The prison industrial complex is predicated upon a long history of abuse and racism. The prison system is inherently flawed because it was built upon a flawed foundation. Sometimes we try to justify the prison system, saying that it is a place of rehabilitation, that it provides essential services, that it keeps us and the people who are imprisoned safe. The ideas of rehabilitation and safety are convenient ways to close our eyes to the reality of a system that has been created to carry out war against people of color or anyone who does not fit into the social norms of our society. This allows us to justify, to pretend that we do not see the crimes that are being committed right in front of us and it perpetuates and sustains the idea of who is allowed to be human. It allows the state to carry out abuses against people, such as sexual assault and rape, and justify it because they are prisoners. The prison industrial complex has set up a system where institutionalized sexual assault is okay and this comes back to the tactics of war. When rape is committed it is about domineering and asserting power, taking away the will of not only the person but also of the community that surrounds them. Looking specifically at how women within the prison industrial complex are treated, there is the constant use of sexual assault as a tool to take away power and it starts at the very beginning when police make arrests.
In 2017, Anna was arrested by two police officers, who then proceeded to handcuff her and take terms raping her in the back of their police car. This raised questions about a loophole in the law, which according to the Buzzfeed article, “there is no law specifically stating that it is illegal for police officers or sheriff’s deputies in the field to have sex with someone in their custody”. As a resident of New York State, this outraged me and the fact that 35 other states do not have any laws against that, concerns me, as well. This case signaled an inherent problem with the justice system, it incorporates and perpetuates the system of institutionalized rape. There can not be any consent in this scenario and by having the perpetrators directly employed and responsible for the safekeeping of our society, is allowed or at least, passively told that this is allowable. Anna later goes on to talk about how she feels unsafe now in her neighborhood, which is low-income and heavily police influenced. The presence of police is not used to assure safety, but rather to create an environment of fear. There is an inherent message being sent about institutionalized violence that is being sent to her and other members of her community. It’s a message of, if we see you as a criminal, you are no longer human, you no longer have rights.
Angela Davis in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete, illustrates how this implicit communication that sexual assault is allowable is seen within the prison system itself. She says, “As activists and prisoners themselves have pointed out, the state itself is directly implicated in this routinization of sexual abuse, both in permitting such conditions that render women vulnerable to explicit sexual coercion carried out by guards and other prison staff and by incorporating into routine policy such practices as the strip search and body cavity search”. Not only is sexual abuse a problem outside of the police committing these crimes, it’s the whole of the institution itself. The strip search, which Davis goes over in her book, (the process can be seen here) is demoralizing and mirrors sexual assault. Not only are guards and prison staff able to use and abuse the people who are imprisoned bodies, but they are also mandated by the system itself to carry out invasive procedures that mirror sexual assault. The whole system is used as a tool to intimidate and terrorize people who are imprisoned.
The idea of a prison system as a place of rehabilitation does not make sense when it has been built upon procedures meant to harm, terrorize, and abuse. The state itself has created an institution where it is permissible to use power to intimidate and control, seen perhaps most brazenly in the expected and permissible use of sexual assault against those accused of a crime.
Literature cited:
Davis, A. Y. Are Prisons Obsolete. Seven Stories Press. 2003.
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