Perpetual Abolition in the Age of a Carceral Culture)
by La-Meik Taylor
When it comes to fighting against the traumatic effects of America's carceral system, most people think of the fight as removing prison and police institutions, or, they draw their attention to radically reshaping how these institutions function as a means of implementing change within society. The cries of families after bearing witness to the murder of their innocent loved ones by police officers, the pain carried in the bodies and souls of those broken by the criminal (in)justice system, and the performance of protestors in our city streets are evidence that speak to the need to abolish this carceral system. However, we must be careful not to limit our fight to particular places and locations.
In her book Prison Land, Brett Story describes the penetrating effects of the carceral system as acts that extend the walls of prison institutions. (#1) Story uses the term "carceral space" to capture the meaning of these acts and defines them as " sites and relations of power that enable and incentivize the systemic capture, control, and confinement of human beings through social structures of immobility and dispossession."(#2) In other words, our understanding of the carceral culture that we live in encompasses spaces and/or acts that subject human beings to oppressive conditions that should not juxtapose what happens inside against what happens outside of prison as separate and distinct problems.
Story's definition of Carceral space provides a framework that parallels what it means to be incarcerated for those confined within prison institutions and makes it applicable to the everyday life of those tasked with the burden of various social inequalities outside of prison. When communities lack adequate access to healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables, food deserts are no longer restricted to (BIPOC) communities, but also incarcerated citizens that lack access to the ability to buy healthy food products on commissary. (#3) A lack of food options has dramatic impacts on health that lead to an overall decreased quality of life. This is evident in the disparities of exposure to heart disease to (BIPOC) communities opposed to whites. Moreover, the police brutality and racial profiling that occurs in the city streets operates within prison institutions as well, its just instead of guns, correctional officers use their bare hands or nightsticks to commit their crimes. Here we see the pervasiveness of a carceral culture that illustrates incarceration as a mechanism of social immobility and deprivation on a wide-ranging scale. In this sense, felonies are merely additional disadvantages tacked to the ideologies driving the denial of humanity for particular groups of people; felonies exceed the scope of crimes and become intricately linked to the identity of non-whites.
This is why it is essential to view abolotion as a perpetual act steeped in radically reconstructing a world equitable for the lives of all people through alternative modes of knowledge and value making. By "perpetual abolition" I mean, not only linking the violence associated with the prison industrial complex (PIC) to abolition but the healthcare system, housing, employment, and any other identifiable source that subjects (BIPOC) people to carceral spaces. (#4) Books like We do this 'til we after Us by Mariame Kaba or Becoming Abolitionists by Derecka Purnell provide the foundation for my understanding of perpetual abolition as a means to broadening the scope and consistency to making abolition an applicable lens for understanding the carceral system and ways of destroying it through abolition in flux.
Abolishing the carceral system of slavery never came to an end: it just transformed into a multitude of fights that need to take place on various fronts, and once we accept this fact as true, our fight will begin to take a more effective shape.
(Footnotes)
(#1) Brett Story, Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neo liberal America; 2019©; the university of Minnesota press
(#2) Brett Story, Prison Land, pp.4
(#3) Commissary is the place where incarcerated citizens are able to buy food on a bi-weekly basis depending on the amount of money they earn through wages consisting of .14 cent an hour. Considering the effects that Covid has on the economy both global food insecurity and minimum wage are also problems that concern both incarcerated and free citizens through a carceral lens.
(#4). As referenced, my ideas for perpetual abolition were inspired by Mariame Kaba and Derecka Purnell. Thus, I would like to thank both Mariame Kaba and Derecka Purnell for writing passionately about an issue that not only affects us but entangles us in the tentacles of oppression.
(Notes about the author)
My name is La-Meik Taylor and I am a citizen incarcerated at Eastern Correctional Facility. I am student enrolled in Bard College's Bachelor degree program and on track to acquiring my B.A. degree in social studies this December. I view myself first and foremost as a human being, a father, a college student, mental health activist, friend, and the list goes on but we might be here forever if I continue, lol. I am 32years old, born on 11/24/89, and yes you guessed it, Sagittarius. I've been incarcerated for 8 going on 9yrs. This is not my first time in prison, but it is definitely my last. I was never consciously aware of what it meant to live because my life existed in broken shattered pieces. Today, however, I know that to live means to be supportive and empathetic of the life I share with others, and I will never stop living because of this. Thank you for taking the time out to listen. Enjoy your day.