May 27, 2022
Welcome to the University of Oklahoma Carceral Studies Consortium Newsletter. The Carceral Studies Consortium strives to build a community for intellectual exploration that includes faculty, staff, graduate students, community members, practitioners, and organizers.

Carceral Studies is concerned with the independent function and nexus of the political and social systems that organize, shape, sustain, and entrench practices of punishment, surveillance, incarceration, and harm.
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Featured Consortium Opportunities
The People’s Garden at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center Seeks New Outside Sponsor 

The People's Garden at MBCC is led and run by women who are incarcerated in Oklahoma, in support of food sovereignty at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in McCloud, Oklahoma. 
  
Outside Sponsor Responsibilities: 
A badged DOC volunteer (or willingness to become a badged volunteer) to act as an advocate for the needs of The People's Garden at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center (MBCC). The position requires strong interpersonal skills, and the ability to communicate effectively across disparate groups (women who are involved in the program, an Inside Sponsor and other staff at MBCC, outside volunteers, potential donors, etc.). This includes creation, delivery, and regular follow-up on official DOC donation request forms, and coordination with a network of volunteers to support social media fundraising as well as seed, plant, and supply deliveries. 
  
The women have already created a thriving garden thanks to their commitment to their own food sovereignty, and financial support from our community. They have high hopes of continuing these successes by implementing monthly meetings at MBCC with the inside and outside sponsors, and spreading the hope and wellness that they themselves are experiencing even further throughout Oklahoma's prison system. 
  
Those interested should contact carceralstudies@ou.edu 
Today's News
Sue Ogrocki / Associated Press
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt recently signed a bill that would ban abortion starting at fertilization. The only exceptions to the ban would be in cases where the mother's life would be in danger or if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. The bill currently holds the stipulation that its enforcement depends on the policing efforts of private citizens rather than state officials, which allows the law to operate outside of the regulations of Roe v. Wade. Upon signing, Stitt justified his desire to shorten the window for abortion by stating that “from the moment life begins at conception is when we have a responsibility as human beings to do everything we can to protect that baby’s life and the life of the mother.” Nancy Northup, the Center for Reproductive Rights president and chief executive, believes Stitt’s decision will be the “beginning of a domino effect that will spread across the entire South and Midwest if Roe Falls. Right now, patients in Oklahoma are being thrown into a state of chaos and fear. That chaos will only intensify as surrounding states cut off access as well.”
Erre Galvez
The federal Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) claims to be an initiative that “places inmates in realistic work environments, pays them prevailing wages, and gives them a chance to develop marketable skills that will increase their potential for rehabilitation and meaningful employment on release.” These programs include agricultural labor for nonprofit organizations such as hospitals and schools. Still, critics of these initiatives, like H. Claire Brown, believe that these efforts remain just as exploitative as for-profit incarcerated labor due to the garnishing of wages. Programs like PIECP boast average compensation rates for their incarcerated populations that are higher than the federal minimum wage. However, incarcerated individuals in these programs across the nation might see up to 80 percent of their wages garnished from their checks. For example, in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, the state Department of Correction in Idaho kept 25 percent of workers’ total gross pay for “room and board” while taking another 31 percent for “victims’ programs.” Idaho also passed legislation for an Agriculture Work Program, which classified incarcerated individuals as “trainees” who cannot receive workers’ compensation or unemployment insurance.  
EWG
A recent study found that early life lead exposure to private water wells increases the likelihood of juvenile delinquency. Although the connection between lead exposure and juvenile delinquency has been heavily researched, the inclusion of private wells refers to water sources that are usually not regulated or tested to the same degree as public water sources. According to Jacqueline MacDonald Gibson, a professor at Indiana University, the results of their study are “relevant to the 44 million U.S. residents relying on private well water.” Net of factors such as income, race, and community demographics, Gibson found that “children relying on private well water are 21 percent more likely to develop any delinquency and have a 38 percent increased risk of serious delinquency.” The study had even more harrowing results for minority populations as “Black children had a nearly 30 percent greater chance of being reported for delinquency, compared to white kids of the same economic status in similar neighborhoods.” The authors of the study recommend changes to infrastructure when applicable and household water filters for more rural communities, which could offset millions per youth diverted from the criminal legal system.   

