The Pains of Mass Imprisonment

The pains of immigrant imprisonment

“…Sykes's classic work on prisoner psychology has implications for thinking about the contemporary pains of mass imprisonment in the United States. Benjamin Fleury‐Steiner and Jamie Longazel's (Fleury‐Steiner & Longazel, ) study of the contemporary “pains of mass imprisonment” “illuminates prisons today as both viscerally and systemically more painful institutions” (p.13; see also Simon, ). They ground that observation in two key interrelated shifts: an eightfold increase in the U.S. prison population since Sykes published his study and the rise of a decidedly racialized politics of mass imprisonment (Beckett, 1997; Gottschalk, ; Alexander, ).…”

“…From this perspective, mass imprisonment is oppressive not just in terms of racial disproportionalities in rates of imprisonment (Western, ), but also in terms of the conditions of confinement that marginalized prisoners confront. That is to say, a focus on penal oppression makes explicit how “prison life today is characterized by the assertion of dominance over marginalized groups in a setting where imbalances of power are especially pronounced and opportunities for meaningful resistance are dramatically curtailed” (Fleury‐Steiner & Longazel, , p. 7).…”

“…For Sykes (, the deprivation of liberty constituted confinement within the institution and confinement to the institution that limits communication with family and friends. Under mass imprisonment, there has been “a movement away from a proactive approach to corrections that, at least in theory, attends to the well‐being of prisoners … and toward a reactive model that focuses narrowly on containment ” (Fleury‐Steiner & Longazel, , p. 12, emphasis in original). Containment is especially visible in grossly understaffed prison healthcare systems that subject chronically ill prisoners to grossly substandard levels of care (e.g., Fleury‐Steiner, ; Fleury‐Steiner, ; Fleury‐Steiner, ).…”

“…As Human Rights Watch () reports, over two million transfers took place between October 2008 and April 2010. Dow (, p. 539) describes how many transfers are retaliatory (as are many abuses within civilian prisons, see Fleury‐Steiner & Longazel, ) and nontransparent. “In the course of transfers and processing into new jails,” he writes, “ ‘detainees’ essential legal paperwork commonly disappears, their personal property is stolen, and families lose track of their loved ones since the immigration agency explicitly disclaims responsibility for informing family of the unannounced moves.”…”

“…In reviewing this literature alongside findings from numerous reports issued by human rights organizations on the conditions of confinement in immigration prisons, we propose a more systematic way of attending to these institutional‐level harms. Specifically, we use a “pains of imprisonment” framework (Sykes, ; Fleury‐Steiner & Longazel, ) that brings scholarship on the conditions of mass imprisonment (e.g., Fleury‐Steiner & Longazel, ; Simon, ) into conversation with research on immigrant imprisonment. More broadly, we argue that immigration prisons constitute punitive and, indeed, “lawless spaces” (Cacho, ) that contribute to social oppression.…”