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ABSTRACT
Drafted a decade after the publication of our inaugural collectively authored essay, the members of the Prison Communication, Activism, Research, and Education collective (PCARE) reflect in this article on recent shifts in criminal justice policy and public discourse regarding the carceral state. Noting a growing consensus regarding the need to reduce national incarceration rates, as well as proliferating discussion regarding police brutality and other forms of state violence, the members of PCARE advocate an orientation of nonreformist reformism when addressing the current climate. Noting that many contemporary developments regarding prisons and policing are promising, we also argue that the prison–industrial complex remains a powerful and violent force in civil society. We begin by describing the complex coalitions that have emerged around prison reform in recent years, claiming that we should temper our enthusiasm for these developments with skepticism informed by a commitment to prison abolition. We then proceed to describe recent developments and tensions related to prison pedagogy, race, and the carceral state, and the gendered politics of policing and mass incarceration. We conclude with a call for critical communication scholars to engage in communication activism with a spirit of nonreformist reform and to humbly learn from the voices and experiences of those communities most directly impacted by the prison–industrial complex. We follow this essay with a response essay drafted by a collective of incarcerated individuals.
Notes
1. Contributing members include L. C. Badger, Stephen John Hartnett, Edward A. Hinck, Shelly Schaefer Hinck, Bryan J. McCann, Kathleen McConnell, Eleanor Novek, Emily Plec, Jennifer K. Wood, and Bill Yousman. Lead compiler and editor, McCann; supporting editors, Wood and Hartnett.
2. For a list of victims, see Haeyoun Park and Jasmine Lee, “Looking for Accountability in Police-Involved Deaths of African Americans,” New York Times, 13 July 2016, A11.
3. Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz, “Prison Guard ‘Beat Up Squad’ Blamed in Death,” New York Times, 19 August 2015, A1 + 19.
4. On the challenges associated with prisoner reentry, see Amy L. Solomon, Christy Visher, Nancy G. La Vigne, and Jenny Osborne, “Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry,” Urban Institute, 24 March 2006, http://www.urban.org/research/publication/understanding-challenges-prisoner-reentry (accessed June 21, 2017).
5. See Jake Halpern, “The Cop,” New Yorker, 10 and 17 August, 2015, 44–55.
6. Among the dozens of stories from this source, see “Stop Urban Shield: Join a Grassroots Campaign to Fight Police Militarization,” The Nation, August 12, 2015, http://www.thenation.com/article/stop-urban-shield-join-a-grassroots-campaign-to-fight-police-militarization/.
7. Petra Bartosiewicz, “Beyond the Broken Window,” Harper's, May 2015, 48–57.
8. A search of the New York Times’ database, on September 9, 2016, revealed 86,352 hits just for the phrase “criminal justice.”
9. While conservative outlets like National Review offer dramatically different analyses regarding the nature and origins of mass incarceration, they increasingly agree that current levels of imprisonment and the collateral consequences thereof are untenable. See Stephanos Bibas, “The Truth about Mass Incarceration,” National Review, 16 September 2015, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424059/mass-incarceration-prison-reform http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection®ion=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Homepage#/Criminal Justice (accessed June 21, 2017).
10. See “Extreme Policing,” a special issue of Stand, the ACLU's monthly magazine, Summer 2015.
11. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Baltimore Enlists National Guard and a Curfew to Fight Riots and Looting,” New York Times, April 27, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/us/baltimore-freddie-gray.html (accessed June 21, 2017).
12. Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968; rpt. New York: New York Review of Books, 2008), 175.
13. F. Brinley Bruton, et al., “Dallas Police ‘Ambush’: 12 Officers Shot, 5 Killed During Protest,” NBC News, July 18, 2016, http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/protests-spawn-cities-across-u-s-over-police-shootings-black-n605686 (accessed June 21, 2017).
14. Charles M. Blow, “A Week from Hell,” New York Times, 11 July 2016, A23.
15. For a critique of the use of terms such as “officer-involved shooting” in news coverage of state violence, see Adam Johnson, “Copspeak: 7 Ways Journalists Use Police Jargon to Obscure the Truth,” Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 11 July 2016, http://fair.org/home/copspeak-7-ways-journalists-use-police-jargon-to-obscure-the-truth/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
16. Emphasis added. For video of the speech, see Tanya Somanader, “Live Updates: President Obama Speaks at a Memorial Service in Dallas,” The White House, 12 July 2016, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/07/08/live-updates-attack-law-enforcement-dallas-texas (accessed June 21, 2017).
