Political Life: Punishment, Power, and Civic Capacities in Prison

• In Event: Human Rights on and at the Margins

Abstract

Although much has been said about "social death" and "civil death" in the lives of current and former prisoners in the United States, scholars such as Avery Gordon (2004) assert that these kinds of negation are never complete. Rather, prisoners have a social life and possess important subjugated knowledge based on their experiences. Building on this framework, this paper thus examines the dynamics of civic and political life among young black men in a contemporary U.S. prison. The paper draws on interviews and long-term ethnography in a state prison with young black men between 18-34 years old. It focuses on these young people's disciplinary encounters and efforts to make social change while in prison, specifically how the authority structure responds to claims-making on the part of young men. Ethnographic focus is given to the following: (1) a young men's collective at the prison, which is organizing for more institutional resources for reentry and greater institutional recognition of race and culture as important assets for identity transformation; and (2) the logics of discretion, censorship, and rehabilitation at work in the exercise of power and control among the bureaucrats and structures of the prison. As a whole, the paper provides important ethnographic insights about the social change efforts very much alive within our nation's prisons, in addition to the critical dialogue those in prison have about issues of racial inequality and dignity within the carceral state.

Author

• David Jonathan Knight, University of Chicago