Lately I’ve been thinking a bit about justice in a broad sense, especially criminal justice, law and law enforcement.
So my last batch of Audible books included one called American Furies by Sasha Abramsky.
Abramsky’s journey through the American prison system covers some of its history and theory, from the inception of penitentiaries to the concept of the panopticon, differentiating rehabilitative and reformative theory from punishment and vengeance. He talks a little about some of the founding theorists of correctional theory and explores a bit of Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on what he saw touring prisons, and about Hobbes’s Leviathan and the works of Bentham, among others. But a lot of his focus is the here-and-now.
The author spends a fair large amount of the book exploring problems with old-school vengeance-based theories for prison, and the recent “tough on crime” and “zero tolerance” trends as they relate to the growth of prison populations and the systematic injustice they incite. With increasing numbers of “life without parole” sentencing, mandatory minimum sentences (in particular for non-violent crime), three-strikes laws and other inclement policies. The main thrust of the book explains how these trends ratchet up the badness of being incarcerated: with no hope of ever being free, the only reason to follow rules is the avoidance of further brutality and suffering. Further, people who walk into prison systems psychically fragile often walk out substantially psychologically worse off than when they went in. Guards institute a culture of brutality and violence, regularly abuse prisoners or at least turn frequent blind eyes to prisoners being abused by others, and people who are paroled are often less able to obtain gainful employment after their imprisonment.
The book is largely an indictment, then, of what the modern prison system has become, and of the theories driving recent changes to the system.
Probably one of the weaker parts of the book is its brief but poignant invective against what amounts to conservative and Southern understandings of justice and the role of prison. While the parts about what the prison system is were, I felt, well-grounded in statistical, philosophical and scientific rigor, I felt like that particular section … while not in any sense incorrect, was maybe a bit … unnecessarily caustic.
Despite its weaknesses, I felt like this book helped my thinking about criminal justice, and as such it was a worthwhile listen (and/or read).
American Furies at Amazon, Audible.
More on the topic is queued up, and consider this me soliciting suggestions.