Indianapolis Peace & Justice Center Journal, v. 10, no. 01, 1992-01

              INDIANAPOLIS
PEACE & JUSTICE
JANUARY 1992
VOLUME X NO.1
Imprisonment as a Peace Issue
With the lowering of Cold War tensions, fear of crime, especially drug crime, has replaced fear of Communism as the major
impetus for increasing institutions of violence as methods of
social control. "Getting tough on crime" has
become as much a bipartisan consensus as
"opposing Communist expansion," probably
with as dangerous an outcome.
The dynamic of the arms race has been
based on fear—build more bombs because
the other side is building more bombs. The
system depends on an enemy. The expansion
of the prison system works in a similar way—
fear of crime is assuaged by the false promise
of deterrence. Communities become dependent on prison jobs in the same way many
communities have been held hostage to military contracts. We end up much less secure
than when we started, just as the arms race
brought less, rather than more, security.
Recent historical studies have suggested
that wars often occur as a reaction to domestic
needs, particularly the politicians' need to distract the populace
from pressing domestic problems. Politicians today see the war
on crime as an opportunity to distract people from the root causes
of crime.
War uses nationalism to dehumanize the enemy. The Russians
(or Germans or Japanese or Vietnamese) can be killed with
impunity because of some evil in their race or system. Similarly,
prisons create a class of criminals who are perceived as less than
human and so must be caged and isolated from society. Prisons
are among the most racist of American institutions, with African-
Americans and Native Americans being imprisoned at a rate
completely out of proportion to their numbers in the population,
even when considering only persons convicted of the same type
of crime. While the imprisonment rate in the United States is high
(recently passing the Soviet Union to move into second place
behind first-place South Africa), the rate for black Americans is
even higher than that of black South Africans.
If truth is the first casualty of war, civil
liberties are a close second. The war on drugs
is producing multiple threats to our civil
liberties—involuntary drug testing, military
involvement in law enforcement, and erosion of the Fourth Amendment. Prison specifically contributes to the erosion of
civil liberties in its concentration of power.
Outside dissent over prison policies can be
short-circuited by denying the public access
to information about what is going on in the
name of security. A recent trend in prisons,
begun at Marion Federal Prison, is the use of
long or indefinite periods of solitary confinement as a means of behavior modification for prisoners perceived to be threats to
the smooth functioning of the institution. This "prison within a
prison" is well-established at Fort Madison; one prisoner has
been sentenced to 68 years of solitary.
Finally and fundamentally, imprisonment is a peace issue
because prisons are based on violence. Legal state kidnapping
not only leads inevitably to abuses, it is abusive in its very nature.
While a small percentage of those currently in prison present a
physical threat to society and need to be confined, most prisoners
could be rehabilitated if nonviolent, positive methods of dealing
with crime were used, including restitution, treatment of drug/
alcohol abuse in settings that lead to taking responsibility, and
community service.
The best way to fight crime is to prevent it. Fighting poverty
continued on page 5
This Month...
Focus on prisons and imprisonment as a peace and justice issue.
pages 4-11
A Visit to Ameriyeh Shelter
page 12
U.S. Church Groups Speak Out
on Israeli Settlements
page 13
Visions of a Just Peace
page 18