The Culture of Incarceration

Introduction to Museums and Social Issues: Re-thinking Incarceration, Volume 6:

Issue 1 (December 2012).

Marjorie Schwarzer

Consider these sobering statistics. Americans comprise five percent of the

world’s population. Yet, the U.S. incarcerates nearly twenty-five percent of the

world’s prisoners (Herivel & Wright, 2007). As of 2010, the nation was holding

under lock and key over 1.5 million inmates, with an additional 5.7 million adults

comprising probation and parolee counts. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010; Ross

and Richards, 2002). And these numbers do not include juvenile offenders nor the

spouses and children impacted when a family member is behind bars.

According to research conducted by the Amnesty International, the majority of

those caught in the corrections system are first-time offenders; over 50 percent

were convicted for possession or sale of narcotics (www.prisonpolicy.org). Since

the War on Drugs and enactment of habitual offender (three strikes) laws in

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twenty-five states, the number of American prisons has grown at an alarming rate,

especially in rural communities enticed by promises of jobs. During the 1990s and

early 2000s, spending in the U.S. for incarceration increased by over 500%, with

large contracts going to private suppliers of all manner of bedding, clothing, food,

concertina wire. (Herivel and Wright, 2007) Despite the influx of money,

conditions in American jails and prisons are generally deplorable. Overcrowding,

rancid food, minimal exposure to the natural light, insufficient health care, and

relentless loud noise are common even in minimum security situations. Gang

violence, hunger strikes and constant surveillance add to the stress. To make

matters worse, rehabilitation programs like college courses and vocational training

have been cut in favor of “get-tough-lock’em-up-and-throw away the key” penal

policies and practices touted by vote-seeking politicians. (Greene, 2006; Hunter &

Wagner, 2007). As justice policy analyst Judith Greene explains: “The astonishing

upward shift in our incarceration rate has swept this country into the uncharted

territory of mass incarceration.” (p. 26).

Economists, sociologists and criminologists largely agree: the current U.S. penal

system is inefficient and ineffective at deterring crime and making society safer. It

is also inequitable. Harvard University sociologist Bruce Western has

characterized the gargantuan American penal system as a “novel institution in a

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uniquely American system of social inequality. (Western, p. 11).” A look at who is

behind bars not only reflects American politics and economics, but a legacy of

racism as well as discrimination against its poorest and least educated citizens.

Over 40 percent of inmates are Black; 20 percent are Hispanic. Forty percent did

not complete high school.

“Amazingly,” writes former inmate Paul Wright, “American pop culture has

largely succeeded in … ensuring that the general population of non-prisoners does

not believe that what occurs in prisons affects them.” (Wright, 2000) Now editor-

in-chief of Prison Legal News based in Vermont, Wright has written extensively

about the media’s role in promoting and exploiting prison as a ghastly underworld

culture, far from the realities of “normal” day-to-day life. Through sensationalist

reality TV shows like COPS, LockUp and Inside, law enforcement professionals

and prisoners provide nightly entertainment to millions of viewers. Switch the

channel to MTV, and watch entertainers sporting orange jumpsuits and rapping

about life in prison (Wright, personal communication, 2011) These popular shows

are so skewed that, in the words of sociologist John Leveille, “they tell us more

about the values of mass media than they present factual information about

prisons.” (personal communication, 2011)

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Wright has also documented how the clothing industry grossly exploits prison

culture. “The baggy ill fitting clothes of the prison yard are sold as cool fashion

statement,” he reports. In Wright’s opinion, ”the most blatant, and successful,

example is the Prison Blues line of clothing, made by the Oregon prison system

using prisoner slave labor.” He goes on to explain that “Oregon prison officials

market the clothes with catchy slogans like ‘Made on the inside to be worn on the

outside.’ One ad shows a picture of the jeans next to an electric chair with the

caption ‘Sometimes our jeans last longer than the guys who make them.” (Wright,

2000)

What does America’s culture of incarceration have to do with museums? A

great deal, it turns out. San Francisco’s notorious former federal penitentiary

Alcatraz Island (reviewed in this issue) – is one of the nation’s most visited

museums. As Wright has observed: “Chambers of commerce in

Leavenworth, Kansas and Canon City, Colorado, market their many prisons

as must see sites for tourists. Expensive ad campaigns use catchy slogans

like ‘How about doin' some time in Leavenworth?’ … Tours of actual

prisons are not offered. Instead, tourists can see prison museums and prisons

that were closed due to their age.” (Wright, 2000) Over 100 prison museums

operate in the world; two-thirds are in the United States. This does not

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include the ubiquitous historical society displays of prison-related material

culture like shackles, handcuffs, and correctional officer badges, popular

(and money-making) museum-prison souvenirs like whiskey shot glasses

bearing prison logos or programs like “Halloween Behind Bars,” and

“Terror Beyond the Walls.”

