There are three orienting facts that render mass incarceration in the United States an ethical problem worthy of our deep consideration. First, the rate of incarceration has grown dramatically over the last 40 years so that today there are 2.2 million people in prison or jail, and another 5 million on probation or parole. This means that 1/32 adults in the USA are under state supervision. Second, the application of incarceration is disproportionately applied to the poor, people of color, and other vulnerable populations. Research shows that 85-90% of those in the criminal justice system fall below the poverty line, and the experience of incarceration only impoverishes people further. The consequences of having a criminal record are harsh and debilitating, ranging from family disruption, social alienation, and disenfranchisement. In these ways and others, the current situation of crime and punishment represents a dramatic moral challenge. Finally, victims of crime are themselves poorly served by the current system, often ignored or sidelined in the machinery of punishment. This course seeks to discover alternatives to the current systems of crime and punishment in order to imagine a more inclusive, just and moral society.
Roundtable Discussion: The Hidden Pains of Prison
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Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration
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Criminalization: The Experience of Prison
This module looks more closely at the intimate details and experiences of criminalization and incarceration. We explore the experience of being charged with a crime, of going through the court system, and of finding oneself in prison. What is the experience of prison, both on those who find themselves inside and those who are the family and friends of the incarcerated?
Rencontrer les enseignants
Graham ResideAssistant Professor
Vanderbilt University Divinity School
[MUSIC]
When we're thinking about prison and being on the inside, being caged,
I wondered if you'd be willing to share what was the hardest part for
you just out of your own story?
What was the most difficult part of being caged?
>> I think for me, I mean the hardest thing that I ever went through while I
was in prison, my mother was killed in a car accident.
At the time I was sitting on bail for a while.
Like I said for something that lead me, initially,
was two years until my imprisonment.
For me, that was the hardest thing that I had to
experience because I mean, it was my mother.
I think most prisoners, he can probably attest to this too.
And I'm sure it's true in life.
I'm certain it's true in life.
We don't even want to get a phone call.
We all would dread that,
I mean, somebody calling you telling you something that happened to somebody.
But I think in prison, it's heightened even more because of the lack of control,
lack of opportunity to be in communication or
someone just being directly in communication with you.
That I think most people sitting in prison dread the idea that the chaplain or
somebody will come to your cell and tell you, hey listen,
we need to take you to make a phone call.
Because you know if they do that, something bad then actually happened.
because they're not giving out free phone calls.
>> [LAUGH] >> So when they come and get you and
tell you this, you know something then happening.
And so in my case, the people came to my cell,
telling me that they need to take me to make this phone call.
And they obviously they know why they are coming to get you, but
they won't tell you why they are coming to get you.
And so I get these people come to my cell to tell me this.
So soon they tell me this here,
I'm thinking all the things that my mother going to tell me when I get on the phone
about something that happened to somebody else.
But, it was my sister actually telling me about my mother and
niece of mine that had been killed in a car accident.
And for me, like I said, that was,
I was already kind of low in life where I was, but that laid me flat on the ground.
So if I would have to say the hardest time I had
In prison that would be it, because I mean for
the first three days after that happened, hell, if my eyes were open I was crying.
If i won't crying I was balled up in an attempt to oversleep.
But, one of the last things my mother told me
when I saying the words that, I just jokingly say it to a girl,
I wouldn't know what to do if I had you in my life and it was really true.
I mean, I knew I had my mother with me when the world was against me.
But it was her saying that
I was going to know exactly what to do when the time came.
That it was that and you know just another statement that she
came to me in the dream, three days after she was killed and just told me to get up.
That was the thing that allowed for me to pick myself up, literally get out of bed,
really at that point.
But, If I had to say, the whole ugly thing that I went through, that's in life, yeah.
But certainly in prison, getting that information.
>> Thank you.
>> For me, it's not just one thing.
I think I have to see it in stages, or in parts.
The first part is the fact that having a life sentence,
and some, I had a life and 20 year sentence.
You get a time sheet and the time sheet that I received initially was blank
because the computer did not process how a life sentence is to be served.
And when I finally received the time sheet that had a parole date on it
here it is I'm nineteen years old.
And I see a parole date that says 2030.
In my mind, I can't really,
even thought the numbers are there, I can't quantify that.
