Articles

Prisons and Executions—the U.S. Model: A Historical Introduction

by The Editors

July 1, 2001

The prison is so prominent an institution in present-day society that it is difficult to remember that the prison as a place of punishment is only a little more than two hundred years old. It emerged first in the United States and soon after in Europe, and its early phase of development was that of 1789-1848, conforming to what historian Eric Hobsbawm has termed The Age of Revolution. It was thus a product of the dual revolution that formed the basis for modern capitalism: the industrial revolution centered in Britain and the political revolution that took place in the United States and France

Lawyers, Jails, and the Law’s Fake Bargains

by Michael E. Tigar

July 1, 2001

Assume that Canada and the Western European countries have about the right number of people in jail. Assume that the social problem of crime is not terribly different in those countries than in the United States. Understand that our incarceration rate is five to eight times that of those other countries. If these assumptions, and this understanding, are even nearly valid, 80 percent of the people in American jails should not be there

Cruel but Not Unusual: The Punishment of Women in U.S. Prisons: An Interview with Marilyn Buck and Laura Whitehorn

by Laura Whitehorn, Marilyn Buck and Susie Day

July 1, 2001

After years of neglect, the issue of women in prison has begun to receive attention in this country. Media accounts of overcrowding, lengthening sentences, and horrendous medical care in women's prisons appear regularly. Amnesty International—long known for ignoring human rights abuses inside United States prisons and jails—issued a report, two days shy of International Women's Day 2001, documenting over 1,000 cases of sexual abuse of U.S. women prisoners by their jailers. However, we seldom hear from these women themselves. And we never hear from women incarcerated for their political actions

Disablement, Prison, and Historical Segregation

by Jean Stewart and Marta Russell

July 1, 2001

The story of disablement and the prison industrial complex must begin with a trail of telling numbers: a disproportionate number of persons incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails are disabled. Though Census Bureau data suggest that disabled persons represent roughly one-fifth of the total population, prevalence of disability among prisoners is startlingly higher, for reasons we will examine later. While no reliable cross- disability demographics have been compiled nationwide, numerous studies now enable us to make educated estimates regarding the incidence of various disability categories among incarcerated persons. Hearing loss, for example, is estimated to occur in 30 percent of the prison population, while estimates of the prevalence of mental retardation among prisoners range from 3 to 9.5 percent

Teaching in Prison

by Michael D. Yates and Monica Frolander-Ulf

July 1, 2001

If prisons were places people who have committed serious crimes were sent to pay a debt to society, and to be rehabilitated to return to society as healthy members of it, then at least the following things would be true. First, people who had not committed serious crimes would not be in prison at all. Drug users and persons with mental illnesses would receive treatment and would live in their communities, either at home or in safe and hospitable facilities run as public entities. Those who had committed minor criminal offences, such as shoplifting, would be given non-prison sentences involving counseling and community service. As much as possible, communities would be involved in both setting the penalties and organizing and participating in the treatment. Ironically, this was typically the case in American Indian communities, now so ravaged by the U.S. criminal injustice system

Notes from the Editors, June 2001

by The Editors

June 1, 2001

In response to the massive popular protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec City on April 20-21, the mainstream media has adopted as one of its favorite lines that the protesters, while frequently well meaning, are ignorant of basic economics. What this means is that the protesters are refusing to bow down before the alleged virtues of unregulated free trade. In his column on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times (April 24, 2001), Thomas Friedman quoted Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs as saying, "There is not a single example in modern history of a country successfully developing without trading and integrating with the global economy."

Credo of a Passionate Skeptic

by Adrienne Rich

June 1, 2001

Recently I collected a number of my prose writings for a forthcoming volume. Rereading them, it struck me that for some readers, the earlier pieces might seem to belong to a bygone era—twenty to thirty years ago. I chose to include them as background, indicating certain directions in my thinking. A burgeoning women’s movement in the 1970s and early 1980s incited and provided the occasions for them, created their ecology. But, as I suggested in “Notes Toward a Politics of Location,” my thinking was unable to fulfill itself within feminism alone

We Make the Road by Walking: Lessons from the Zapatista Caravan

by Rachel Neumann

June 1, 2001

Imagine Times Square filled with more than a hundred thousand people of all ages and backgrounds. Some have climbed telephone poles, others have reserved spaces on balconies. Imagine them waiting there together, peacefully, not to see the ball drop on New Years Eve, but to listen to the words of poor black women from West Virginia talking about the need for dignity and respect for poor people of all colors. Imagine Columbus, Ohio (the rough geopolitical equivalent of Iguala, Morelos in Mexico), the whole town decorated in colorful murals, posters, and flags welcoming the rural poor. Impossible? Okay, let’s say 50,000 in Times Square. Let’s say Detroit instead of Columbus. It’s still a stretch. We’re not even close. To appreciate the recent Zapatista march from San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas to the plaza at the heart of Mexico City—a caravan that drew over 1,500 participants, 100,000 supporters along the way, and over another 100,000 who braved the scorching sun to welcome the Zapatistas on their arrival in the capital—you have to acknowledge the uniqueness of this event, which has no easy parallels in either U.S. or Mexican history

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