Intersectionality & The Prison Industrial Complex - Race - 10
Angela Davis’ Critique of Foucault’s Analysis
To treat racism as a contingent element of the criminal justice system results in part from
marginalisation in histories and theories of punishment.
Race needs to serve as an analytic category
In philosophy on imprisonment, there is a prevailing assumption that individuals are
punished because they commit crimes (and thus focus on the justification and function of
punishment).
Anti-racist analysis helps to challenge this association of crime and punishment and look at
the relationship between race and punishment.
It also helps to bring our attention to how the system is attendant to forms of labor that are
heavily influenced by prevailing ideologies and economic structures of racism…ditto to
gender.
Foucault leaves out race and gender in his analysis - Davis raises qs:
What are racial implications of Foucault’s analysis of power?
How should we consider racial and gender issues in the incarceration system?
How does race and gender construct the punishment system?
In leaving out these factors, we risk being unable to gain a full analysis and understanding
of the idea of power and control in terms of the punishment system.
Foucault gives an analysis of US industrial prison complex, but this extends beyond to
Europe and post-colonial when considering similar practices
incarceration historically and continues to play a pivotal role POC’s histories
people who were confined and imprisoned even beyond the prison system, for no reason
other than gender or race, are impacted
justification for punishment came from processes of racial association in leaving this
out of analysis, we cannot fully understand prison as a mode of punishment
What has become self-evident, is that the large majority of people in prison are POC and
there is also a gendered aspect to this
a type of naturalisation occurs
The fact that the majority of those imprisoned were white males, reinforces the
Enlightenment ideas regarding rights and autonomy i.e. that women and racial minorities
, did not have them and therefore could not have their rights or freedom taken away (so
they could not be imprisoned as it would not be a punishment) - prison institution
gendered as male
women’s prisons reformation of women back into the domestic sphere
rehabilitation and reformation was still directed towards traditional gender roles
aim = return deviant women to ‘housewife’ status
Punishment in Slavery
Most punishment for enslaved people was corporal as they were not seen as worthy of
reform. People of colour were seen as non-citizens and non-public subjects meaning their
communities were not regarded as being composed of individuals possessing rights and
liberties. It was therefore a category mistake to apply prison’s function of reform to them.
Critique of Foucault’s Analysis
Does not explain why vast majority of prisoners being POC is self-evident
although does allow for possibility that prison’s purpose is not to transform, but to
concentrate and eliminate politically dissident and racialised populations
Does not account for how enslaved black people were seen as without an immortal soul
Davis
Within institutions of slavery, it has itself not been generally understood as a form of
incarceration
Development of racialised forms of punishment, from conditions of slavery, coincided with
the emergence of the prison system
as white men acquired privilege to be punished in ways that acknowledge their
equality and liberty, punishment of black enslaved people was corporal, concrete,
specific
After Slavery’s ‘Abolition’
Explicit link between slavery and punishment was made:
US 13th Amendment chattel slavery is unconstitutional except as a punishment for crime
‘whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any
place subject to jurisdiction‘
Encoded within abolition of slavery in US constitution is the right to enslave people if you
commit crimes slavery authorised as punishment
restrictions of freedom are legitimised by the state
interconnection between slavery and freedom
lack of freedom as punishment
predominant institutions where slavery still exists is in prisons / carceral system both in US
Angela Davis’ Critique of Foucault’s Analysis
To treat racism as a contingent element of the criminal justice system results in part from
marginalisation in histories and theories of punishment.
Race needs to serve as an analytic category
In philosophy on imprisonment, there is a prevailing assumption that individuals are
punished because they commit crimes (and thus focus on the justification and function of
punishment).
Anti-racist analysis helps to challenge this association of crime and punishment and look at
the relationship between race and punishment.
It also helps to bring our attention to how the system is attendant to forms of labor that are
heavily influenced by prevailing ideologies and economic structures of racism…ditto to
gender.
Foucault leaves out race and gender in his analysis - Davis raises qs:
What are racial implications of Foucault’s analysis of power?
How should we consider racial and gender issues in the incarceration system?
How does race and gender construct the punishment system?
In leaving out these factors, we risk being unable to gain a full analysis and understanding
of the idea of power and control in terms of the punishment system.
Foucault gives an analysis of US industrial prison complex, but this extends beyond to
Europe and post-colonial when considering similar practices
incarceration historically and continues to play a pivotal role POC’s histories
people who were confined and imprisoned even beyond the prison system, for no reason
other than gender or race, are impacted
justification for punishment came from processes of racial association in leaving this
out of analysis, we cannot fully understand prison as a mode of punishment
What has become self-evident, is that the large majority of people in prison are POC and
there is also a gendered aspect to this
a type of naturalisation occurs
The fact that the majority of those imprisoned were white males, reinforces the
Enlightenment ideas regarding rights and autonomy i.e. that women and racial minorities
, did not have them and therefore could not have their rights or freedom taken away (so
they could not be imprisoned as it would not be a punishment) - prison institution
gendered as male
women’s prisons reformation of women back into the domestic sphere
rehabilitation and reformation was still directed towards traditional gender roles
aim = return deviant women to ‘housewife’ status
Punishment in Slavery
Most punishment for enslaved people was corporal as they were not seen as worthy of
reform. People of colour were seen as non-citizens and non-public subjects meaning their
communities were not regarded as being composed of individuals possessing rights and
liberties. It was therefore a category mistake to apply prison’s function of reform to them.
Critique of Foucault’s Analysis
Does not explain why vast majority of prisoners being POC is self-evident
although does allow for possibility that prison’s purpose is not to transform, but to
concentrate and eliminate politically dissident and racialised populations
Does not account for how enslaved black people were seen as without an immortal soul
Davis
Within institutions of slavery, it has itself not been generally understood as a form of
incarceration
Development of racialised forms of punishment, from conditions of slavery, coincided with
the emergence of the prison system
as white men acquired privilege to be punished in ways that acknowledge their
equality and liberty, punishment of black enslaved people was corporal, concrete,
specific
After Slavery’s ‘Abolition’
Explicit link between slavery and punishment was made:
US 13th Amendment chattel slavery is unconstitutional except as a punishment for crime
‘whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any
place subject to jurisdiction‘
Encoded within abolition of slavery in US constitution is the right to enslave people if you
commit crimes slavery authorised as punishment
restrictions of freedom are legitimised by the state
interconnection between slavery and freedom
lack of freedom as punishment
predominant institutions where slavery still exists is in prisons / carceral system both in US