So, that was hard and
it remained hard for many, many, many years to just get a time sheet and
it's showing you when you're going to be eligible for parole.
So that being number one.
Number two, having to decide if I'm going to have to kill or will I be killed.
Because I was at some violent prisons,
Four Pillar, West Tennessee High, Turney Center, Vietnam.
But mostly Turney Center Industrial Prison Farm, which, I mean,
just so people can understand.
Here's a place where they had pictures of Nathan Bedford Forrest on the wall and
General Lee of the Confederate Army, on the wall.
Here's a place where out of 100% of the employees who worked there,
only two were black.
Okay, here's a place they had a metal plant and
a wood plant where you worked really like slaves.
They had a farm, you milked cows, you do all of that.
And it was surrounded by water.
So surviving a place like that, you know, and you're just mixed in with everyone.
There was no separation at this time, everybody walked the compound together.
That was really, really hard because there were four encounters where I didn't know
if I would live or I would die.
I was in a gang fight, it wasn't my fault.
What happened was I was in a unit with two of my biological brothers.
My brother jumped into a fight because his friend was being ganged.
They sent word on the hill that the Bufords ganged the Vicelords.
So the next morning, I had to expect retaliation, and it came.
My two brothers stayed in the unit.
I went, because I had many, many, many more years to serve.
That was just one encounter, and it happened.
I didn't die.
But there was a physical clash.
Another thing is when you do make mention,
I got that phone call from the Chaplains office and my sister had been murdered.
And it just really destroyed my family, because it was unexpected.
For myself it was the first time that I was transported to a wake in chains,
shackles to view a body.
And to view the body of a younger sister that I wasn't there to protect.
And so there was a powerlessness that I felt in that moment,
looking at my sister in this casket.
But there was a transformative moment that occurred.
Because it was in that moment that I realized that I had done that to
another family.
So for me, it was like, wow.
And that was the second death.
You see, because the first death was my father.
It didn't even effect me.
I viewed his body.
I didn't have an emotional connection to him.
I saw this man, I didn't really know it but
when my sister and then seeing what was going on with my mom.
I can't hug my mom.
I sat at a table with a lot of my family members and I remember,
just like is this the only time we can come together.
And so that's another hard point and the last of those is getting out of prison.
I had to meet the parole board three times.
And each time I was put on trial, each time I had to sit in a small
space like this like in the Silence of the Lambs movie, in a box and
my supporters behind me and this screen and the victims in my case looking at me,
like down on me and then the parole board members.
And it's just like a very dehumanizing experience because you'd think that going
up for parole, they're going to determine whether you're suitable to be released.
They want to know if you've done enough time, how did you do that time, did you do
enough programs, are you psychologically able to return and are you remorseful?
And all of the things that seem normal, but when it comes to the crime,
they makes you revisit you have to exhume your past in a way that, some parts of it
you can't remember, and if they think you're lying, you're going to be put off.
That was the last of those, that was hard for me.
>> I am interested in terms of what you think about what it did for
you to be able to go see your sister and
how you feel about the fact that they do not let prisoners do that no more.
>> So if that would happen now, you wouldn't be able to do it.
>> No, he wouldn't.
>> I can't speak for anybody else because, for me, I'm glad that I was
able to see my sister before, because prior to that I had only visited her once.
because of the disconnect that occurred over those years.
When my grandfather died, my family didn't even tell me.
He died the same year.
I didn't know my grandfather had died until one of my brothers said, man,
I sure miss grandpap.
I said, what do you mean by that?
He said, you know, grandpap is dead.
I say what?
Grandpap is dead?
And I don't know.
My mom, she just didn't tell me,
so I think that it's wrong not to allow people to pay their respects.
That's what they want to do, it should be your choice.
>> Yeah, I think one other thing that I would add to that is that,
when you asked the question,
I think that there's this consciousness about certain things,
but then there's this thing that life happens as well, too.
I mean a lot of the time,
I didn't ever keep a calendar in my cell, and oftentimes,
the only way that I would be reminded how much time that actually passed,
when I see one of my nephews or somebody that grew up and they got kids,
and this would be this reminder about how much time had actually passed.
And so, in that, I think when you talk about what's hard about
prison is a lot of it goes unnoticed.
because I think what happens when you take a person, at least for me and I think it's
probably true for everybody, because prison there's an abnormal situation.
