America is a prison nation. Seven million people are now under the control of the criminal legal system in this country. In correctional facilities, the United States houses 25 percent of the world prisoners—the highest percentage in the world.
These were some of the sobering statistics presented by Dr. Beth Richie, Ph.D., at a Feb. 1 Lavender University lecture at the Center on Halsted. Richie is the director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and Professor of African American Studies and Criminology at UIC. Richie is also a founding member of INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence.
"We are much more like the countries that we think most violate human and civil rights," Richie said. "We house more people in harsher conditions of confinement for longer periods of time for less serious offenses than almost any country in the world."
According to Richie, the prison nation reflects an ideology and public policy centered around individual responsibility. "We divest from communities because we think people should be taking care of themselves," Richie said. "We invest in law enforcement in targeted and specific ways. We criminalize norm-violating behavior through the creation of new laws in a way that profoundly undermines a civil society, human relationships or state accountability for people who are most in need."
Richie maintained that those most in need or most disadvantaged tend to be the most vulnerable to the prison nation or the prison industrial complex. She noted how racial identity, sexuality, class, culture, gender and other markers of who people are become particular sources for that vulnerability. "We create laws, most of them based on an understanding of harm, but arbitrarily passed in order to control people and often based on a fear of certain groups." Richie said.
By way of example, Richie discussed the plight of Black people identified as women. "America's prison nation targets them because of their vulnerability." Richie said.
She gave stark examples of how that ideology has devastated lives.
One bright sunny morning, Richie observed police cars and members of the media who were gathered around a trash dumpster outside of a South Side high school. "I heard them talking about a young woman," she recalled. At the center of the activity was a 15-year-old student whom Richie called "Tanya." That morning, the girl went into labor, alone in a bathroom stall. "She decided that she had no better option but to deliver the baby herself, to put the newborn in her backpack and place the backpack in the dumpster." Richie said. "I wondered how could anyone feel so desperate? What tragic events could have led to this?"
In getting to know Tanya, Richie discovered that the young girl was raped by her Uncle and violently assaulted by her boyfriend. There was no record of the abuse. Owing to the lack of anti-violence programs or counseling available to Tanya, she felt that no one would take her seriously. What astounded Richie the most, was the reaction of the media.
"They spun the story on the evening news as part of the ongoing labor strike that was crippling trash collection in the city at the time," Richie said. "It became a story about what happens when you don't pick up the trash."
According to Richie, the news carried stereotypical images of the young, Black, immoral, irresponsible, violent-prone girl. "She was ruthless and irresponsible and the media were the heroes. The audience was fed notions of moral condemnation in a disregard for the woman's life," Richie said. Tanya was charged as an adult for the murder of her child and was sent to prison.
Richie also talked about a 2006 case in New York's Greenwich Village when a group of young Black lesbian friends had an altercation with a man whom they alleged was verbally and physically harassing them. Ultimately, the four women were arrested and sent to trial where Richie noted the racist, anti-gay atmosphere that the prosecution created helped convince the jury to convict. "Two of the women served serious time," Richie said. "One is still detained in a New York State prison for attempting to defend herself."
"The eye witnesses confirmed that the young women acted in self-defense," Richie added. "It was a blatant, anti-gay sexual attack. The aggressor was never charged with a crime."
Richie recalled the widespread media coverage of the case—a Bill O'Reilly segment labeled them as "Violent Lesbian Gangs"—but she also noted that mainstream gay-rights organizations and groups concerned with violence against women would have nothing to do with the trial.
"New York, like Chicago, is facing a growing anti-gay, anti-youth sentiment," Richie said. "Issues of gentrification, class difference and New York City tourism are hallmarks of the new conservative image that the city wants to claim for itself. Part of why the violence towards them was not taken seriously, is that people buy the rhetoric that public safety means they we must keep certain people out."
Richie believes that in order to be an anti-violence advocate one must also be a prison abolitionist. "The prison nation is supported by laws that benefit people in power and criminalizes people for norm-violating behavior," she said. "It's because they're queer. It's because they're poor. It's because they're Black. It's because they're pregnant. It's because they dare to move in protected spaces. The more stigmatized their position is, the easier it is to victimize them. The more queer we are, the more we will not be taken seriously. That's what happens when we invest in a prison nation."
Richie concluded her lecture with the idea that people are using a prison nation state apparatus to solve problems in their communities and that this is dangerous. "We are lining ourselves up too closely with Conservative, more main stream, more normative issues," she said. "When we do that, we lose our will, and our political ability to dig deeper into the lives of people like Tanya or the New Jersey Four. We must think about prison abolition as a place where we say 'we will not rely on the mean spirited, racist, homophobic state to protect us'….because it won't protect us."
For more information on the Center on Halsted Lavender University Series, visit www.centeronhalsted.org . For more information about INCITE, go to www.incite-national.org .
