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They endeavor to make you as much like
Brutes as possible. When they have blinded the eyes of your mind - when
they have embittered the sweet waters of life - when they have shut out
the light which shines from the word of God, then and not till then, has
American slavery done its perfect work.
American prisons are the linear descendants of American slave pens, socially constructed institutions designed to dehumanize, exploit, and profit from the shackled. In both cases powerful social forces converge to protect the institution, to insure its continued existence. Prisons as metaphor for slavery are especially crystallized in the disproportionate percentage of African Americans who are cast into American Gulags, a reflection of social policies following media and political projections. Another factor that mirrors the slave experience is the antebellum (or pre- Civil War) Black codes that outlawed education for slaves, under pain of death. In March 1998, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections (DOC) announced that it would phase out all of its four and two-year colleges programs. That means roughly 400 of the state’s 35,075 prisoners, men and women taking courses for a bachelor’s or associate degrees in arts and sciences, will have to quit by June, 1998. The department, which already made it so difficult that it generally took approximately 10 years for a prisoner to complete courses for a degree, now offers GED (high school diploma) courses, and training in vocational fields like cooking or plumbing. While some may question the usefulness of college for prisoners, one long-term corrections expert found education to be the "most powerful" preventor of violence, both in and out of prison. Massachusetts prison psychologist, Dr. James Gilligan, notes: While several programs had worked, the most successful of all, and the only one that had been 100% effective in preventing recidivism was: receiving a college degree while in prison. Several hundred prisoners in Massachusetts had completed at least a bachelor’s degree while in prison over a 25-year period, and not one of them had been returned to prison for a new crime. (Later I discovered that the state of Indiana, and Folsom prison in California, have also found that college degrees provided 100% immunity against recidivism among their "alumni.") Immediately after I announced this finding in a public lecture at Harvard and it made its way into the newspapers, out new governor, William Weld, who had not previously been aware that prison inmates could take college courses, gave a press conference on television in which he declared that Massachusetts would rescind that "privilege", or else the poor would start committing crimes in order to be sent to prison so they could get a free college education! (Gilligan, James, "Pictures of Pain", Fr. Behind the Razor Wire: Portrait of a Contemporary American Prison System, (NY, New York University Press, 1998) p. 34 (by M. Jacobson-Hardy). Clearly, then, what motivates prison administrators isn’t what works, but the political imperatives of a system that seeks to continue the deadly cycle of recidivism. The more bodies they can capture, the more they can keep. Anything that can break the chains of mental slavery is justified. Knowledge is the beginning, so let us begin. © 1998 Mumia Abu-Jamal
© MAJ |
Imprisonment of the Mind