I mean when you take somebody, like you said,
put him in a cage literally, they got cages that they put people in,
a cell, and you just subject people to what that really is.
I think the point of being able to cope with that is that
people will have to internalize the abnormal as normal.
because it become this coping mechanism and it's like,
we were talking earlier about you don't, oftentimes,
know how bad you're being treated until you actually see something else.
And so even in my case, I mean,
I come from really harsh prison environment.
And to a place like River Bend and I was actually able to exhale and
say, damn, these people was really treating me bad.
>> [LAUGH] >> You see what I'm saying?
Even though I was treat at being treated bad, but it was just at a different level.
And I would often tell myself, then it really didn't matter,
because the reality is I'm still locked up.
So, it don't make no difference if you got me in this corner over here or
if you got me over here.
I'm still locked up and don't have no choices, can't do what I want to do.
But a lot of what prison does, I mean,
when you talk about the harshness of it, you don't notice it.
What could my family have been like had I been there for
the 28 years that they took me out of there, you see what I'm saying?
So yeah, I think there is a lot of, you know?
>> May I add one thing, because I put stuff like that out of my mind.
But I think it's important to say.
One of the hardest things that I think anyone who is incarcerated,
who has caged experiences, is when you have to strip naked
in front of another person, particularly a male, and
if you choose not to do it, you can be retrained and hog-tied.
That is something that we had to experience before a visit sometimes and
after a visit.
During the late night hours, 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning,
they may come with a shakedown.
When you come out of your sleep, and they might hit your door real loud,
and open that door and say get naked, strip, bend over,
let me see your nut sack, let me the crack of your butt cheeks.
Open your mouth full, let me see your tongue,
I mean, those same things that they used to do to those who were enslaved.
This is a body and we're going to make sure that it's secured, this property.
And that was really hard and I mean, just going out and being moved
out of the cell in some underwear, and sometimes you didn't even have a shirt on.
And with your hands cuffed and flip-flops on, and they sit you down in rows,
almost like prisoners of war.
In the rows, and rows, and rows, and guys would walk around with these pepper-style
machine guns, looked like machine guns but would spray pepper, to make sure that you
conform to those orders, I mean that was hard.
>> I just want to speak a little bit about what he said,
although on that point there is that, one of the ways that I dealt with that and
just being really frank, when people actually told me to do that,
I would always really shake my stuff in their face.
Hey, you want to see this?
[LAUGH] You see what I'm saying.
And so, for me, that was part of the way I resisted this
dehumanizing process that he talked about was claiming.
So you want to come in here and try to dehumanize me,
about telling me to get naked and that stuff,
I'd then make it, yeah, you want to see under my nuts, here.
[LAUGH] But he's right, though, I think that's part of this process,
that they try to break you, your spirit or whatever it is.
And for some people it actually does, but for me,
part of my resistance was yeah you want to come in there?
Yeah, okay, well this is how I'm going to respond to it, just
trying to claim what I could claim in this whole process that he is talking about.
Yeah, so yeah, prison is really hard.
Prison life is really hard, it really is.
A few years ago, you had
the legislators in their state went through this whole thing about they need
to go take comfort out of the Constitution when they deal with prisoners,
as if somehow you've got people living in hotels.
And the truth is, no, prison is a really hard life.
If you, hell, oftentimes, nearly weekly,
I had to turn my mattress over and fluff it and shake it.
If you laying on this stuff they give you,
at some point it's like you're laying on steel.
[LAUGH] So, everything about prison is really hard, it really is.
>> Another part that I miss because it's now coming back is
that when you have to leave the prison to go to an outside
hospital to be operated on and you're a guinea pig.
And it happened in my case where I
had developed a, what's that?
It was a protrusion out of my abdomen, a hernia.
And I could no longer withstand the pain.
And they operated on me out at Meharry Hospital.
And it was a lot of pain afterwards because I wasn't able to get the type
of medication that they probably would normally prescribe to someone.
Because of that being a prison environment and
trying people to stop from getting high or whatever.
And I had to sit in the clinic for 72 hours just before I could even walk.
And I later learned that the type of operation that I had,
they were doing that by just putting two small incisions.
They slit, it was a scar that long in that area.
Seeing what was happening to other guys coming back,
one guy was going to get a knee replacement.
