Gisela Fosado, "Introduction" (Page 4 of 4)
Envisioning Justice
For many activists, including the contributors to this issue, a
complete reconfiguration of the way we think of "justice" is necessary.
This new sort of justice would not focus on policing and punishment, but
instead on individuals working within their own communities toward
safety, accountability, and conflict resolution. Regardless of the exact
vision of justice the contributors to this issue (and other scholars of
the Prison Industrial Complex) have, all agree that our current justice
system is extremely flawed and in need of analysis and radical change.
Even for those activists who don't believe in the abolition of prisons,
there is much that can be done: improving education in prisons;
a moratorium on the death penalty; better employment possibilities for prisoners who
have completed their sentences; an
end to criminalizing marginalized people, including gender nonconforming
individuals, people of color, and people living in poverty; and an
end to the privatization of prisons
and the corruption within them.
For most of the contributors to this issue, reversing certain
national spending trends is fundamental to this revised vision of
justice. Instead of investing in prisons and war, for example, tax
dollars could ensure an adequate education system for all Americans; a
broader health system that would include treatment options for substance
abusers (to replace incarceration); and a support system for people
living in poverty, including affordable housing and living-wage
standards. Many of the contributors to this issue, including Alex Lee, Kai Barrow, Andrea Ritchie, and Ije
Ude, propose new, less
punitive ways of addressing domestic violence through enhanced forms of
community empowerment. One way to begin this process—which, as Vivian Nixon points out,
is going to be long—is to begin to integrate prisons into our field of
vision when we think about U.S. society. The invisibility of prisons in
most people's everyday lives—although not in the plans of
corporations—is part of the problem; awareness is an important first
step. We hope that this issue is one small step toward this new
vision.
Endnotes
1. Herbert, Bob, "School-to-Prison Pipeline,"
The New York Times (9 June 2007). [Return to text]
2. Women who participated in the college program
while in prison had a 7.7 percent re-incarceration rate over 36 months
compared to 29.9 percent for women who did not enroll in college while
in prison. [Return to text]
3. For every 100 college students educated in
prison, approximately $900,000 in tax dollars, now dedicated to prisons,
can be saved over two years through reduced re-incarceration rates.
[Return to text]
4. Actual execution of female offenders is quite
rare, with only 568 documented instances as of December 31, 2006,
beginning with the first in 1632. These executions constitute about 2.8
percent of the total of confirmed executions in the United States since
1608. [Return to text]
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