Mass Incarceration Victimizes

 From The Guardian: The crime victims’ advocate fighting mass incarceration: ‘How we actually stop violence’. It is an interview that might open your eyes. Some excerpts, mostly from the introduction (links lost in pasting, and there were quite a few):

In a new book, Lenore Anderson says the legal system doesn’t serve most victims or alleviate unaddressed trauma

For decades, the cause of victims’ rights has been one of the most powerful political movements in the US.

From the 1980s to 2010s, advocates worked with law enforcement to transform the criminal justice system, passing more than 32,000 laws explicitly in the name of victims. Fueled by backlash to the civil rights era, white Americans’ fears of rising crime and hysteria around particularly shocking cases of violence, the policies exponentially grew prison populations. They also created mandatory long and indefinite sentences; locked up youth for life; expanded surveillance; and restricted the rights of defendants and incarcerated people.

In her new book, In Their Names, criminal justice advocate Lenore Anderson argues the traditional victims’ rights movement caused immense harm through mass incarceration and harsh punishments – while fundamentally failing to address survivors’ needs or support public safety. 

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Anderson, the Oakland-based president of Alliance for Safety and Justice, which supports survivors, lays out a new vision for victims’ rights, one that focuses not on punishment, but on providing aid and trauma recovery, with the goal of meeting people’s material needs and interrupting cycles of violence. She’s part of a growing movement of survivors and activists who have spoken out in favor of services and prevention, instead of vengeance and incarceration.

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You expose the falsehood that “victims” and “people who commit crimes” are separate groups. What do we know about who is victimized?

The vulnerabilities that lead someone to potentially get hurt by crime are the same vulnerabilities that lead someone to potentially commit a crime. The reality is, when we don’t protect people, often they are either going to get hurt or hurt. While people of all walks of life are hurt by crime and violence, when you look at chronic exposure to everyday violence – robberies, break-ins, gun or interpersonal violence, witnessing violence – the people who are frequently vulnerable are low-income folks, people of color, immigrants, individuals disabilities and those who are unhoused. Those are all societal barriers to being protected from harm. And if you were harmed, especially at a young age, and you don’t get help recovering, that affects every aspect of your life. That systemic disregard for people when they are hurt leads to the likelihood that they may later commit a crime. Roughly 90% to 95% of people who get arrested and convicted of a crime were a victim before. So why are we spending all this money on toxic prisons? If we really cared about safety, we’d have a massive campaign to address unaddressed trauma.

In a country where billionaires can cry about being victims, where we seem a people addicted to punishing others, I doubt that there can be any meaningful reform, but that does not mean we cannot try. Having been in there, prison does not do what you think it does. 

The system does not know its purpose. During my PO's October visit, he was looking at the pile of paper that are the manuscripts I wrote in prison. There was a nervous aspect to his looks - I do not think he reads much - as if he got too close the papers might attack him. He asked if I wrote all this during prison. I said, "Yes, what else was I to do?" He had no answer to that.

Nor does the federal government know what to do with its supervised release. If you review my articles under Supervised Release, or just search the blog for PO, look for the services provided to help me re-enter society. Frankly, if I were not me, with my education and talents and ambitions, I would have been screwed. 

sch 12/29