Bonus Episode: A Reflection on the Last 10 Episodes

There has been A LOT of critical content delivered over these last 10 episodes- here is your cheat sheet. In this episode, Abbie highlights the main takeaways and over-arching themes throughout and draws attention to possible solutions for a more just society. 

Transcript

Hey, everyone today is going to be a little different. There's so much content and so many gems in these last 10 episodes, which I cannot believe it's been 10 episodes. I feel so grateful to the guests that I've had on I've learned so much. And so I thought, you know, there are so many through lines throughout all 10 That I wanted to kind of highlight and show the greatest takeaways. Um, so I'm just going to do this off the cuff. I have my notes here and, you might want to get a pen and a pad and take some notes because it's going to be a lot, but I wanted to first just. Express my gratitude for the contextualizing that these conversations do and the redefining of concepts that seem basic and are often simply accepted on face value. I appreciate the complication that it does to those concepts. And. Really getting into the weeds on incredibly complex issues. So I hope that you found that this podcast changed your perception or perspective in some way, as I know it has for me. So first I think it’s important to put the criminal justice system into a historical perspective, acknowledging the fact that the criminal justice system was constructed around the hyper criminalization of blackness.

Right. We know that. With the inception of the United States of America, we had the intitution of slavery and through this, race was created. Race is not a biological trait. It is a social construct. And so blackness was created in opposition to whiteness to maintain a social hierarchy. There was a lack of familiarity and due to Blackness being foreign to white folks in power, there was a feeling of threat- threat of the unknown. And in order to defend power and the social hierarchy, blackness was criminalized and seen as dangerous. And so. the main purpose of police in the South at the time was simply patrolling Black folks seeking freedom. The first prison in America, Eastern State Penitentiary, was constructed in 1829 and the emancipation of slavery didn’t go down until 1863, so at this point those in prison were predominantly Black. But then upon the emancipation proclamation, we see the policing of vagrancy and congregating of black folks and the use of convict labor, so as more Black folks became incarcerated, those in power figured out ways to continue to use them for free labor. The 13th amendment, which abolished slavery has a clause that states slavery can exist as “punishment.” Then through the war on drugs, we see a movement towards hypersurveillance of predominantly black communities, resulting in more arrests and more and more incarceration. There are currently 77 million people in the US who have a criminal record. One third of all Black men in America have a felony conviction. the narrative around Blackness has never really shifted away from this idea of threat and danger. And so, because there really hasn't been A restructuring of the criminal justice system away from these narratives until maybe the present moment with what we're seeing with the defund movement. It's really important to expose and unpack the system-to stop assuming it's working and making us safe, just because it posits to do so. Our criminal justice system and specifically prisons serve as this false symbol of safety. But we know that they actually cause more harm and more violence, not only to the individuals who are inside, but also to communities on the outside, by removing individuals and breaking down the economy in neighborhoods with high incarceration rates, by removing individuals that can love and supervise children in the neighborhood, by limiting opportunities upon release and pushing individuals to re-engage in potentially harmful acts to survive, by criminalizing drug addiction, by limiting opportunities for education.

The criminal justice system also often creates more feelings of fear for those on the outside. We don't view prisons as a place that's making us feel safe. We view them as a place that’s harboring danger and threat. if we actually perceived prisons to be correctional institutions, the longer someone's inside, we should feel safer engaging or employing these people on the outside. Right. Like the longer you're inside, the more services you're getting, the more transformation you're going under, you're becoming a better person you're being corrected. But we know that really served all is serves is as a categorizing system of threat. So the longer you're in, you're actually just perceived to be more dangerous upon release. We are less likely to employ you.

So I really appreciate the fact that this podcast and the guests I've had on take such a critical lens to see the complexities and the problems with the system we have today.

I think something that's so important that almost all of the guests did was to contextualize crime. We have to understand that, that which is deemed criminal- We so often just accept the term and the definition of crime on face value and just view people who engage in it as “criminal.” But we have to realize that crime is malleable And again, is just a social construct. What is deemed a crime isn't necessarily an inherently immoral act,more often it’s a reflection of the interests of those in power at the time. So we see that definitions of crime in terms of the criminalization of certain drugs or activities differs across time and space.

