História da troca de emails que originou o trabalho

Dear Steve,

I would like to read your full essay on abulicionism (The Need to Abolish the Prison System: an ethical indictment)

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Sep 9, 2012 at 1:02 PM, António Dores <antonio.dores@iscte.pt> wrote:
 

Dear Steve Martinot,

I share with you the desire to promote a society without prisons by restorative justice.  I am sociologist in Lisbon University, Portugal. I am a prison activist for 15 years who mostly makes record of prison inmate complains about what they think is useful for them to diffuse to State authorities, communication nets and public in general.

I am interested in discussing with you what you can do to attain such a goal.

I read yours “The Need to Abolish the Prison System: an ethical indictment”. I would like to comment on it.

a)      You are right when you write that there is no social movement looking for abolishing prisons. Without it, it would be only possible to resume our common goal by taking some power at State level to act. If fact we will need both bottom-up and top-down movements to attain that.  That´s a long and profound job.

b)      Prison systems are one of the things most globalized I can think of. So, your concern with USA prison system specific problems is not very useful to our common argument. In order to prove ethical need for abolish prisons we need to argue that even the best prison system one can think off  would be unethical. Or instance, northern European countries prison systems would be better empirical case to study. I heard that India as a very short number of prison inmates and as much as I imagine their prisons stinks. How can we manage to know better what is happening around the world.

c)       Several times you wrote about the sociological conclusions about what prisons are. I think social theory reinforces social stigmas through classification models it uses so frequently in unilateral use of a case study without knowing well what it means in broader social sense. I know sociological critical approaches to prisons. I do not know any sociological movement for societies without prisons. I do not think social theory to be an activist´s partner in that demand.

d)      You insist both the law and justice are criminal institutions and the need to enforce human rights. How to enforce human rights outside justice institutions? Do you really mean justice and trials in general or your mean criminal justice only, as part of criminal system?

If you think we can continue changing information about how to move head in order to gain partners for our common propose, please let me know. I will collaborate as I can.

I think there are many causes for the very fast growth of prison industry in the States and in the Western world as well as around the world. I mention what I can think off immediately:

a)      Another way, after slavery and segregations, to continue to stigmatize, explore and discriminate slaves descents;

b)      Improve and make it harder the social control for worker classes through prohibitionist policy against drugs, giving police a war to develop in its own;

c)       To brake the rule of law, occupying the main criminal investigation community with crimes without victim and distracting it from big crime, namely corruption and white color crimes (corrupt police, politicians and entrepreneur can join together as free of crime investigations nets to make money over land and poor people – locally – when big money speculate on credit system);

d)      To brake the rule of law by giving way power of doing fair justice  from police (Zero tolerance administrative system of controlling police activity) and judges community (using some of the mechanisms you mention in your essay);

e)      To open security public needs to capital exploitation, as prison private sector,

f)       Distract public opinion from the changing of dual work market to a neo-feudal society (99%, as say the occupy movements) with crime culture on news and on television;

g)      To develop social and personal insecurity as a tangible thing – showed by entertainment industry and news networks – to avoid system decadence explanations for justify such a growing social feelings across western world.

Should we write an appeal to activists around the western world and beyond to consider in their agenda the need to join prisoners their families and friends struggle for justice?

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Hi, Antonio,

Thank you for your comments. I hope this is the beginning of a good dialogue. Here are some of my thought on what you have written.

In the pamphlet, I actually make two arguments, one of which is global and the other specific to the US. The global argument is the analogy between prison and kidnapping, or more generally, between prison and a criminality of violence against the individual at a number of different levels. I don't care what society one is looking at, to imprison someone is to commit an act of violence against them.

But then, there is the specificity of the US situation. It is characterized, in my argument, by the participation of the prison system as a system rather than simply an act of violence in the structures of racialization (which are specific to the US; other countries may have different comparable structures) and in the ethos of white supremacy. That is, the prison system in the US must be understood as emerging from a society whose foundation was a slave state, and whose major form of organization at the community and class levels are racialized, that is, organized around racial oppression and segregation.

When you say that sociological theory deals with the specific but not with the aggregate, and that it has no real meaning for the activist, I agree with you entirely. That was the point of including a couple of arguments about sociology.

With respect to human rights, I do not think that any human rights can be gained or preserved within this system, whether one looks at the prisons, the judicial machine, the justice institutions, or capitalism. Human rights are foreign to every one of these levels of social organization. We need to step outside and away from these institutions, and build alternate political structures. From the bottom-up. In the US, it must not be a combination of bottom-up and top-down, because the only thing the "top" knows is how to coopt and destroy.

To your list of causes for the growth of the prison industry, I agree with what you say. They are all factors, but surface ones. Not superficial, but on the surface of society. But what I think we also have to look at is the underlying, foundational cultural structures that make something as horrendous as the present prison system acceptable to people. It is that cultural structure that is the real cause.

And yes, we should get all the people we can involved in this struggle which is not only a struggle for justice but a struggle for democracy as well.

So now tell me, how does any of what I have written pertain to Portugal, if at all?

