Beth Richie and the Abolition of a Prison Nation

Beth Richie’s lecture today was quite interesting. At first, I was quite lost in the use of her vocabulary, but I was able to understand her point of view and what she aspires to accomplish. It seems that her lecture circulated around the idea of the abolition of prison nation and the instigation of community resistance. She made her points obvious through tales of the degradation of minorities by policy and how some policies instated for the “good” of the people actually just widen the amount of people that can be jailed. That, for example, in this prison nation we live in, “enacting a loitering law [just] widens who can be jailed for standing” (Richie).

            In her book Arrested Justice Richie explains the building of prisons and the impact on black women. Two stories from her book that she mentions are very heartfelt and lead to the idea that women are being incarcerated unjustly because of their race and gender and that there is a white mail hierarchy. Tanya’s story, for example, got spun by the media as an ongoing labor strike, while in reality Tanya had ditched her young child in a dumpster as a result (most likely) from her environment. No one knew that Tanya had been raped by her uncle and was in an abusive (like) relationship, while also living with three people with criminal records. Nothing Tanya had gone through in her life was placed on paper and so the legal system had no way to see Tanya’s real reason for leaving her baby, yet she would still be scrutinized for her actions by the law.  Ms. B’s story deals with abuse by the police and the favoring of a white male over her for being an African American woman. In Ms. B’s case instead of being able to go to the police for help, they attacked her. In the end we saw how the prison nation is causing a severe injustice to the underprivileged communities. A few key facts Richie mentions toward a solution are: create alternatives of prison state; build stronger more radical connections with other coalitions; build our base following the leadership of those who are most affected.