Bearing Witness to Injustice

Mechthild Nagel

pp. 281-290

in: Human Studies 30 (4), 2007.

Abstract

About 15 years ago, Professor Angela Davis gave a talk at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I vividly remember some aspects of her talk, which dealt with violence of incarceration, and overnight, practically, I became convinced of the virtue of abolitionism. Prof. Davis talked about her experiences in jail in New York City while awaiting the outcome of an extradition charge. She befriended other women prisoners who in turn taught her the tricks of “the crime school,” such as walking with a TV between one’s legs without being noticed by the guards. This vivid example kept me thinking about the question: what good comes out of prison? If prisoners don’t repent, as the Quakers imagined when they set up the modern prison experiment, and instead, they learn additional tricks of anti-sociality, why then should one uphold the seductive ideology that prison, if governed well, would contribute to the total rehabilitation of the errant person?