What kinds of messages do these museums and exhibitions communicate? Are

they copacetic with our field’s educational values? Or, do they glorify and titillate

in the name of entertainment and voyeurism? This issue of Museums & Social

Issues asks the museum field to think more deeply about the connections between

museums and prisons.

Since the 1970s, post-modern theorists have likened museums’ fortress-like

architecture and closed-off and guarded collections of sequestered objects to

imprisonment. The French philosopher Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish

(1974) and subsequent analysis within the museological literature (Bennett, 1990;

Lord, 2006) pushes this metaphor further, analyzing prisons’ mechanisms of

power, control and classification and then implicating museums in participating

with and manifesting these values. Some of these dense assertions have not stood

the test of time – after all, museums now strive toward discourse and access while

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prisons do their utmost to remain authoritative and intimidating. What role can

museums play in promoting thoughtful discourse about our culture of

incarceration?

Since the 1970s many museums have reached out to inmates through

programming. Art museums, for example, sponsor programs where educators work

with prison populations, providing materials and art instruction to inmates. We

know that art-making has therapeutic value and can be helpful and healing to

inmates and their families. As Shawna Meiser, who recently curated an exhibit of

art created by Pennsylvania prisoners for the Samek Gallery at Bucknell

University, explains: “the inmates who participate in art programs maintain better

behavior while serving their sentences, and that engagement with the arts helps

inmates transition more successfully back into society.” (Meiser, 2011) Yet, these

kinds of educational programs are extremely challenging to implement. Museum

educators are often unprepared for the procedural as well as emotional factors they

must deal with when they work with the prison system. These concerns echo

throughout this issue. Museums are to be applauded for their programming efforts.

Yet is there an even larger role that we can play? Can museums help to enlighten

the public and serve as a call to action for prison reform, compassion and debate

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about justice? Can they give voice to the marginalized population behind bars and

allow them to share their stories directly with the public?

This issue offers no easy answers to the above questions. Rather its purpose is to

open a dialogue about the role of museums within the American culture of

incarceration. The subjects of criminology, violence, law enforcement and the

justice system are extraordinarily complex; this issue only begins to touch on

questions that need a great deal more study and consideration.

The opening contribution to this issue is a call to action from a former inmate.

Alan Mobley, now a professor of criminal justice at San Diego State University,

presents his vision for the Prisoners Center For Reentry And Reconciliation, a

place of healing, reflection and action. He calls on the museum field to get

involved.

We next turn to the perspectives of educators and artists who have recently created

programs and exhibitions within museums that reflect and respond to the issue of

prison culture in the United States. The institutions discussed are the Eastern State

Penitentiary Museum in Philadelphia, the Hull House Museum in Chicago, the

Rubin Museum of Art in New York City and Arizona State University Museum of

Art in Tempe (ASUMA).

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Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) in Philadelphia, one of the most historic prisons in

the world, is known for its architecture and rehabilitation programs designed to

inspire penitence (the root of the term “penitentiary”). After it opened in 1829, the

French reformer Alexis de Tocqueville visited and viewed it as an indication of

America’s advanced understanding of criminology. It remained in operation until

1971, and is now a historic site and museum. In his article The Jury Is Out:

Programming at Eastern State Penitentiary, Sean Kelley, ESP’s director of

exhibitions and education, describes how conceptual artists’ on-site installations

investigate racism, homophobia, victims’ rights and other social issues associated

with incarceration. Kelley wonders how the field can measure the impact of such

exhibitions on the public. Are artists better equipped to explore touchy topics than

historians? By closing with a description of his own efforts to organize a history

exhibition about two inmates (one is still alive and serving a life sentence for

murder in another facility), he concludes that the “jury is out” as to how to use the

medium of exhibition to explore deeply disturbing topics.

In 2011, the Hull House Museum in Chicago developed a participatory exhibition

about the history and present day realities of Cook County juvenile justice system.

As Lisa Yun Lee, Ryan Lugalia-Hollon and Teresa Silva discuss in their article,

Making Incarceration Visible: The Unfinished Business of Hull-House

Reformers, the exhibition’s goal was not only to “critique the prison industrial

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complex,” but to give visitors tools to carry on the activist legacy of the museum’s

founding social reformers and “do something about it.”

What happens when educators offer programs for those incarcerated at jails and/or

prisons? In The Emotional World of Museum Educators: Teaching

Himalayan Art at Riker’s Island, Marcos Stafner and Becky Utech Gaugler

describe an interactive art class offered by Rubin Art Museum staff during 2008

and 2009 for juveniles offenders housed at New York City’s main jail complex.

Entries from Gaugler’s journal document her feelings of “stress, anger, fear and

frustration” each time she delivered the program and her “guilt” at being able to

leave the complex when the class was over, while her students remained jailed.

The authors suggest that museums need to better prepare educators for their on-site

experiences when working with non-traditional audiences.

Curator John Spiak introduces the final articles in this section which discuss the

exhibition, performance and educational program It’s Not Just Black and White

held at Arizona State University Museum of Art. A centerpiece of this effort was

Phoenix-based artist Gregory Sale’s two-pronged work, intended to turn both

prison and museum culture inside-out. In early 2011, Sale brought prisoners from

Maricopa County’s jail to the museum to paint black and white stripes on its walls.

