This week on CounterSpin: The US locks up more people than any other country, in a criminal justice system whose racial and class biases are demonstrated, and whose entrenchment in the economy is highly problematic. As prison unrest sparks around the country, highlighting conditions that shock the senses, many would like to reopen a conversation about the purposes of incarceration…for individuals, and for society. But it’s difficult to have an informed conversation when a key ingredient—public knowledge of what happens inside prisons and jails—is missing.
Prisons are shielded from public view on purpose, and journalists have to work hard for access when it’s possible at all. The result is a media landscape that pairs relative silence about prison life with an absurdly outsized focus on crime—certain kinds of crime; it hardly encourages compassion for those who wind up behind bars, or even an accurate understanding of who they are.
The question of public access to the country’s prisons is the subject of a recent article on TheConversation.com by Heather Ann Thompson. Thompson teaches at the University of Michigan in the Afro-American and African Studies and History departments, and in the Residential College. She wrote the book Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City and, more recently, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history for this year.
We spoke with Heather Ann Thompson about “What’s Hidden Behind the Walls of America’s Prisons,” this week on CounterSpin.
Transcript: Access is About Knowing How to get the Future Right
Plus a special look back at coverage of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which occurred—or didn’t—53 years ago on August 5.
How can private for profit prisons even BE in America? How can Prisons for profit with guaranteed bed numbers to be filled—-how is this even Constitutional? Bernie Madoff Made off with the money and so did a lot of others who are not in jail. Does Ferguson, MO still depend on locking up the poor and compounding fees to pay for city goverment? Why can AT & T and others make big money on prison phone calls? Why are companies paying for cheap prison labor to make American products and yet when the prisoners get out the jobs that they could do on the outside are still being done by locked up prisoners. This seems insane in a world of imploding jobs. This couldn’t happen in a real democratic republic——-and yet very often the real criminals, corporate and govermental just keep lying and stealing……..things were getting like this in that last big revolution in 1789——-and as climate change makes living harder and food and water less available to more and more————-what, oh soothsayers of government do you think will happen——–when human life is so devalued, what government leaders, makes you think that starving people will not treat you in the same way? The People are becoming les miserables——” the center cannot hold and anarchy is loosed upon the world…..” Do your job government because this future world will not be a happy one for any..