He came back and his leg was shorter then it was when he left.
He has a permanent limp.
So, those are just some of the things that maybe society doesn't really know about.
>> Yeah.
>> Casey, what about you,
if you had to think about the most difficult part of it for you?
>> I'm like Raheem, there's stages and processes.
It's one to the next.
I can remember when he was in county jail.
And my husband is innocent and we were kids.
We were teenagers.
We were in high school.
And our whole process was, you're going to go to trial and you're going to come home.
And we're going to pick our life up and
we're going to do what we're supposed to be doing.
And sitting in his trial and being an 18 year old who had no idea
how the criminal justice system worked and my thought wa,
if you're innocent, you go to trial and they let you come home and that's it.
And sitting there and when they said guilty and
immediately sentenced him to life that day, there was no break.
You get a sentencing hearing.
No, it was at that moment that the judge said, life in prison,
I literally can remember my chest collapsing.
And I wanted to die.
Because, for me, I thought life in prison, that's forever.
That's forever.
And I can remember the first time I looked on the Internet at full and,
which is how you can see parole dates, and I think it was '36.
And I was like, 2036?
That doesn't even seem like a comprehensible date in anyone's life.
And all I could think of was, 2036, you're never coming home.
You'll be in your 50s and we're teenagers.
And then, we tried really hard to
maintain our relationship for years.
And going once every six months to see somebody,
we just couldn't maintain a relationship.
We always stayed in touch.
We always wrote.
We always talked on the phone.
But at one point, it was my decision,
I was like, I can't do this.
I want to be normal.
I want to have a normal life.
I want kids, I want to life.
And I ended up marrying someone else and having kids.
And I still talked to him and I still wrote him and we still wrote him.
Because I felt like that was where my heart was, but
society wouldn't let me be there.
My family wouldn't let me be there.
And so, we reconnected after I had got divorced and we reconnected.
And I wasn't, at that point, even strong enough to say,
I'm going to do everything I can to help you.
And it took earth-shattering losses.
It took me, actually, being in a relationship where I thought I was
going to die and surviving to be able to go to him and say, you know what?
Whatever I have to do to get you home, that's what I'm going to do.
And for him, he had always gave me this rose-colored glasses version of prison.
I had no idea, none.
And then when we got married, I told him, you have to be real,
I have to know exactly what happens and what's happening to you.
And actually, Raheem was there when we were going through,
we just couldn't get it together.
It was so hard and he had an appeal and it had gotten denied.
And he was in a super low place and I didn't know how to help him at that point.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know what fighting for justice was.
And we were sitting in the visitation gallery and I came to see him, and
he had gotten in a fight.
And his face was all messed up.
And he wouldn't tell me what was happening, and I was so scared.
And I walked out and I got to the gate and was like, I can't leave him here.
And I turned around and I came back in.
And he had already went back to the room to get shake down.
And Raheem, I shot off across the visitation gallery like, dude, she's back.
Trying to repair a marriage that is already
compartmentalized and so sterile,
trying to repair it in a prison is almost impossible.
30 minute phone calls, just as soon as we would get to a point where we could,
we're making ground, you have 60 seconds left.
[LAUGH] And you can't get that momentum back again.
And it would just feel like, my gosh, we're never going to get past this.
It's never going to And, I mean, it took struggle and struggle and struggle for
us to get common ground to where we could operate together as a team and
be just a husband and wife and be able to do this.
But for him, I mean, he lost his biological father.
Well, the man who raised him died while he was in prison.
His biological father was in prison and died while he was in prison.
His brother died while he was in prison.
And his sisters, they were kids, little kids, when he went to prison.
And so it took him coming to Riverbend five years ago for
him get a relationship with his sisters.
Because before that,
the only way they got to see him was if someone brought them to him.
And just, The violence, the trauma and even now and
like the other day when we talked and I was like you are not scared of anything.
Like I'm scared of everything,
I was like I literally operate in fear and I was like your not scared of anything.
And he said, you want to know what scares me?
He said what scares me is never coming home.
What scares me is never being your husband,
never taking care of you, never having kids.
What scares me is that I'm going to wake up and I'll be 50 and
I'm still going to be here and I shouldn't even be here to begin with.
And I'm going to be 50.
He was like I woke up and I was 20 and I was here.
And I woke up and I was 30 and I was here.