Jamiel Law
The “superpredator theory,” coined in the 1990’s, labeled potential offenders as radically impulsive, violent, and without conscience. The courts utilized the theory to dole out increased sentence lengths under the assumption that these “superpredators” were long-term threats to society. Although the theory's creator later denounced the label and apologized for its consequences, the lives of those sentenced amid the theory’s popularity are still imprisoned. However, the Connecticut Supreme Court has begun revisiting these sentences on the grounds that the outcomes were based on the “materially false information” and disproportionately punished Black children. Kristin Henning, a professor at Georgetown, supports the court's view by stating that when we look “back to cases from the 1990s, you won’t see too many judges use the word ‘superpredator,’ but it was definitely in the air. You can see it in the juvenile transfer laws that allowed young people to be tried as adults and in the long sentences many teenagers got. They all stem from that same idea that Black children must be feared and controlled.” Advocates of law and racial justice, like James Forman Jr. and Kayla Vinson, recognize that the damage done in the “hyperpunitive 1990s” is irreparable but are hopeful that more courts will begin reversing these harsh punishments. 
Featured Scholarship
Please share recent research you would like to see featured, including your own!
Send it to carceralstudies@ou.edu
ABSTRACT: There is a large body of research that examines the impact of visitation on the likelihood of recidivism among released state prisoners. That research reveals that receiving any visits, and a greater number of visits, reduces the likelihood of recidivism. However, whether the recidivism-reducing effect of visitation operates within the jail setting remains unclear. Using data from a Florida jail, the current investigation examines the association between visitation and recidivism among a cohort of releases (N = 6,565). Analyses also consider the extent to which the frequency of visits impacts the likelihood of recidivism. Findings from a series of logistic regression models reveal that inmates who received visits were no less likely to recidivate than their counterparts. Yet, among inmates who were visited, those receiving more frequent visits were less likely to recidivate. This departs from existing visitation research and underscores the importance of directing research attention to local jails. 

ABSTRACT: Policing is a high-risk occupation that can cause a myriad of psychosocial problems to its workers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, officers have experienced increased rates of anxiety around contracting the virus, and these fears have been mirrored by their families, due to the largely unknown nature of the virus and mounting reports of police deaths across the world. Using data from 18 police officer interviews from a range of roles and forces in early summer 2020, this paper explores officer experiences of policing the pandemic, the emotional labour involved, and the detachment and displacement of anxiety and fear of working a global pandemic with little support from management.
ABSTRACT: Drawing on interview data with over 50 male former prisoners in Ontario, Canada, we examine male ex-prisoners’ narratives of change within prison settings. Specifically, we focus on how ex-prisoners talk about change to self and their persona, as they reflect back on both their pre-prison selves and the ways they believe prison changed them. We find that these ex-prisoners described prison as a time where they developed a more general sense of positive change. Ex-prisoners described how prison living made them “calmer,” “stronger,” and more “patient” overall. These descriptions stand in tension with the overall hostility of prison environments where prisoners are forced to focus on survival and basic well-being as they navigate the risks and threats of prison living. Overall, in this article, we seek to contribute to emerging discussions on positivity within prison settings, acknowledging that studying the more positive impacts of prison is a delicate yet important endeavor necessary to help better understand the experiential complexities of punishment. 

EXCERPT: In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States built an enormous infrastructure for community treatment: more than sixty-five thousand beds in halfway houses and similar small-scale residential facilities. By promising to displace prisons and to establish forms of intervention that were less expensive, less restrictive, less dependent on institutional confinement, more effective in rehabilitation, and more humane, halfway houses became linchpins of criminal and juvenile justice systems, drug and alcohol treatment, and other court-ordered interventions. Nationwide zeal for community treatment caused the number of correctional halfway houses to explode from fewer than twelve in 1960 to more than two thousand in 1978. That year, more than two hundred thousand people spent time in residential treatment facilities, as common a fixture of 1970s American life as roller-skating rinks. The total capacity of all U.S. halfway houses rivaled the number of prison beds in California, New York, and Texas combined. 
  
Updates, Events & Opportunities
Carceral Studies Graduate Student Fellowship

Application Deadline Extended

The Carceral Studies Consortium offers an outstanding graduate student with an interest in advancing Carceral Studies a 12-month, .20 FTE position (8 hours per week). This CSC Graduate Student Fellow serves as the student representative on the Carceral Studies Board of Directors, as well as provides critical support for CSC initiatives throughout each academic year (July 1 to June 30). Applications will be accepted until the position is filled, with priority consideration given to applicants who apply before June 15, 2022. 
OU Libraries and Carceral Studies Consortium Assemble “Racial Capitalism” Library Guide 

In a collaborative effort between OU Libraries and the Carceral Studies Consortium, a library guide on “Racial Capitalism” is now available for all students, staff, and faculty. Racial capitalism contends that racist oppression is central to how capitalism operates. Racial subjugation is not one specific manifestation of a larger capitalist system, but rather, capitalism itself is a racial system. The guide includes resources (written, audiovisual, and contacts) for information about the carceral state, crimmigration, and race and labor.  

ABOUT
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The Consortium Newsletter will offer a roundup of a few selected articles that reflect today’s news, organizing, and thinking related to the carceral state. We understand that freedom work is built on education and engagement. Education requires an understanding of contemporary issues informed by their historical context. We hope that these curated articles will help you analyze the issues that we face and understand the community that we strive to construct.

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Land Acknowledgment

The University of Oklahoma is on the traditional lands of the Caddo Nation and the Wichita & Affiliated Tribes. This land was also once part of the Muscogee Creek and Seminole nations. It also served as a hunting ground, trade exchange point, and migration route for the Apache, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and Osage nations. Today, 39 federally-recognized Tribal nations dwell in what is now the State of Oklahoma as a result of settler colonial policies designed to confine and forcefully assimilate Indigenous peoples.
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The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution. ou.edu/eoo