17. “Rudy Giuliani's Entire Republican Convention Speech,” CNN, 18 July 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7ZQ035cpLQ (accessed June 21, 2017).
18. For one of the many sources making this comparison, see Danielle Kurtzleben, “Trump Will Model His Speech Off Nixon ’68,” NPR, 21 July 2016, http://www.npr.org/2016/07/21/486648691/trump-will-model-his-speech-off-nixon-68-here-s-how-2016-is-dramatically-differe (accessed June 21, 2017).
19. On the historical role of race, class, and other modes of identity in such discussions, see Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Stephen John Hartnett, Executing Democracy, Volume One: Capital Punishment and the Making of America, 1683–1807 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010); Executing Democracy, Volume Two: Capital Punishment and the Making of America, 1835–1843 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012); Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History,” The Journal of American History 98 (2010): 703–34.
20. “Remarks by the President at the NAACP Conference,” The White House, 14 July 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/14/remarks-president-naacp-conference (accessed June 21, 2017), para. 17.
21. Ibid.
22. For a similar call for loving justice, see Eleanor Novek, “‘People Like Us’: A New Ethics of Prison Advocacy in Racialized America,” in Working for Justice: A Handbook of Prison Education and Activism, ed. Stephen J. Hartnett, Eleanor Novek, and Jennifer K. Wood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 203–20; the notion of America becoming an “incarceration nation” is from Stephen J. Hartnett, Incarceration Nation: Investigative Prison Poems of Hope and Terror (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2003).
23. See Pew Center on the States, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008, February 2008, http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2008/one20in20100pdf.pdf (accessed June 21, 2017).
24. PCARE, “Fighting the Prison–Industrial Complex: A Call to Communication and Cultural Studies Scholars to Change the World,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4 (2007): 402–20.
25. Examples of PCARE-related scholarship published since 2005 include Lisa M. Corrigan, Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016); Stephen John Hartnett, “The Annihilating Public Policies of the Prison–Industrial Complex; or, Crime, Violence, and Punishment in an Age of Neoliberalism,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11 (2008): 491–515; Stephen John Hartnett and Daniel Mark Larson, “‘Tonight Another Man Will Die’: Crime, Violence, and the Master Tropes of Contemporary Arguments about the Death Penalty,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3 (2006): 263–87; Stephen John Hartnett, Jennifer K. Wood, and Bryan J. McCann, “Turning Silence into Speech and Action: Prison Activism and the Pedagogy of Empowered Citizenship,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 8 (2011): 331–52; Bryan J. McCann, “Contesting the Mark of Criminality: Race, Place, and the Prerogative of Violence in N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 29 (2012): 367–86; Bryan J. McCann, “On Whose Ground?: Racialized Violence and the Prerogative of ‘Self-Defense’ in the Trayvon Martin Case,” Western Journal of Communication 78 (2014): 480–99; Eleanor M. Novek, “‘The Devil's Bargain’: Censorship, Identity and the Promise of Empowerment in a Prison Newspaper,” Journalism 6 (2005): 5–23; Eleanor M. Novek, “‘Heaven, Hell, and Here’: Understanding the Impact of Incarceration through a Prison Newspaper,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22 (2005): 281–301; Carol A. Stabile, White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in US Culture (London: Routledge, 2006); Raechel Tiffe, “Interrogating Industries of Violence: Queering the Labor Movement to Challenge Police Brutality and the Prison Industrial Complex,” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 2 (2015): 1–21; Jennifer K. Wood, “Balancing Innocence and Guilt: A Metaphorical Analysis of the US Supreme Court's Rulings on Victim Impact Statements,” Western Journal of Communication 69, no. 2: 129–46; Bill Yousman, “Inside Oz: Hyperviolence, Race and Class Nightmares, and the Engrossing Spectacle of Terror,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6 (2009): 265–84.
