequences over punishment. This book helped me reframe my mind on the question, “where would all the ‘bad’ people go?”
Ashley:
What I think started to help me reframe and get to a place where I discovered for myself the concepts of prison abolition initially was when I realized that it was messed up that adults hit kids. I think I always knew that in my body, but I kind of figured like, well, I'm not a parent. But then one day it hit me that people were literally defending that the smallest version of a human, who they had all control over, all control, and this person had to know and feel that in their blood and bones that this bigger person has every bit of control over my life, that sometimes the bigger person hurts my body and tells me that it's because they love me and want me to be better. And that's messed up. And it also occurred to me that that is essentially in a lot of ways that carceral punishment and corporal punishment are not that far apart.
Danielle:
No, they are not. The need for us to accept control begins early in life.
Ashley:
And specifically in the way that like the carceral system does the thing that they have decided is punishment. And they claim that it is corrective and rehabilitative, but in reality, it is not. No study has ever concluded that it is. It is not. But because it's “what we do”, we just don't try anything else.
Danielle:
Exactly. I want to be abundantly clear. I believe in the protection of society. I do. You have lots of systems that do that. And I believe that there is a place for, I say law enforcement, but the system of policing itself stems out of that carceral state. Angela Davis just does an amazing job of explaining this. I was almost embarrassed to admit at 36 years old, I didn't even know where prisons came from. Like the origin of prison.
Ashley:
Talk to me about that. Because that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you specifically. I know that because of work I've done in the past and research I did around writing my book, I had a pretty good idea and pretty good read on the history of where prisons had come from. But I never read it laid out as clearly and succinctly as it was in this book. So I was like, if Danielle wasn't aware of this, this is going to hit her like a ton of bricks, because this is all of it at once. What I've had to piece together, it's all right here.
Danielle:
It is. I mean, it is just a wild notion and it plays into what you're saying about how kids aren't supposed to question the bigger person. We're not supposed to question the bigger system. Things have been able to prevail as a pattern so long you just think it is what it is and that's the way that it is. And her book is asking you to be creative and curious in examining why it is this way, and does it always need to be? And it's not a utopian thing. It's not like if we all stood around and we held hands and we sang songs, the world would just be a better place. The book and her intention is not that.
Ashley:
Nope.
Danielle:
She's asking you to really question, what do you really know about the prison system in general? And mine, like many, was just the experience of loving and knowing someone who was in it, but where did “prison” come from? I know I mentioned earlier, the system itself used to be a holding ground for the punishments. Okay? So you think about stealing, and you’re told don't do that, or I'm going to hold you and then you either pay a fine, or sadly, I mean, when you get into it really early, we'll just say American history, it was like, well, I'm going to take something from you because you took something from me. Some of that was like literal flesh. Right?
Ashley:
Yep.
Danielle:
And then you think about when somebody killed somebody. And we had to hold you until your punishment, which was usually like hanging or getting shot.
Ashley:
Right.
Danielle:
But, even then they recognized the expense of holding somebody too long. Like you hold them and then you give them the punishment, and then you move on. Even when colonial America was being formed and Britain was still over here saying like, well, people aren't doing what they're supposed to do, the same thing was happening. They had these holding cells and then they would give the punishment. So you start to ask yourself, when did it flip? When did it flip from holding for punishment to holding is the punishment? It flipped after the abolition of slavery and it was no longer legal to hold a person and make them do free labor. But guess where they can be held to do free labor?
Ashley:
Yep.
Danielle:
They can be held in prison. 13th Amendment. Slavery is illegal except... if you’re incarcerated. You are not expected to have free body or free will over your person if you're incarcerated. Slavery's abolished, Southern plantation owners are super upset. Who's going to work our plantations? I know, let's go to our lawmaker friends and make things like homelessness and joblessness a crime. Guess who was homeless and jobless? All the people who have just been freed from slavery. Guess what we get to do with them? Walk them back up. And guess where they sent them back to? Freaking chain gangs right in the same places most of the times they had just come from.
When I started to learn that history and the weight of it, like you said, hit me like a load of bricks. It was like “I know nothing.” I know nothing when it comes to why we have to have the system the way that it is.
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Part Three, the final part of this book talk will go up tomorrow. And we'll announce the next selection we're reading for continuing Book Talks! Don't miss it! See you soon.