We also have to understand that, for many who engage in what is deemed criminal, And I think we have to continue to say, what is deemed criminal rather than saying crime and accepting it as a fixed concept, but got those engaging in what is deemed criminal- they are often doing what they have to do to survive. these aren't people that necessarily lack a moral compass. many know what they're doing is considered wrong, maybe causing harm, but as Maleek and  Dr. Yasser Payne explained, for many, it's not about right or wrong. It's just doing what you have to do to survive with the opportunities that you're given in the place that you're at. Everyone in my opinion is doing their best with what they have with their capacity, whether their mental capacity, their emotional capacity, their social capacity, everyone is doing their best. Even the serial rapist, even the serial murder, because in my opinion, if they could do something else or better, they would. And what that means is that, while we hold the person accountable and address the harms they’ve cause, we have to then turn the critical gaze onto the ecological systems, the environment in which these individuals are being raised to allow this situation, to be their best. We are all culpable, until we take action. in upholding systems, institutions and structures that incite violence and cultivate threat and danger. 

Turning the critical gaze to trauma-inducing systems is one of the outcomes of the conversations around resilience i’ve had through these last 10 episodes. We can’t applaud certain individuals for having a “positive trauma response” and demonize those who don’t while also not looking critically at why individuals have to be resilient in the first place. Resilience is an inherently othering concept that separates those from the same place into categories of success and failure. If we take Dr. Yasser Payne’s redefinition of resilience, we realize that resilience is simply acting in a way to further your own survivability, so those who are dealing drugs, pimping, engaging in gun violence, are actually enacting resilience, just as those from the same place who go to college and get a high paying job are. We have to take the implicit notions of morality out of the notion of resilience, because what is deemed moral or not, what is deemed right and wrong, again, are social constructs, that AGAIN often serve to maintain social hierarchies.

Even the worst crimes ,even think about murder, depending on who commits it, it could be justified. It could be accepted. It could even be celebrated. The fact that certain people are executed or sentenced to death by incarceration for killing someone And yet we killed Osama bin Ladin and everyone was cheering Shows that distinction. the shooter of Osama bin Laden wasn't criminalized, they were celebrated. So it’s not murder that we deem “wrong” but the context of the murder. the criminal label really depends on the power and privilege and. social position of the individual committing the crime. 

When looking at crime rates too, we have to realize that they are often heavily based on policing practices in that area. We know that if there was a hyper surveillance of individuals in other communities, even in the suburbs, there would be far more arrests in those areas because they would be looking for it, but they're not. We use blackness often as a biological marker of threat. And so when we go in and proactively police these neighborhoods, of course, we're going to catch more people engaging in what is deemed criminal, especially when these neighborhoods lack opportunities and resources. we also have to recognize that it’s not only more people caught engaging in “crime” but also that certain behaviors are criminalized in certain neighborhoods and not others. You might have a group of black men just standing on the corner just hanging out. And in one neighborhood they may be approached by police, stopped, frisked, questioned And then in another neighborhood, a congregation of people on the corner could just be seen as normal, safe, and this often depends on their skin color and assumption of wealth, power or class. This goes into the idea of the patrolling of racial boundaries that is touched on in both Dr. Andrea Boyles episode and Laiken Jordahl’s episode - borders are arbitrary lines, they are not engrained on the land but again are social constructs that serve those in power. This borders are not solely geographical but racial- we patrol based on racial and ethnic boundaries, whether it’s separated Mexicans from Americans or Blacks from whites- there are spatial landscapes that are seen as acceptable for certain groups, and once those lines are crossed those individuals are suddenly perceived as dangerous and threatening regardless of their actions. You see a black guy with a hoodie on walking in what would be considered an acceptable black space it’s nothing, but the same guy in the same outfit walking the same way but in a white space, he’s up to no good. 

So the conversations all served to contextualize crime, to see the flexibility of our definitions and the racial under and overtones of the criminal justice system. When thinking about change, it has to occur on both a structural level and a cultural level. Policy can serve to hold systems and people accountable for their inequitable and harmful actions, but this doesn’t immediately result in cultural change. If we think about the emancipation proclamation, yes, It removed the slave label, but perceptions of black folks did not necessarily change immediately after that And it hasn't really changed for many over time because we live in a segregated society. So in order to create cultural change, I think these kinds of conversations are required. Getting proximate to people you might not encounter on the day-to-day because of our segregated society, becoming proximate to concepts and issues you may not think about on a regular basis, because you have the privilege not to. so,I hope that this podcast has created a space for you to become more familiar with these incredibly complex topics.