26. In terms of books, see Working for Justice: A Handbook of Prison Education and Activism, ed. Stephen John Hartnett, Eleanor Novek, and Jennifer K. Wood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); and Challenging the Prison–Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts & Educational Alternatives, ed. Stephen John Hartnett (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011). In terms of special issues of journals, see Edward A. Hinck, “Introduction to the Special Issue,” Argumentation and Advocacy 51 (2015): 135–7.
27. Since the 2005 call to action, PCARE members have presented their work each year at the annual conventions of the National Communication Association and the Western States Communication Association; we have held preconferences in conjunction with these events; we have delivered presentations at various other conferences; and we have led workshops, hosted roundtables, and delivered invited lectures around the nation—by our estimate, PCARE members have, since 2005, delivered over 100 such presentations, thus helping to put prison education and activism firmly at the heart of the larger communication discipline.
28. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (1975; rpt. New York: Vintage, 1995), 194; and see Michael Meranze, Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760–1835 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
29. Drawing from a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, a Sentencing Project Fact Sheet notes that “while the number of people in prison in the United States has stabilized in recent years, incarceration trends among the states have varied significantly. Two-thirds of states (34) have experienced at least a modest decline since 1999, while 1/3 (16) have had continued rises in their prison populations.” See Sentencing Project “Fact Sheet: US Prison Population Trends,” n.d., http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/publications/inc_Prison_Population_Trends_fs.pdf (accessed October 6, 2015).
30. Peter Wagner and Leah Sakala, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie. A Prison Policy Initiative Briefing,” Prison Policy Initiative, 12 March 2014, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie.html?gclid=CL3rvb-rq8gCFUKRHwodBKUDmw (accessed June 21, 2017), para. 2.
31. Ibid, para. 7n6.
32. Pew Center on the States, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, March 2009, http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2009/03/02/pspp_1in31_report_final_web_32609.pdf (accessed June 21, 2017). The national figure of 1-in-31 is somewhat misleading, however, for the variation among states is high. For example, the reach of the prison–industrial complex has become so extensive in Colorado that the state now incarcerates one-in-29 adults. “Report: 1 in 29 in Colorado in Criminal Justice System,” Denver Post, 2 March 2009, http://www.denverpost.com/2009/03/02/report-1-in-29-in-colorado-in-criminal-justice-system/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
33. Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, S.2123 (2015).
34. Mauer quoted in Carrie Johnson, “Here's One Thing Washington Agreed on this Week: Sentencing Reform,” It's All Politics Blog, October 1, 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/10/03/445309516/heres-1-thing-washington-agreed-on-this-week-sentencing-reform (accessed June 21, 2017), para. 4; and see the website of Mauer's organization, http://www.sentencingproject.org; PCARE was honored to include Marc Mauer in one of our roundtable discussions at the national convention of the NCA, in Washington, DC, in November, 2013.
35. Quoted in Johnson, para. 9. See the website for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, http://famm.org.
36. The bipartisan group included House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA.); Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI); Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); Congressman Raul Labrador (R-ID); Congressman Mike Bishop (R-MI.); and Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-CA); see Beth Breeding, “Judiciary Committee Unveils Bipartisan Sentencing Reform Legislation,” Congressman Bob Goodlate, October 8, 2015, http://goodlatte.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=428 (accessed June 21, 2017).
37. It is important to note that even if they become law, they will apply only to those convicted of federal crimes and incarcerated in federal prisons—thus leaving the vast majority of imprisoned Americans unaffected (of the 2 million-plus imprisoned nationally, only 145,780 are in federal prisons). Nonetheless, the federal-level sentencing reform policies noted above reflect laws that either have been passed or are under consideration in many states. On state and federal incarceration rates, see James J. Stephan, “Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 2005,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 2008, 9, http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/csfcf05.pdf (accessed June 21, 2017). On state-level sentencing reform, see “Model Legislation for State Sentencing Reform,” The Sentencing Project, 9 December 2011, http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/model-legislation-for-state-sentencing-reform/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
38. See Anthony Romero and Mark V. Holden, “A New Beginning for Criminal Justice Reform,” Politico, 7 July 2015, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/a-new-beginning-for-criminal-justice-reform-119822 (accessed June 21, 2017).
