Unlocking the Prison Culture

Stetson professors leading discussion

The state of New York spends more than $50,000 to house a prisoner – about the same cost to “send someone to Harvard,” said Andy Eisen, Ph.D., Stetson University adjunct instructor of History.

In pursuing a higher education, most Stetson students are not faced with reality of prison life. However, in the book Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Times, author James Kilgore asserts that learning about the prison system is an education about inequality in America.

Stetson professors leading discussion
Stetson University professor Jelena Petrovic talks about the social structure and impact of the prison culture during a discussion in the Cross Cultural Center. Photo by Stetson Professor Andy Eisen

With more than two million people currently incarcerated, the United States makes up 25 percent of the world’s prison population, despite only making up 5 percent of the global population, according to Kilgore.

“That’s quintupled since the 1980s,” added Eisen at an event entitled “Understanding Mass Incarceration” at Stetson’s Cross Cultural Center on Nov. 21. He traced the historical roots in Nixon’s Law and Order society, Reagan’s War on Drugs, and Clinton’s Crime Bill, and said “the ‘tough on crime’ political rhetoric emerged as a response to civil rights activists.”

“The message of the book speaks to how fragmented we are in society,” said Jelena Petrovic, Ph.D., Stetson assistant professor of Communication and Media Studies.

In a group-read sponsored by the Community Education Project, a coalition started by Stetson University professors, including Eisen and Petrovic, students were invited to bridge that fragmentation by learning about the implications of prison culture.

“Prisons shifted from being a place of rehabilitation to punishment. You do the crime, you do the time. Lock them up and throw away the key,” said Eisen. “But when billions of dollars go to prisons instead of general welfare, what do people do when they’re hungry?”

Kilgore states that prisons were a means of addressing more than just crime itself, but also poverty, race, sexuality and gender.

Pamela Cappas-Toro, Ph.D., an assistant professor of World Languages and Cultures, illustrated the powerful effects of media and government.

“There’s the concept of the welfare queen that criminalizes a specific person on the idea that they are exploiting the system,” said Cappas-Toro. “But these are just constructions. Media is powerful, playing these images over and over until it’s normalized — and criminalized.”

Children are criminalized through juvenile facilities, and unequal policing marginalizes communities, Petrovic and Eisen said, noting the difficulty for prisoners to get out of the system.

“After so many years, many prisoners go back,” said Petrovic. “They can’t work into certain businesses. They have to check a box.”

By learning more about the social mechanisms of mass incarceration, students are encouraged to gain insight on correctional facilities and the people in them. There will be another group read Tuesday, Nov. 29, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Cross Cultural Center on Bert Fish Drive.

-Veronica Faison