by Asar Imhotep Amen,
California Health Care Facility, Stockton
A View from the Bridge
Prison (or criminal justice) reform re-entrenches criminalizing assumptions about Black & Brown people through the false narrative that the criminal and legal system are-or can be-neutral and fair, therefore it must be (Black & Brown people) who are the “problem.” In other words, reforms don’t just fail to address the damage the system causes, they contribute to further damage.
The ugly truth is that racism/white supremacy is built into the constitutional architecture of American so-called “democracy,” i.e., racial inequality is hardwired into the fabric of our social and economic landscape, and rather than an unfortunate accident, represents an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of American society.
The bottom line is that you can’t reform something that is doing what it was created to do. The notion of “reform” implies that an institution has strayed from its core responsibilities and that the reins just need to be tightened up within the criminal justice system. But there is no “fixing” something that works as intended (the outcome is the purpose).
The truth be told, the criminal justice system would change overnight if the vast numbers of young, wealthy, and white drug criminals at private schools and famous universities were harassed and beaten by the police in the streets, had their family homes raided at night, were sexually and physically assaulted in jails and prisons, and were confined to live and die in cages. The human costs of the bureaucracy would be evaluated differently if drug searches by undercover police and SWAT teams were as common at the University of California at Berkeley as they are down the street in the low-income neighborhoods of nearby West Oakland, California. The brutality of separating tens of millions of families from their loved ones-with no empirical evidence of a benefit-would not be tolerated if it were happening to different people. Our culture would see it as widespread violence in need of serious justification, if not a human rights crisis demanding urgent and immediate action, rather than as a vague and impersonal aspect of the need for “law enforcement.”
What’s Really Going On With All of the So-Called Reforms?
A lot of people are talking about “criminal justice reform.” Much of that talk is dangerous. The conventional wisdom is that there is an emerging consensus that the criminal legal system is “broken.” But the system is “broken” only to the extent that one believes it purpose is to promote the well-being of all members of our society. If the function of the modern punishment and torture system is to preserve racial and economic hierarchy through brutality and control, then its bureaucracy is performing well.
The emerging “criminal justice reform” consensus is superficial and deceptive. It is superficial because most proposed “reforms” would still leave the United States (California) as the greatest incarcerater in the world. It is deceptive because those who want largely to preserve the current punishment bureaucracy-by making just enough tweaks to protect its perceived legitimacy- must obfuscate the difference between changes that will transform the system and tweaks that will curb only its most grotesque flourishes.
Nearly every prominent national politician and the vast majority of state and local officials talking and tweeting about “criminal justice reform” are, with varying levels of awareness and sophistication, furthering this deception. These “reform”-advancing punishment bureaucrats are co-opting a movement toward profound change by convincing the public that the “law enforcement” system as we know it can operate in an objective, effective, and fair way based on “the rule of the law.” These punishment bureaucrats are dangerous because, in order to preserve the human caging apparatus that they control, they must disguise at the deepest level its core functions. As a result, they focus public conversation on the margins of the problem without confronting the structural issues at its heart.
The establishment reformist believes that it is possible to create a well-regulated stable and humanitarian system of criminal justice under the present economic and political arrangements. Establishment reform proposals are invariably formulated within the framework of corporate capitalism and are designed to shape new adjustments to existing political and economic conditions.
Establishment reform proposals are formulated and practically designed to shape Black and Brown people’s adjustments to existing and ongoing Eurocentric political and economic conditions-and more fundamentally, to the conditions of white over Black/Brown, to the conditions of white supremacy.
Eurocentric establishment reformism has helped to create probation and parole, the juvenile court system, reformatories and half-way houses, the indeterminate sentence, adjustment and diagnostic centers, public defenders, youth service bureaus and other “reforms” which served to strengthen the power of the state over the poor, Third World Communities and youth. The legacy of California’s latest reform effort is an increasingly repressive penal system and over-crowded courts dispensing assembly line justice. In other words, reforms do not make the criminal legal system more just, but obscure its violence more effectively.
Establishment reform or charity under the aegis of the dominant white ruling class, of white supremacy, serves to maintain such dominance and supremacy. In fact, when conservative white people learn that criminal justice policies have an adverse impact on Blacks, it makes them support the policies more. The truth be told, the most corrosive racial stereotype in America is that whites commit crimes but Blacks are criminal. However, world history tells a far different story with regard to criminality and white behavior. Establishment reform is what reform does. If the institution of reform measures do not help to liberate the oppressed, and furthermore, actually worsens their oppression, then such measures functionally serve the power status quo. Criminal justice reformism which does not make its objective the eradication of the criminogenic politicoeconomic system is designed to put a “benign” face on racist, ruling class; to make oppression palliative to the oppressed.
In sum, California does not have any plans to give up its slave system because the criminal “justice” system is deeply influenced by multibillion-dollar industries with sophisticated marketing and lobbying strategies because many corporations depend on increasing punishment/incarceration in California. These interests include prison guards (CCPOA), vocational instructors, food service staff, warehouse workers, tradesment, pharmaceutical companies (psychotropics) and large meat corporations lobbying to create new felony offenses for videotaping animal abuse at their factories. They also include private prison corporations and the much larger industry of private contractors in public prisons, jails and electronic monitoring services who profit from slave labor, phone calls, emails, family visits, mail, food, supplies, and medical care of prisoners/slaves. The more people in jail and prisons in California and the longer they remain confined (LWOP) to a cage, the more profit the companies make. Going through the motions of “reform” is BIG BIG money!!! Welcome to the “New” California model!
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