39. The Coalition for Public Safety's website address is: http://www.coalitionforpublicsafety.org/.
40. On cultural discourses associated with the “War on Drugs” and its role in mass incarceration, see Daniel Mark Larson, “Killing Democracy; or, How the Drug War Drives the Prison–Industrial Complex,” in Challenging the Prison–Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts & Educational Alternatives, ed. Stephen John Hartnett (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 73–104.
41. Gilad Edelman, “The Real Answer to Mass Incarceration,” The New Yorker, 17 July 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-answer-to-mass-incarceration (accessed June 21, 2017). Also see E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2013,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2014, http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf.
42. On recent trends against capital punishment, see David Von Drehle, “The Death of the Death Penalty: Why the Era of Capital Punishment is Ending,” Time, 8 June 2015, http://time.com/deathpenalty/ (accessed June 21, 2017). On life-without-parole sentences and death penalty discourse, see Bryan J. McCann, “‘A Fate Worse Than Death’: Reform, Abolition, and Life without Parole in Anti-Death Penalty Discourse,” in Working for Justice: A Handbook of Prison Education and Activism, 187–202. On rhetorics of rehabilitation and the legitimation of mass incarceration, see Mikaela J. Malsin, “A Rhetoric of Rehabilitation: Dorothea Dix's Prison Reform Arguments,” Argumentation and Advocacy 51 (2015): 138–52.
43. On the communicative complexities of coalitional politics, see Karma R. Chávez, Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2013).
44. “The Economy of Incarceration: Ruth Wilson Gilmore,” The Laura Flanders Show, 26 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Axc3FIu9A (accessed June 21, 2017).
45. Gary Gutting and Nancy Fraser, “A Feminism where ‘Lean In’ Means Leaning on Others,” New York Times, October 15, 2015, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/a-feminism-where-leaning-in-means-leaning-on-others/?_r=0 (accessed June 21, 2017), para. 19.
46. Stephen John Hartnett, “Empowerment or Incarceration: Reclaiming Hope and Justice from a Punishing Democracy,” in Challenging the Prison–Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, & Educational Alternatives, ed. Stephen John Hartnett (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 5.
47. See John H. Esperian, “The Effect of Prison Education Programs on Recidivism,” Journal of Correctional Education 61 (2010): 316–34.
48. PCARE, “Fighting the Prison–Industrial Complex,” 411.
49. Teaching Communication Activism: Communication Education for Social Justice, ed. Lawrence R. Frey and David L. Palmer (New York: Hampton Press, 2014).
50. Back issues are available for download from https://ucdenver.academia.edu/StephenHartnett/Captured-Words-Free-Thoughts.
51. For similar examples of such prison-generated work, see Louisiana State Penitentiary's The Angolite and the blog Between the Bars (https://betweenthebars.org/campaigns/prison-poetry-workshop/). On sensationalism and representations of incarcerated individuals, see Yousman, “Inside Oz.”
52. See Shelly Schaefer Hinck, Edward A. Hinck, and Lesley A. Withers, “Service-Learning in Prison Facilities: Interaction as a Source of Transformation,” in Working for Justice: A Handbook of Prison Education and Activism, ed. Stephen John Hartnett, Eleanor Novek, and Jennifer K. Wood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 39–59; Shelly Schaefer Hinck and Erin Lynn Scheffels, “Transforming Argumentative Dialogue through Prison Service-Learning Projects,” Argumentation and Advocacy 51 (2015): 200–13.
53. Similar service-learning programs include those at Boise State University, Villanova University, and Wright State University.
54. On service learning and social justice in general, see Lori L. Britt, “Why We Use Service-Learning: A Report Outlining a Typology of Three Approaches to This Form of Communication Pedagogy,” Communicaton Education 61 (2012): 80–8.
55. Erica R. Meiners, “Resisting Our Expanding Carceral State,” in Handbook of Public Pedagogy: Education and Learning Beyond Schooling, ed. Jennifer A. Sandlin, Brian D. Schultz, and Jake Burdick (London: Routledge, 2010), 546.
56. See Scott Jaschik, “Is a Criminal Past Relevant?” Inside Higher Ed, 11 March 2014, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/11/princeton-students-want-university-stop-asking-whether-applicants-have-criminal-past (accessed June 21, 2017).
57. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 228.
58. Dylan Rodríguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the US Prison Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
59. Hartnett, Wood, and McCann, “Turning Silence into Speech and Action.”
60. See Martin J. Schiesl, “Behind the Badge: The Police and Social Discontent in Los Angeles since 1950,” in 20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict, ed. Norman M. Klein and Schiesl (Claremont, CA: Regina Books), 153–94; Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters.”
61. For a list of political demands regarding criminal justice reform and other sites of struggle, see A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice, https://policy.m4bl.org (accessed June 21, 2017).
62. At the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2016, for example, hundreds of participants waved “Blue Lives Matter” placards, thus showing their support for Donald Trump's “law-and-order” platform; a week later, at the Democratic National Convention, “Black Lives Matter” placards were prominent, while speaker after speaker acknowledged the pressing need for criminal justice reform. Perry Bacon, Jr., “Trump and Other Conservatives Embrace ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Movement,” NBC News, 23 July 2016, http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-conventions/trump-other-conservatives-embrace-blue-lives-matter-movement-n615156 (accessed June 21, 2017); Issie Lapowsky, “#BlackLivesMatter Cuts to the Heart of the Democratic Convention,” Wired, 27 July 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/07/blacklivesmatter-cuts-heart-democratic-convention/ (accessed June 21, 2017); Alex Seitz-Wald, “Bernie Sanders Event Shut Down by Black Lives Matter Activists,” MSNBC, August 8, 2015, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sanders-event-shut-down-black-lives-matter-activists (accessed June 21, 2017). On public attitudes regarding BLM, see Julia Menasce Horowitz and Gretchen Livingston, “How Americans View the Black Lives Matter Movement,” Pew Research Center, 8 July 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/08/how-americans-view-the-black-lives-matter-movement/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
63. On the representation of black bodies and communities, see Boulou Ebanda de B'béri and Peter Hogarth, “White America's Construction of Black Bodies: The Case of Ron Artest as a Model of Covert Racial Ideology in the NBA's Discourse,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 2 (2009): 89–106; Suzanne Marie Enck-Wanzer, “All's Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the News,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6 (2009): 1–18; Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006); McCann, “Contesting the Mark of Criminality;” Mark P. Orbe, “Constructions of Reality on MTV's ‘The Real World’: An Analysis of the Restrictive Coding of Black Masculinity,” Southern Communication Journal 64 (1998): 32–47; Kashif Jerome Powell, “[6 Black Boys ˆ Jena (1 Tree + 2 Nooses)—Civil Liberties] / 1 Indivisible Nation = Auto-ethnographic Performance of the Jena Six,” Text and Performance Quarterly 31 (2011): 68–89. On police interactions with people of color, see Valerie Barker et al., “Police–Civilian Interaction, Compliance, Accommodation, and Trust in an Intergroup Context: International Data,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 1 (2008): 93–112; Travis L. Dixon et al., “The Influence of Race in Police-Civilian Interactions: A Content Analysis of Videotaped Interactions Taken During Cincinnati Police Traffic Stops,” Journal of Communication 58 (2008): 530–49; Howard Giles et al., “Police Stops of and Interactions with Latino and White (Non-Latino) Drivers: Extensive Policing and Communication Accommodation,” Communication Monographs 79 (2012): 407–27.
64. On social media and the Black Lives Matter movement, see See Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter: Epistemic Positioning, Challenges, and Possibilities,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 5 (2015): 78–89; Brent McDonald and John Woo, “#BlackTwitter after #Ferguson,” New York Times, 10 August 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000003841604/blacktwitter-after-ferguson.html (accessed June 21, 2017).
65. McCann, “On Whose Ground?”
66. For an examination of the ways that liberal and progressive politics, and, therefore, not only conservative politics, are historically complicit in the growth of mass incarceration, see Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014).
