When I knocked on the door at 7.15 that morning Anura was still asleep. Anura, aka the frog, is two, and his godless father was in prison. It was the first day any of us could visit Thomas, ((I have a car, and in a crisis situation I like nothing better than I really long to-do list, so I’d gotten myself approved first.)) and I wanted him to be able to see his godless son.
The visit didn’t start until 8.30, but Rimutaka prison is half an hour’s drive from Wellington and I was told to get there half an hour early. So Anura’s mother woke him up, and I strapped a grumpy, sleepy baby into his carseat. We talked about the visit on our way up, me and Anura. “We’re going to visit Thomas” I said; “Yeah” he said”. “He’s in prison” I said; “Yeah” he said. But mostly I just drove.
I’d heard that you could take property (which is corrections lingo for stuff) into the prison while you were visiting. I had my bag of baby stuff in one arm and my bag of prisoner stuff in the other as we went from the visitor’s carpark to the gatehouse. We were a little late, and he was walking really slowly so I slung him on my hip, with my two bags. “Takahe” said Anura – although actually it was a Pukeko.
When we got to the gatehouse it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to take anything in – everyone was putting everything they had into lockers. So I did too and we were the last to go through the metal detector. “One at a time” the guard said – so I sent the baby through first. Neither of us set off the metal detector – I’d worn my black pants rather than my jeans to make things easy. After searching my bag he let me take my nappies and a museli bar down to visiting. I wouldn’t let Anura walk to visiting, but carried him instead – I wasn’t going to cut into our hour. ((that’s the guard’s job))
When we got there the guard made me go back and leave my bag in the entranceway. I could see everyone else hugging their prisoner, but I couldn’t see Thomas. The guard told me that they would get him and I should sit down.
Visits at Rimutaka were in a prefab – bigger than the ones at school – but the same basic shape. In one corner was a small fenced in area – like it should have been for children to play in, but there were no toys.
Then Thomas was there in a bright orange Guantanamo bay jumpsuit and I was hugging him and he was OK. The next fifty minutes weren’t how we’d normally talk, and not just because the guards would come over and tell him to put his feet on the floor. Although when Anura got bored (even a prison visit hour is a long time for a two year old) he came over and grabbed my face – just like he would have in any other conversation (although he’s a better talker now so when I wasn’t paying attention to him yesterday he just said “Stop Talking”).
Prison visits are too short – they tell you it’s over and you try and get one last hug, and say one last thing, and then another last hug, and then it really is over.
The prisoners were taken away and we were sent to the entrance way. They don’t let you out of the visitors centre right away. While waiting in the I got a nappy from the bag they hadn’t let me take in. Anura had needed changing for a while. I put my hand under his head as he lay down and changed his nappy just outside the door to the visitors centre – there was nowhere else.
Once they let us out we walked back to the gatehouse at two year old pace – he wouldn’t be carried.
But in the end, my experience was as borrowed as the baby. When I was waiting to visit the following week, ((A visit that never happened – but the way the corrections department at times seems deliberately set up to make your life worse is a topic for another post.)) I noticed a woman who visited every day. Later she pointed me out to a friend – “She’s with the terrorist” and glared at me. I don’t know what her problem with me was, but I would think part of it is that I was so obviously there temporarily.
I saw people I knew when visiting, and I wasn’t surprised to see them, although they were very surprised to see me. I don’t belong to any of the groups whose existence is criminalised or for whom jail is a life hazard. I visited five times in four different prisons before I saw other pakeha ((white NZer)) visiting pakeha.
So I don’t want to talk as if I know anything about having people you love in prison – because twenty-five days is nothing – people are on bail for months and are sentenced to years in prison. There are families and communities, poor and non-white families and communities, where people in prison isn’t a horror or an aberration, but a fact of life.
I kept coming back to how much I had, when working to support people in prison. Most important was that there were heaps of us doing this together. I was in a good position for other reasons I had a car, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have a child, English is my first language. While I love my friends who were arrested, their disappearance did not change the fabric of my life. I wasn’t trying to live without their income, or what they did around the house.
Despite all this trying to support people in prison took everything I was able to give. Even prison visiting – which was the high point of my weeks – is work, doubly so if done with a two year old. The work of having people in prisons, and keeping families and communities functioning while they’re away, is done by women. Female visitors outnumbered male visitors three or four to one. It was mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends and friends who were there, with or without kids, to do what needed to be done.
I’m not pointing out anything new when I say this makes prisons a feminist issue. The invisible work women do is even further from the public eye when it is to serve an institution designed to hide and conceal.
There are different ways of knowing. I’ve believed in prison abolition for years, but I believed it different on Tuesday 16 October when I stood outside barbed wire fences and thought about people on the other side. And I knew that prisons were a feminist issue when I changed a nappy at the entranceway to a prison visitors centre.
I’d love a post on prison abolition sometime; I’d always thought prisons were the most non-violent of the plausible alternatives, but you seem to have a different viewpoint.
I thought I was the only prison abolitionist. I never realised there were others.
