Truthout editor-in-chief Schenwar and Law, the co-founder of NYC Books Through Bars, critique efforts by reformers seeking to significantly reduce the prison population. There’s things that become very real barriers for both them and their family.A useful survey of a variety of “alternatives to incarceration.” They can’t even walk to the end of the driveway to put out their trash without setting off a sensor on their system. If someone is under house arrest, and they have an electronic monitoring device on them, their home that they might live in with other members of their family or their children becomes this digital prison of sorts. On their face, people might think, “Well, aren’t these better than prison itself?” And I think this looks at how a lot of these things can convert home into a prison. It’s looking at things like electronic monitoring of people, body cameras on police, house arrest-all things that have been pitched as alternatives to incarceration. There’s lots of discussion in this text about technological fixes that can end up in themselves becoming digital prisons of sorts and lead us to places where we don’t want to go. So it’s looking at things that, on the face, look like steps in the right direction.
It’s looking at a whole range of popular reforms that are often posited as viable and more holistic alternatives to incarceration, but still, as the authors posit, end up being forms of carceral control in their own right. This one is a really, really interesting text. You can check it out on Scribd on audio, which is how I read it.
It is out from The New Press in the US, and is coming out in Australia at the end of September. Jaclyn: Our second discussion pick this month is Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law. In this week’s episode, Kendra and Jaclyn discuss Incarceration Nations and Prison by Any Other Name.
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