67. See, for example, “The Mark of Criminality: Bryan McCann at TEDxLSU,” TEDx Talks, 15 May 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f832LlrjEW0 (accessed June 4, 2016); Samantha Jones Toal, “C-U Community Members Discuss Race and Violence,” The Daily Illini, 5 October 2015, http://dailyillini.com/news/2015/10/05/c-u-community-members-discuss-race-and-violence/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
68. Jodi M. Lawston, “Women and Prison: Sociologists for Women in Society Fact Sheet,” Spring 2012, https://www.socwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/fact_1-2012-prison.pdf (accessed June 21, 2017); Sentencing Project, Women in the Criminal Justice System, May 2007, http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Women-in-the-Criminal-Justice-System-Briefing-Sheets.pdf (accessed June 21, 2017).
69. Gisela Fosado, “Women, Prisons and Change: Introduction,” The Scholar and Feminist Online 5 (2007), http://sfonline.barnard.edu/prison/intro_01.htm (accessed June 21, 2017).
70. “Women and Girls in the Justice System,” National Criminal Justice Reference Service, n.d., https://www.ncjrs.gov/spotlight/wgcjs/Summary.html (accessed June 21, 2017).
71. Many women continue to experience shackling during labor, despite successful lawsuits against the practice. For example, see Victoria Law, “Giving Birth While Shackled May Be Illegal, But Mothers Still Have to Endure It,” The Guardian, 13 February 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/13/mothers-prison-illegal-shackled-while-giving-birth (accessed June 21, 2017).
72. Maya Schenwar, “Female Prisoners’ Babies Shouldn’t be Sentenced to Life without Breast Milk,” The Guardian, 22 October 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/women-prison-babies-no-breast-pump (accessed June 21, 2017).
73. See Dorothy E. Roberts, “Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers,” UCLA Law Review 59 (2012): 1474–500.
74. Paula Schaefer, “Girls in the Juvenile Justice System,” GPSOLO, April/May 2008, http://www.americanbar.org/content/newsletter/publications/gp_solo_magazine_home/gp_solo_magazine_index/juvenilejusticesystem.html (accessed June 21, 2017).
75. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, ed. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015); Jerome Hunt and Aisha C. Moodle-Mills, “The Unfair Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth,” Center for American Progress, 29 June 2012, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/report/2012/06/29/11730/the-unfair-criminalization-of-gay-and-transgender-youth/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
76. Sarah Aarthun and Holly Yan, “Student's Violent Arrest Caught on Video; Officer under Investigation,” CNN, 27 October 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/26/us/south-carolina-spring-valley-high-school-student-video/ (accessed June 21, 2017). Some individuals who viewed this video argued that the young woman was at fault for refusing to comply with the officer's orders, whereas others question whether compliance guarantees protection from police violence. For a critique of the “cult of compliance,” see David M. Perry, “Ferguson and the Cult of Compliance,” Al Jazeera America, 15 August 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/ferguson-police-shootracismcompliance.html (accessed June 21, 2017). On the death of Sandra Bland, see Debbie Nathan, “What Happened to Sandra Bland?” The Nation, 21 April 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/what-happened-to-sandra-bland/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
77. “Transgender Woman Claims She Was Raped by Police Officer (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT),” Huffington Post, 29 October 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/transgender-woman-rape-police_n_4174379.html (accessed June 21, 2017).
78. Jaime M. Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (Washington: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011), 163.
79. Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012).
80. See Paula Mejia, “Why Cops Get Away with Rape,” Newsweek, 9 July 2014, http://www.newsweek.com/police-sexual-assault-rape-justice-258130 (accessed June 21, 2017); Carimah Townes, “Sandra Bland And The Invisible Plight Of Black Women In The Justice System” Think Progress, 17 July 2015, http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/07/17/3681752/sandra-bland-say-her-name/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
81. See endnote 71 above on evidence of continued use of shackling; and Carrie Johnson, “Prison Rape Law a Decade Old, But Most States Not In Compliance,” NPR, 6 June 2014, http://www.npr.org/2014/06/06/319538761/prison-rape-law-a-decade-old-but-most-states-not-in-compliance (accessed June 21, 2017).
82. See Captive Genders; Bryan J. McCann, “Holding Each Other Better: Discussing State Violence, Healing, and Community with BreakOUT!,” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 3 (2016): 98–116.
83. For an exemplary and ambivalent reading of OITNB, see Suzanne M. Enck and Megan E. Morrissey, “If Orange Is the New Black, I Must Be Color Blind: Comic Framings of Post-Racism in the Prison–Industrial Complex,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 32 (2015): 303–17.
