The findings I share will be analyzed through an abolitionist framework and therefore this project does not recommend policy reform as an end goal. Rather it looks to offer immediate life-saving reform recommended by incarcerated people, while we plan long-term strategies for building a world without prisons. No amount of reform can salvage a system built off the enslavement and suffering of Black and Brown people. Instead of trying to reform modern slavery, we must use our imagination to create a new vision of what responses to harm look like. Inside and outside the prison, the existence of a prison industrial complex threatens the lives of Black and Brown people for simply existing. How many murders need to be televised for us to realize the prison industrial complex strategically normalizes Black and Brown people’s deaths?
Carceral violence begins before the prison, it begins the very moment police are given the power to arrest, surveil, carry arms, and simply exist. A nation built off the enslavement of people, on stolen land, can only exist through continuous violence and policing to maintain oppressive control. It can be daunting to contend with the realities of the cruelty of a world that is running on violent ideologies such as white supremacy, racism, capitalism, ableism, heteropatriarchy and more, but acknowledging this violence helps us know what we need to organize against. It also helps us build community with people who are also working to create a safer world for everyone. This research is done out of a place of love and solidarity to all of those who have lost their lives to carceral violence, communities grieving at the hands of the State, incarcerated people, abolitionist organizers, and people who want to build a safer, just, and liberated world together.
Iconic abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba puts it simply saying:
“People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food, and education for all? This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice. When the streets calm and people suggest once again that we hire more Black police officers or create more civilian review boards, I hope that we remember all the times those efforts have failed.”
Mariame Kaba, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
My abolitionist appeal to public health/health professionals and advocates:
Carceral violence is a public health crisis that must be addressed. As a person committed to public health, we (as a field) cannot distance ourselves from the preciousness of life. We cannot normalize state-sanctioned violence and death. We must reconnect ourselves to the care and humanity that public health necessitates so that we may be able to truly fight for a world where everyone has the freedom of health. May this project honor the fight for abolition and liberation. May it honor those who have lost their life at the hands of carceral violence. May it honor families and communities who have to live with this violence daily. There are enough academic papers and projects that discuss mass prisons, policing, and carceral violence with the sole use of statistics and a sense of emotional detachment. This project is one written with love and commitment to a liberatory world that is safe for all people. This project is an analysis of public health within prisons so that violence is not faced alone by incarcerated people. The normalization and neglect of prison health is a reproduction of carceral violence and to fight against it, we must know what to fight against. This paper is an interrogation of the use of health as a weapon within Alabama prisons.
PRISONS ARE A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS: ALABAMA PAVES THE WAY 