1. A thread on mainstream theories of incarceration - retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, restoration, incapacitation - which are gaslighting narratives that provide a smokescreen for racial capitalism:
2. Many critics say the American carceral system is based on retribution but I disagree. It's based on racial capitalism. All of the above principles - not just retribution - are in fact utilised to enforce a system of racial capitalism...
3. If you look at actual court cases, sometimes judges sentence someone to punish them; other times, they sentence someone "for their own good," because they "can't take care of themselves"...
4. These are two sides of the same coin: racialised others are seen as "uncivilised savages" who either deserve to be locked up or need to be "rehabilitated" by the state...
5. Of course, not everyone who is incarcerated is non-white, but the carceral system is based on this principle of white supremacy and still operates this way. (The same goes for the other sentencing principles, which are also subsumed under a racial capitalist agenda)...
6. Racial sentencing norms intersect with capitalism in that recruiting people into forced penal labour is a central pillar of the U.S. economy, which is why Angela Davis calls the American prison system a modern-day form of slavery...
7. Switching from "retributive justice" to "rehabilitation" won't do anything since all of these principles are simply used to rationalise American-style mass racial incarceration...
8. What WILL help is identifying the prison system as an apparatus of racial capitalism and trying to abolish it, along with its flimsy rationalisations. And here I'm basically just echoing Angela Davis...
9. The takeaway is that you can't talk about incarceration in America without talking about racial capitalism - that's a central tenet of prison discourse. Anything else is racial gaslighting.
10. #prison #abolition #incarceration #RacialCapitalism #Justice #AngelaDavis #capitalism #Marxism #gaslighting
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