84. PCARE, “Fighting the Prison–Industrial Complex.” For example, several scholars have found in the controversial case of Aileen Wuornos, a queer Florida prostitute who was executed in 2002 for murdering several men, an important, if tragic, site for study. See Bryan J. McCann, “Entering the Darkness: Rhetorics of Transformation and Gendered Violence in Patty Jenkins’s Monster,” Women’s Studies in Communication 37 (2014): 1–21; Kyra Pearson, “The Trouble with Aileen Wuornos, Feminism’s ‘First Serial Killer,’” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4 (2007): 256–75; Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart, “Crime and the Gothic: Sexualizing Serial Killers,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 13 (2006): 1–18.
85. Enck and McDaniel also make the important observation, as we do in the previous section regarding prison pedagogy, that such oral histories are unavoidably implicated by their entrenchment in metanarratives regarding crime, personal responsibility, and womanhood. Suzanne Marie Enck and Blake A. McDaniel, “‘I Want Something Better for My Life’: Personal Narratives of Incarcerated Women and Performances of Agency,” Text and Performance Quarterly 35 (2015): 57. Also see McCann, “Holding Each Other Better.”
86. Caroline Joan Picart, “Rhetorically Reconfiguring Victimhood and Agency: The Violence Against Women Act's Civil Rights Clause,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6 (2003): 97–125; Jennifer K. Wood, “In Whose Name? Crime Victim Policy and the Punishing Power of Protection,” NWSA Journal 17 (2005): 1–17. Also see Leigh Goodmark, A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System (New York: New York University, 2011); Suzanne Marie Enck-Wanzer, “All's Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the News,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6 (2009): 1–18; Victoria Law, “Against Carceral Feminism,” Jacobin, 17 October 2014, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/against-carceral-feminism/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
87. See, for example, Pearson, “The Trouble with Aileen Wuornos.”
88. See Courtland Milloy, “Black Women's Lives Matter, Too, Say the Women behind the Iconic Hashtag,” Washington Post, 19 May 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/black-womens-lives-matter-too-say-the-women-behind-the-iconic-hashtag/2015/05/19/61d57798-fe4c-11e4-8b6c-0dcce21e223d_story.html (accessed June 21, 2017).
89. PCARE, “Fighting the Prison–Industrial Complex,” 413–14.
90. Rebecca Shabad, “Obama Renews Call for Gun Control after Orlando,” CBS News, 18 June 2016, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-reiterates-his-call-for-gun-control-action-after-orlando/ (accessed June 21, 2017).
91. On the racially disparate impact of gun laws, see Benjamin Levin, “Guns and Drugs,” Fordham Law Review 84 (2016): 2173–226.
92. See “A Statement on New Orleans Pride Parade,” BreakOUT!, 19 June 2016, http://www.youthbreakout.org/content/statement-new-orleans-pride-parade (accessed June 21, 2017).
93. “Opposition to Safe Campus Act Continues (Update),” Inside Higher Ed, 16 November 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/16/opposition-safe-campus-act-continues-update (accessed June 21, 2017).
94. In recent years, many prison officials have sought to limit incarcerated individuals’ ability to engage in public commentary or maintain, even through non-incarcerated proxies, a social media presence. See George Lavender, “Pennsylvania's ‘Revictimization Relief Act’ Struck Down by Federal Judge,” In These Times, 1 May 2015, http://inthesetimes.com/prison-complex/entry/17898/pennsylvanias-revictimization-relief-act-struck-down-by-federal-judge (accessed June 21, 2017); Sarah Shourd, “Facebook Now a Place for Prisoners, Too,” The Daily Beast, June 4, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/04/facebook-now-a-place-for-prisoners-too.html (accessed June 21, 2017).
95. On negotiating the differences between speaking for and speaking with incarcerated individuals and their communities, see Jennifer Asenas et al., “Saving Kenneth Foster: Speaking with Others in the Belly of the Beast of Capital Punishment,” in Communication Activism: Struggling for Social Justice Amidst Difference, Vol. 3, ed. Lawrence R. Frey and Kevin M. Carragee (New York: Hampton Press, 2012), 263–90.