(photo: Convict tied for punishment, 1930s, Georgia. Photo from http://www.slaverybyanothername.com)
The Racialization of Crime and Punishment
--An Interview With Nancy A. Heitzeg
By Angola 3 News
Nancy A. Heitzeg, Ph.D is a Professor of Sociology and Program Co-Director of Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity at St Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
This is the second part of our interview with Dr. Heitzeg. Be sure to read part one, Visiting A Modern-Day Slave Plantation, which also featured our video-interview with Robert Hillary King and Dr. Terry Kupers, Slavery In US Prisons.
Angola 3 News: Your article, "The Racialization of Crime and Punishment: Criminal Justice, Color-Blind Racism, and the Political Economy of the Prison Industrial Complex, " was published in 2008 by American Behavioral Scientist. What are the key arguments that you make, along with co-writer Rose M. Brewer?
Nancy A. Heitzeg: Dr. Brewer and I argue that that the prison industrial complex is the latest in an historically uninterrupted series of legal and political machinations designed to enforce white supremacy with its economic and social benefits both in and with the law--"all domination is, in the last instance, maintained through social control strategies" (Bonilla-Silva 2001:103).
As movements for Abolition and Civil Rights worked to end the institutions of slavery, lynching and legalized segregation, new and more indirect mechanisms have emerged for perpetuating systemic racism and its economic underpinnings. In this era of "color-blind racism," there has been a corresponding shift from de jure racism codified explicitly into the law and legal systems, to a de facto racism where people of color, especially African Americans, are subject to unequal protection of the laws, excessive surveillance, extreme segregation and neo-slave labor via incarceration, all in the name of "crime control." The prison industrial complex is the current manifestation of the legal legacy of the racialized transformations of plantations into prisons, of Slave Codes into Black Codes, of lynching into state-sponsored executions.
We rely on Critical Race Theory (CRT) to guide our analysis. CRT precedes from the premise that racial privilege and related oppression is deeply rooted in both our history and law, thus making racism a "normal and ingrained feature of our landscape" (Delgado and Stefancic 2000:xvii). CRT acknowledges the myriad ways in which the legal constructions of race have produced and reproduced systemic economic, political, and social advantages for whites. We use Supreme Court opinions and the voices of political prisoners/prisoners of conscience as evidence of the dominant text and the dissent.
A3N: With the US prison population increasing from 200,000 in 1970 to 2.4 million today, the US now has more prisoners and a higher incarceration rate than any other country in the world. What do you attribute these staggering figures to?
NAH: The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world's population, has about one-quarter of its prisoners. As you noted, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Over 2.4 million persons are in state or federal prisons and jails--a rate of 751 out of every 100,000. Another 5 million are under some sort of correctional supervision such as probation or parole (PEW 2008). The US remains the last of the post-industrial so-called First World nations that still retains the death penalty, and we use it often. Nearly 3,500 inmates await execution in 35 states and at the federal level. It was not until the early 21st century that the US abolished capital punishment for juveniles and those with IQs below 70.
During the past 40 years there has been a dramatic escalation in the US prison population--a ten-fold increase since 1970. Between 1987 and 2007 alone, the prison population nearly tripled. The rate of incarceration for women escalated at an even more dramatic pace. The increased rate of incarceration can be traced almost exclusively to the War on Drugs and the rise of lengthy mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug crimes and other non-violent felonies.
A similarly repressive trend has emerged in the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system has shifted sharply from its original stated goals of rehabilitation and therapy, into a "second-class criminal court that provides youth with neither therapy or justice" (Feld 2007). Throughout the 1990s, the federal government and nearly all states enacted a series of legislation that criminalized a host of "gang-related activities." This lowered the age at which juveniles could be referred to adult court, widened the net of juvenile justice, and made it easier, and even mandatory in some cases, to try juveniles as adults.
Recently scholars, educators and activists have raised concerns about the growing connection between schools and the prison industrial complex.. The growing pattern of tracking students out of educational institutions, primarily via "zero tolerance" policies, and tracking them directly and/or indirectly into the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems is variously referred to as the "school to prison pipeline," the "schoolhouse to jailhouse track," or as younger and younger students are targeted, the "cradle to prison track" (NAACP 2005; Advancement Project 2006; Children's Defense Fund 2007). In part, the school to prison pipeline is a consequence of schools which criminalize minor disciplinary infractions via zero tolerance policies, have a police presence at the school, and rely on suspensions and expulsions for minor infractions.
A3N: What drives the US to imprison so many people?
