This website is currently set up to reflect an effort to respond to one thread of “What if…?“: What if we lived as though everyone deserved basic liberty and humane treatment? What can we learn from a more abolitionist-focused lens on history and world-building? And, for anyone interested: what can we learn from Jewish traditions around these topics?
I am writing the words on this particular (“Addressing Carcerality”) page on the 100th day of the current stage of US government. Yesterday (Apr 28), while I was in the midst of working on some of this website’s reorganization, the White House confirmed that a military coup is imminent, or at least expected (See “Strengthening and Unleashing….” executive order‘s declared military intentions.) was confirmed the White House yesterday. Perhaps this particular intention will be stymied somehow. (The legalities of this particular pronouncement, like that of so many recent “orders,” are unclear, as is the import of what “legal” will mean in practice.) Even if this particular order does not succeed, however, very soon very few of us in the US will have the luxury of considering carcerality someone else’s problem.
…Meanwhile, the Jewish calendar is in the midst of the journey from Passover, the festival of “freedom,” to Shavuot, the festival of Torah-giving — a time many Jews are already focused on issues around Liberation (on Jewish time)….
I chose the label “addressing carcerality” to reflect the urgency of addressing needs of those currently suffering inside the carceral system while also attending to the wider systems of carcerality around us. Some definitions below. I am no expert, but in the spirit of that “What if…?” — “things we’re willing to offer and suggest” — I am sharing what I have learned and a few connections I have made.
Links to organizations, books, and other resources for learning about and addressing carcerality, mostly focused on the U.S.
Blog posts and other materials on carceral systems and related learning plus previous interview series, “Conversations Toward Repair.”
For those interested: Jews, Judaism, and Carcerality
Definitions
CARCERAL: of, relating to, or suggesting a jail or prison
Pronounced: KARSS-uh-ruhl. Merriam-Webster notes the word’s relationship to incarcerate and incarceration, adding: “Carceral has always been the rarest of the group, but its use has increased significantly since the turn of the current century, most often within academic or legal contexts.” (My print OED says first use 1563; on-line OED and Merriam-Webster say 1570).
CARCERALITY: societal operations or systems relating to incarceration: criminalization, policing, surveillance, parole
Pronounced: karss-uh-RAL-uh-tee. Definition from students at Purdue University.
CARCERAL CREEP: process through which “anti-violence movements have been increasingly conscripted to bolster the violence of policing and punishment” (No More Police: p.92, citing M. Kim, full citations below)
CARCERAL GEOGRAPHY:
Ruth Wilson Gilmore has been teaching “Carceral Geography” for decades. Interviews and background on Abolition Geography. An academic review that I found clear, concise, and useful, and a 2022 article on the “problem of innocence” — “Human sacrifice is the central problem that organizes the carceral geographies of the prison-industrial complex.” Interview at On Being 2023: “Where life is precious, life is precious.” Synopsis of her career.
Citations
Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie. No More Police: A Case for Abolition. The New Press, 2022.
Mimi E. Kim. “The carceral creep: Gender-based violence, race, and the expansion of the punitive state, 1973-1983,” Social Problems 2020 (article via Academia.edu). See also INCITE! and Creative Interventions
Virginia Avniel Spatz 