How can we overhaul our societal system?

Reading Angela Davis this week really made me think about our ideas surrounding justice. As Davis states, “the prison has become a key ingredient of our common sense” and I think it has become a part of our understanding of the world. The way the prison industrial complex has been set up has made it such an integral part of our economy, sense of safety, and understanding of “good” vs “bad” citizens.

When we discussed if we could imagine a world without prisons, it was extremely difficult for me to do so. I think that the idea of prisons has become so engrained into every aspect of our being. I think we see it starting from when we are young children, and we are punished with “time-outs” – a time away from the larger “society” to think about what we did and make us not misbehave again. But, as I think most of us know, this rarely works as children misbehave again after time-outs, and often don’t understand why they are happening. I know when I was a child, my mother gave me one time-out (that I remember that is) and I cried through the entire thing. I don’t remember what I did, but I do remember that I hated being separate from everyone else and not being able to know what was going on around me. That may not be the best example, but I think that prisons are not effective solutions to stop people from committing crimes. Instead we need to look at the root of social problems and find ways to address them there.

Angela Davis’ ideas reminded me of readings of Foucault I have done in the past where Foucault discusses how schools, hospitals, and prisons are all set up the same way. Everything in rows, everyone labelled with numbers. Thinking about this shows how we are conditioned to be able to move from one place to the next and back again. So, if we really want to overhaul the prison industrial complex, we would have to do a complete overhaul of our entire system. Our entire society would have to be reorganized not according to numbers, and reducing to people to what they have done but who they are. It seems like a noble project, but one I’m not sure could happen easily, or in our current societal context.

I am curious what people think about the possibility of a form of justice that is not set up around separating the non-normative individuals from the “rest of us?” How can we (if it is even possible) overhaul our entire societal system?

This is on a complete side note, but I am also curious how people feel about major companies involved in the prison industrial complex (for example, I am thinking of Aramark) also being involved on our campuses, places we consider to be spaces of social transformation.