7 - From Rights to Revolution: Prison Activism and the Carceral State

Summary

“The ultimate expression of law is not order – it's prison. There are hundreds upon hundreds of prisons, and thousands upon thousands of laws, yet there is no social order, no social peace.”

– George Jackson

The explosion of prison unrest in many Western countries from the 1960s to the 1980s belies just how distinctive the U.S. prisoners' rights movement was. The movement's roots, leadership, relationship with state institutions, and the broader political environment it operated in distinguished it from prison activism in other countries. Most importantly, race was the crucible for the contemporary prisoners' rights movement in the United States but not elsewhere. The most significant race-related factors that shaped the U.S. movement of course included the deep and long-standing racial cleavages in the United States. Beyond this social characteristic of the United States were specific race-related political and institutional factors: the origins and development of the black nationalist, civil rights, and black power movements; and the central role of the courts and a discourse on rights in American political development. These factors help explain an ironic outcome. The United States gave birth to a prisoners' rights movement that was initially more powerful and significant than prison reform movements that emerged elsewhere at roughly the same time. But the U.S. movement developed in ways that helped create conditions conducive to launching the “race to incarcerate.