Collective Memories of the War on Drugs in New York City: Toward a Discourse of Responsibility and Victimhood

• In Event: 600 - Section on Crime, Law and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Constructing Crime and Victimhood

Abstract

In the age of mass incarceration, the imprisonment of black people affects entire families and communities throughout the U.S. Through a three-part study (a pre and post individual interview and a focus group), I investigate the multiple memories of formerly incarcerated black people. They have their autobiographical memory of their lives pre and post incarceration and all that entails, life in ghettos ravaged by the War on Drugs, and in prison. They then confront more distant memories of difficult pasts such as slavery, Jim Crow, and other events in African American history disseminated through public and popular discourses. They also encounter alternative memories, communicative memories, via their families, neighborhood, and incidentally in prison; the discussion and conversation one might engage in provide a interpretative frame to evaluate one’s own or others’ memories. In sum, I explore how this group of people navigates these different public, private and official memories whether and how they converge and diverge. I find that even though these men take responsibility for their criminal behavior, their autobiographical memories describe a social environment in which they had limited resources and choices to achieve agency and mainstream goals. By contrast, during the focus groups their responsibility narrative remains, but they also critically and reflexively discussed the cultural and collective memory of slavery, Jim Crow, and made connections with the War on Drugs and mass incarceration.

Author

• Vanessa Lynn, State University of New York Stony Brook