What do abolitionists propose as the alternative for violent offenders?
All violent offenders would live in the community.
This contrasts with the situation as it is now, where most violent offenders live in the community.
Ignoring secondary effects, this should result in a small increase in the level of violent crime, proportionate to the percent increase from “most” to “all”. Civilization will not collapse.
But secondary effects are significant. One secondary effect often cited is deterrence, but deterrence is only really effective is the punishment is reasonably certain and follows more or less immediately from the offence, something which criminal justice fails to do. Contrary to popular belief, most people refrain from offending, not because they are deterred by the possibility of punishment, but because they are socialised into not offending.
Another secondary effect lies in the other direction: The “university of crime” effect of socialising prisoners into further offending.
There is also the opportunity cost. Money spent on prisons is money that can’t be spent on, say, high quality pre-school education, which is known to significantly reduce offending in later life.
Abolishing prison would eliminate all violent crime and oppression that takes place within prison today. The effect it would have on violence in general isn’t clear. There may be a small increase, but there could just as well be a reduction.
> Contrary to popular belief, most people refrain from offending, not because they
> are deterred by the possibility of punishment, but because they are socialised
> into not offending.
Speaking for myself, I doubt I would be tempted to steal if there was no threat of
punishment. But I know for a fact that I would not hesitate to beat up a thief,
cripple a mugger, or kill a rapist. Or rearrange the face of one who threatens me.
Frankly, I think you are a troll. If you are not, you are hopelessly naive. It is
enough if one person in a thousand decides that instead of working, he will take
other people’s property. The rest will organize to stop that tenth of a percent.
I can vouch for Daran not being a troll.
Plus I think it’s really hard to troll on a post which argues for prison abolition, by arguing for prison abolition.
I promise I’ll write about prison abolition – but I’d really like it if every post i wrote about prisons didn’t get distracted with ‘what about the murders’. To me that’s just an excuse to turn away from the reality of prison, by focusing on the few rather than the many I promise to have a post that will talk about the rapists and murders soon.
> I can vouch for Daran not being a troll.
After checking a few of Daran’s posts, I stand corrected and apologize for suspecting him. I should have done that before posting.
I still feel that he is naive in thinking that by removing the threat of punishment by the government you will end up with a society without threat of punishment. And I believe that a government would have to be very oppressive, worse than any in the Western World, to be less desirable than vigilantism.
> Plus I think it’s really hard to troll on a post which argues for prison abolition,
> by arguing for prison abolition.
I disagree. One could speak for prison abolition using inflammatory language or weak arguments, with the objective to provoke other posters into responding. Which I believe matches the most common definition of trolling.
Now, I think that there is a lot wrong with the US prison system, and I would be interested in a discussion of alternatives. But saying “Because few people are deterred by the threat of punishment, leaving the offenders in the community will not necessarily increase the violence in general” is such a weak argument that I felt stupid answering it.
Well, if you were writing about prison abolition for only non-violent crime, then I think people wouldn’t bring up violent crime. That’s not what your argument seems to be…
>>but I’d really like it if every post i wrote about prisons didn’t get distracted with >>‘what about the murders’.
“Let’s abolish prison because it’s horrible and unjust.”
“Ok. What about murders?”
Seems like the logical first question to me.
I remember reading an article about somewhere — Sweden, I think? — where they used an alternate system to prison. People convicted of crimes had to go live in a special dormitory for a while. They had a curfew, and everybody knew that they were being punished, and they were supposed to feel ashamed and to spend the time contemplating their mistakes, but for the most part they were allowed to come and go as they pleased. The author of the article seemed to think that it was working fairly well there; he didn’t say much about what happened to those who refused to participate.
I’m not convinced that the same kind of thing would work outside of a Scandinavian socialist utopia, though. Once you have established a culture of lawlessness (and that’s what we have here in the US, from the President on down), shame and ostracization aren’t really much of a deterrant to crime any more.
I think that it seems like the logical first question shows how little people know about the reality of prisons.
This post is about the way the work of having loved ones in prison is women’s work. It only mentions my support of prison abolition in passing. Maybe the post wasn’t very clear on this, I’m feeling my way into this, how to use my experience without claiming to be something I’m not. But I wonder if the work of having someone in prison is just that invisible.
Maia, I didn’t mean that it was the obvious response to your post. I meant that it was the obvious response to a desire to eliminate prisons. Yes they’re horrible. But if you eliminate them what do you do about the small, but not trivial, number of people that cannot, or will not, live peacefully within society.
I think I’m like a lot of people that don’t like prisons and don’t like the current system. But I don’t see a better alternative for the real service prisons provide by keeping the truly dangerous away from the rest of us.
If you have a different solution what is it? If you don’t, than it’s not prison abolition. It’s criminal justice reform.
just my $0.02
I don’t agree with the absolute abolition of prisons.
But I do quite agree with this. I think that there are a lot of offenses for which punishments other than prison would be both more productive and more effective. Save the prisons for the most incorrigible and violent.