Steve

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Sep 18, 2012 at 9:11 AM, António Dores <antonio.dores@iscte.pt> wrote:
 

Hi Steve,

I am a university professor. My background is sociology, I am 56 years old and form 15 years I work on spreading to Portuguese national authorities complaints of prisoners about their lives in prison. I have a lot of information about bad things happening in Portuguese prisons and I have an idea about what is the prison policy in Portugal.
a) Some of what happens happens only in Portugal. Most of the characteristics of prison system are the same everywhere. I would like to discuss and present those characteristics. It could be one way to work with you.
b) I join you in the goal of calling people to sustain the struggle to abolish prison system (and criminal justice as we know it). I think restorative justice is a really good perspective to oppose criminal justice. You could work together this topic, as well.
c) I developed a critical social theory (I call it Sociology of instability and its main concept is state of spirit) in order to help to support the cause of abolishing prison system. My argument goes like that: tabu is a natural feature of human specie. Prison is one way power systems abuse society, using tabu natural feature to hide power privilege an perversity. Society needs tabus and democratic societies should learn how to control tabu out of the hands of institutional power and criminal organizations.
I write in Portuguese. My English is not good. Never the less I have some web pages in English in order to attract collaborative work from angloworld. I hope you can be that inter civilization link I would like to pass through.
http://iscte.pt/~apad/estesp/ - please, find the links for English language. the texts do not reflect the actual state of the art of my work.

So:

1.       Are you available to work on a two Portuguese-English books on abolishing prison system all over the world?

2.       If so, as I hope, we need to build a workable environment to produce the two books as images of one another. Do you have an idea of what it could be? A blog is not easy to work. There are google applications or others (I do not know much about it). I hope you can decide on that. Otherwise I would ask for help at the university computer centre.

3.       I just finished a book on the subject (Prison secrets and freedom of speech is the title) and I prepare another one with new material. Could you read Portuguese? If not, I will have to translate the main questions and arguments for you.

4.       We could put together, side by side, your text and mine. Point by point, we would discuss what we think about each piece of argument, both yours and mine.

5.       In third and forth sites we begging to produce a new Portuguese-English text with the same new argument.

6.       Meanwhile maybe we can meet other partners to work with us, maybe in other languages as well.

What you think about the proposal?

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Dear Antonio,

I have been very busy with a number of writing projects, and I am just getting back to catching up.

One of the things that has emerged from different events I have been part of in the last couple of months is that of a publication center for writings of prisoners. You say that you have been documenting conditions in Portuguese prisons, and circulating this information. Does this include what prisoners themselves have been writing, as critiques of the prison system itself, of the society itself, and of the society as one that can support a prison system?

One of the ideas we are working with here is that the prisoners see various aspects of this society more clearly than we on the outside do, precisely because they are exposed to its power structures and dehumanization in the extreme and in the most direct manner, and thus, in seeing past that, see the sources of that dehumanization more clearly. This includes not only capitalist exploitation, and political power, but the culture and cultural structures that determine the specific forms that that political power takes.

In terms of the project you outline in your last letter, we would have to make a distinction between what imprisonment means in general, in order that it apply to all prisons in all societies, and what is specific to each cultural structure. When I asked you what there was in my essay on prison abolition that applied to Portugal, I did not have any generalization in mind, but rather where the intersection might be between the ethos of imprisonment that the US power structure adopts, and that in Portugal. It would not surprise me that there were none at all, and that the ethos of imprisonment in Portugal obeyed a different sense of power, and a different ethic of revenge. Those differences would have to be spelled out. I raise this because you propose two books, one in English and one in Portuguese, that would address the prison systems of both countries. I think it is a good idea, because it would fit into some of the thinking we are doing here. But we would have to approach it without assumptions.

You speak about a Sociology of Instability and a state of spirit. I do not think that your concept of "state of spirit" is the same thing as what I refer to as a cultural structure. You mention "habitus" in your web page (which I only read briefly, and have not studied). I find Bourdieu a little hard to take, and prefer the Sartrean account. I think that you and I will have different concepts of how the individual participates in society, and in him/herself. Thus, I would see the concept of "taboo" as having a contingent rather than necessary character in capitalist society. And especially in a society dominated by the corporate structure, as is the US. One difference this would establish between the US and Portugal is that of a colonialism whose structure is precisely that of corporate globalization. (Cf. works by Richard Barnet, Michael Hudson, and myself "Recreating Democracy in a Globalized State" (2012)) The entire concept of human nature cannot be assumed in a world dominated by colonialism. And the present is characterized by a colonialism that is very different from the 19^th century version, against which Portugal itself rebelled in 1975.

These are just some random thoughts, having read your thinking in your letter and webpage. I think the differences between are very interesting, and could be very fruitful. Let us begin with a discussion of the relation between the ethos of imprisonment (as I describe it) in the US, and that in Portugal, as you have experienced and represented it.  