Now, when thinking about solutions, there is not a silver bullet- the responsibility for change is far more structural and community-based than on the individual. The criminal justice system operates under an individual-focused lens- the idea that you incarcerate one person at a time to enhance public safety. if this was the case we would see a correlation between crime rates and incarcerations rates and we don’t - there’s a lot of data showing no correlation, and this is in large part because the systems and structures that incite violence and engagement in that which is deemed criminal remain even when you remove one person at a time. 

We have to think about how Chris Wilson and Maleek Jackson and Dawan Williams discussed how prison represented a moment of solace,  a place to catch a breath, a place to finally sit with their own thoughts, a place to read, a place to gain some services. This to me is not a reflection of success on the inside, but of failure on the outside - when a punitive system is the only space you have to find solace, that's not right. we have to think about the environments in which the chaos is occurring. That disallows people from finding support. One of the things that many of the individuals I spoke to. Engaged with, was this idea that change individual change can't happen alone. You have to have support either through expanders and role models or through services. Almost all of the people I interviewed said that the number one service needed in the community Is trauma care- trauma is one of the most shared experiences for almost all people in prison. We incarcerate the poorest, least educated, most traumatized individuals. The age-old adage that hurt people hurt people is true. But we also have to realize that while, yes, the prison population includes individuals who committed direct harm to others, it also includes innocent people and people who committed nonviolent “victimless crimes.” But, because of shows and media, we think of everyone in prison as dangerous, as the same. Hopefully these conversations served to individualize and show that everyone inside has a story and every action is a reaction to something else. 

One of the things that I heard from many of the men is that they have to engage with redemption politics upon their release, even though they've served their time. They've served time but they have not been “redeemed”, so we require redemptive acts on the outside to make us feel safe. Whether it's writing a book or doing speaking engagements or contributing to victim services organizations. We know that there are certain things, certain acts that can make us feel safer with individuals. So why, for many people who don't have to be incapacitated. Who don't have to be removed from society because they're not an immediate threat to themselves or others. Why can't we have them engage in these redemptive acts rather than being stripped of their humanity, rather than being stripped of their social connections to the community. What does it look like to hold individuals accountable, address the harms of the victims, address the needs of those wrapped up in the system, and make us feel safe? 

The idea that prison would be a place to correct someone- that a punitive carceral system would be a place for healing is oxymoronic. 

So when we think about what to do. How to move forward. We need to be imaginative. We need to be creative. Something that makes me feel better about the possibility of change is to acknowledge that the criminal justice system  is a social construct. Prisons as we know them today in America were just the brain child a group of Quakers in Pennsylvania in the 1800s, this wasn't a mountain or a tree or something ingrained in the fabric of our humanity but was simply something we constructed. And so with that understanding, I know that as humans, we have the ability we have the ability to deconstruct it and construct something different. We just have to be imaginative and creative. And I really think that we need complete overhaul.

the way I view reform -  the criminal justice system is a dirty bowl and we just keep trying to throw new ingredients in the bowl, but no matter what, because the bowl is dirty, those new ingredients are going to get dirty eventually. And so I really believe that we need a new bowl and my life goal is to figure out what that is, but I can’t do it alone. We need to be. Collaborative. it has to be an interdisciplinary effort bringing in a whole array experts. And when I say experts, and this is something that the podcast really harps on, I'm not just talking about people with their PhDs, I'm talking about people who also have real world experience, who can speak directly to how this has impacted themselves, their families and their communities. Rather than assume, we have to ask those most impacted what they need, what they think could work. 

And, again, while structural change is necessary, cultural change is key and I hope that this podcast has helped to shift perspectives, and hopefully shift social narratives.

The next 10 episodes, i am really excited about- I’ve already recorded a couple of them and man, they’re good. I'm so excited for you to hear. I hope that you stay curious and that's, you know, that's one of the things that, again, to create cultural change, you have to approach the unknown with curiosity rather than fear and understand that fear creates defensiveness and defensive acts are often reactionary without consideration of consequence.

And so we just have to be vulnerable and open-minded. open to change or at least open to hearing other people's sides. I hope this synthesis was helpful and I really thank you for listening and engaging. I'm Abbie Henson and this is critical conversations.