And I woke up and I was 40 and I was still here.
He was like, what scares me is I'm going to wake up and
I'm going to be 50 and I'm still going to be here.
>> I think, I mean, obviously I mean,
we just bearing witness to your pain and that stuff, but
I think that's another thing about, like I was saying earlier,
prison certainly, all of us know relationships are hard.
I mean even under the best circumstances, that relationships can be hard, and
when you kind of compound that by this artificial
connection, that it gets even harder.
I think that you said it earlier about when we were out there,
the number of people that you see visiting, for instance, in prison.
It's true in any prison you go to it's going to be a small number of people
that regularly visit.
Because I think that prison separates people.
And so you can have all the love, I mean, the mother's love, wife's love,
or whatever it is.
But what's hard about prison is that it's hard to maintain those connections.
I'm sure it's true for you and me and most people seen me in prison
even outside if you connected to people, you see this thing kind of happening.
Where I used to say out of sight out of mind.
I mean you got this old saying about out of sight out of mind.
Because what happened is that the way the industry,
the prison industry is that most people,
like I said, sitting in prison, certainly ain't like out here in West Nashville.
You're miles away from home.
When I was sitting in prison here, it cost me right at $30 to make a 30 minute
phone call from here to St. Louis where all my family is.
And when you have,
if this is your line of communication and
the people busting a charge on you for these phone calls.
I mean, at some point, your mother saying there hey,
I can't take these collect calls no more.
She might not necessarily say that.
She might go all the way until the phone gets cut off, she can't even afford to pay
the bill because she ain't fixing to deny this phone call when it comes through.
I mean when you talk about families and
how harsh prison life is on people that's loved ones,
people that's sitting there.
Like I said, prison can be really hard.
It can be a really hard environment, >> Well, it's not.
Sorry.
I was just going to say, it's not in response to what you were saying Dume.
It's more than just hard, I think it's unnatural.
I mean it is antithetical to what human beings are here on the earth to do,
which is be in community with each other.
>> Yeah. >> The system creates,
I was thinking when you were talking about separation,
the system creates divides that feel unnatural.
And there's so much cognitive dissonance in that setting,
because you are being made to be in the world
in a way that doesn't feel natural.
So like, dehumanization feels unnatural
watching CO's yelling at grown adults,
about tucking their shirts in.
That feels unnatural, that creates cognitive dissonance.
Rules are really inconsistently enforced, like Raheem was talking earlier about how
some nights they bang on your door at three in the morning and
sometimes they don't do that and you never know which night it's going to be.
That kind of inconsistency of rules being enforced is so
psychologically destabilizing and feels almost schizophrenic.
For me at least, even just being a person that works in that setting.
It's every day driving there and thinking, like, am I going to get yelled at today?
Am I not going to get yelled at today?
Is the lieutenant going to be happy to see me today or
is he not going to be happy to see me today?
Am I wearing something that last week was fine and this week wasn't fine.
I mean, you just, you never know, and that
feeling constantly off balance produces so much anxiety.
Speaking personally, just produces so much anxiety.
You can never feel comfortable or sort of not agitated.
And I think that, that extends to every person that, that system touches.
So, to me that's the hardest part.
>> Yeah, one other point I want to make on hard things,
Casey calls me to remember is that someone you love
divorces you, or departs from you or leaves you, Particularly
as a young man who had a girlfriend at the time.
One of the hardest things that I had to do was in 1990 at Lake County in Tiptonville.
I remember making a phone call and
saying I know we can't continue this relationship.
Because I'm not going to be able to be there and
I don't really want you to hold your life up for me.
And I remember how long that affected me.
It really touched my heart in a way that for
more than 20 years, I dreamt about this person.
I still love her and she doesn't even know it probably.
Because I didn't call her anymore because I knew it was over.
But over the years, I was able to connect with other people.
And the hardest thing is when they choose not to show up any more.
You know it's over.
You know that there is no longer a relationship, but
even harder, that is when your family is not involved.
And that's what happened in my family, Casey made me think about it.
My baby brother, eight years younger than me.
I did not see him from 1989 until 2005
and that's because he was in jail and
he wanted to leave the jail so he said, I want to come see you.
So we found a way to bring him all the way into the same
prison that I was at just so that I could see him.
Yeah, it's tough.
[MUSIC]
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