Steve

Dear Steve,

Thanks for your email. Our work with prisoners is mostly to accept and direct claims both to the administration, the political institutions, media and people that are concerned with prison issues (mostly not active, but sometimes do something about it). Yes, we have some letters and texts from prisoners and we diffuse them. But they are few and not always very critical to the system. Last month I receive the master on Law final paper of an inmate that is less than critical to the system. In Portugal most prisoners are illiterate. Any way there is friends of other NGO that can help us if we intend to develop this way of calling the attention for prison issues. One friend is working in Lisbon to build the Portuguese chapter of north-American Human Rights Coalition. I told him about our common propose and he is available to work on a program like that. We would count, I suppose, with the help of other people.

To present a summary of the complaints we receive from prisoners and their families is a way of reflecting collective oral talking about prisons in Portugal, even it is non prisoners who write it down.

So thanks for the proposal. We will work on it.

About our work in common, yes, we have to be aware of the big differences between Portugal and the States both in real life experiences and in language ethos and logic. Even our texts would be the same, the language would imply different perspectives and logic and the reception by the States and Portuguese public will different as well. Two books would present the same general abolitionist message but in different ways, according to the different situations and feelings.

What I propose, now, is to begin discussing what would be the main argument to support prison abolition. I propose we bring to the discussion people from Brazil and UK. So we will have very different situation within two major languages worlds trying to join efforts. Four countries, two continents, and two civilizations and histories. In order to do that, we would produce a page or two to ask other people to join us.

I propose to begin immediately with mobilization to abolition of prisons in the western world using a short text we can agree on. So we can diffuse this propose and get some people that would join us. Meanwhile we begin to develop a strategy to develop a two text work that could cross each other with challenges coming from both sides. I think the better way is to start is to develop a common index of issues we both want to deal with.

About our different conceptual backgrounds I think we will have lots of opportunities to discuss them applying them working together. I will give priority to real world and theory that fits our expression needs to present it to other people. Any way this innovative sociology of mine is out of touch of common sociological ethos – I criticize social theory for not only forgetting but making scientific taboo from violent social foundations at the same time ignoring social nature of human kind.

First there is no real difference between society and individual, structure and behavior, agency and system, person and society. What happens is social theory opens that gap – one side Aristotelian and the other side platonic. One can choose our weberian or durkheimian “paradigm” (the first more platonic and the second more Aristotelian) or a mix, avoiding developmental approaches to reality. Showing “social photos” and presuming whatever, each sociological author takes out of them “interpretations” instead of studying the complex history and transformation processes both personal and social. That is the reason why social theory avoids socio-psychological scientific methods as well as any other science methods arguing the scientific division of labor and splitting inside by myriad of sub disciplines, including all matters ignored by mainstream social theory, such as violence, woman studies, child studies, aging studies, body and emotions studies, etc..

 According to Hirschman ideological hiding bourgeois State violence is one of the main features of modernization. Norbert Elias present it as civilization process without figuring out the cause: bourgeois critic of violence against aristocrats (in Europe) stopped when their class interest become dominant at the State level. Today, still, dominant theory of violence is built by stigma appeals against the Devil. Devil which is, according to Zimbardo, the effect of prison.      

I stop here. Someday I would like to present a complete report on that. For now I working step by step. Thanks for stimulating me to present these ideas.

Next I present to you a proposal for mobilization “prison abolition speech building” based on the idea that the main universal problem of prison system (as well as criminal justice system) is moral – as you say. Even – in my view – it does not lie on the immoral natural behavior of human species of making pain to other human beings. This brutalizing trend of human kind is not right. But we cannot avoid it. One can struggle against but one cannot abolish it. As we need to abolish prison as a legal and legitimized violence centre we need a stronger argument, I mean an argument that do not deny the eternal (natural) presence of violence in our lives.

My proposal is to take falsehood, the generalized lie, as main motive of abolition speech.

Ii is not very different from my sociological argument presented before. We got crime as a Aristotelian “thing” and punishment as a platonic “idea” one can live without shame or daily basis responsibility – as it happened during Holocaust. One is conditioned to think that there is equivalence between crime and adequate punishment, forgetting that one needs to develop a prison system and this prison system will develop results (recidivism, racism, drug dealing, crime training, repression against poor people and new strategic ideas, deregulating the markets, giving power to the worst part of the State, social insecurity, etc.). These results are paid and supported by society as an all, not just inmate and their families. Science knows that is wrong system: it cannot deliver what it promises, being it avoiding crime or social reintegration. The reverse is the true. Judicial system and society adapts to prison system as the scapegoat was leading society and each person. That is way when one ask how can one figure out a society without prisons people become confused. People are “possessed” by the scapegoat syndrome as this guy who find himself in the death row some time after having voted yes to the Californian referendum for death penalty.

Panic political and media campaigns are ways of bringing irrationality to power games and to avoid democracy and make war. Civil war and international war are easily started and maintained based on lies because prison system models the way of doing and thinking (and not the other way around). That is way we need first to abolish prison in order to better control social and political violence in a democratic way.

Please, take this text and produce a mobilization text for anglophile people that could join our work. After I will comment on it and close it as soon as possible. Then I will translate it into Portuguese and spread the word between my Brazilian and UK friends. I post this emails of ours in the website in order to become available (except you say otherwise).