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From there, he brought museum visitors into the local “tent city jail” to expose

them to “life on the inside.” This innovative project broke down both

institutions’ “surveillant mechanisms of disciplinary power,” according to

Chema Salinas, a doctoral student in Performance Studies and Rhetoric at

Arizona State University. (Salinas, 2011) 

In his article, Museums and New Aesthetic Practices, Arthur J. Sabatini

analyses the political and institutional significance of It’s Not Just Black and White

by discussing its “relational boundary-setting aesthetics.” Among the important

questions Sabatini raises about the project are: “What aesthetics are involved? What is

represented in such a project? What is the “position” of the museum, politically, in such a

context?” Sabatini’s piece is followed by choreographer Elizabeth Johnson’s essay

Mother/Daughter Distance Dance. Johnson used platforms (like Skype) to engage

four inmate mothers at Phoenix’s Estrella Jail in a virtual dance at the Arizona

State University Museum with their daughters. While Sabatini’s perspective is

political and aesthetic, Johnson’s is personal. Her project was fraught with risk

and emotion: “this experience has had a profound effect on me professionally and

personally, the extent of which I have not fully processed.”

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In the Review section, our reviewers look at three radically-different museums and

two books. Paul M. Farber analyzes the National Museum of Crime and

Punishment, complete with a crime lab and shooting range and located just blocks

from the White House in Washington DC. Lexie Waite takes the boat to San

Francisco’s Alcatraz, known as “the Rock” and the most visited prison museum in

the US. Anne E. Parsons visits the Rotary Jail Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana,

which was recently converted to an art center.

Myriad books and studies exist about the sociology and politics of prisons. We

highlight two award-winning volumes that approach the topic from the

perspectives of memoire and poetry. The first, reviewed by Margaret Kadoyama,

is a first-person memoire by Sue Ellen Allen of her seven years behind bars. The

second, One Big Self, reviewed by Shin Yu Pai, presents a poet’s response to a

collaboration between inmates at the Angola State Prison in Louisiana and a

photographer.

Diana Falchuk concludes the issue with reflections on her experiences, and she

ends where we began: with a call to action. In 2003, working with the Museum of

Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art in Tacoma, Falchuk helped

to develop a series of workshops between artists and young women

incarcerated at Remann Hall, the Pierce County youth detention center.

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Although the Tacoma project, like all of the programs discussed in this issue,

was laced with internal and external politics and emotions, Falchuk believes that

museums have much to offer both the public and those who are incarcerated: “The

need is there,” she concludes, “So what are museums waiting for?”

When we distributed the call for papers for this issue, we received enormous

interest in this topic. Clearly we have tapped into an area of concern that deserves

far more discussion and analysis than we can offer here. We were not able to

include perspectives on prisons and prison museums in other nations, prisoners of

war, police museums, gender issues, the history of prisons, and other very

important topics that merit further attention in the museum field.

The voices of those who are currently incarcerated are missing from this issue. In

the opening article Alan Mobley reminds us that “prisoners, former prisoners, their

families and victims of crime” are among the most marginalized people in the

United States. Museums & Social Issues does not seek to perpetuate or participate

in this historic oppression. We call readers’ attention to the resources below, as

well as the numerous citations in each article, which provide ways to directly

communicate with prisoners and/or access their perspectives.

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About the Author

Marjorie Schwarzer served as Professor and Chair of Museum Studies at John F.

Kennedy University from 1996 to 2011. She is currently on the faculty of the

Bank Street College Museum Leadership Program and California College of the

Arts. A second edition of her award-winning book, Riches, Rivals and Radicals:

100 Years of Museums in America (2006: American Association of Museums) will

be released in May 2012.

References

Bureau of Justice Statistics (2010), Retrieved August 16, 2011 from

http://bjs.ojp.usdog.gov.

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site (www.easternstate.org), accessed 17

August 2011.

Greene, J. (2006). Banking on the Prison Boom. In Herivel, T., & Wright, P. (Eds.)

(2007). Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration. (pp. 3 –

26). New York: The New Press.

Herivel, T., & Wright, P. (Eds.) (2007). Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money

from Mass Incarceration. New York: The New Press.

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Hunter, G. & Wagner, P. (2007). Prisons, Politics and the Census. In Herivel, T., &

Wright, P. (Eds.) (2007). Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass

Incarceration. (pp. 80 - 89). New York: The New Press.

Lord, B. (2006). Foucault’s museum: difference, representation and geneology.

Rathbone, C. (2005). A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars. New

York: Random House.

Meiser, S. (2011), Accessed on www.bucknell.edu/samek (1 November 2011).

Prison Policy Initiative. (www. prison policy.org ) (accessed 23 November 2011).

Ross, J. I., & Richards, S. C. (2002). Behind Bars: Surviving Prison. Indianapolis:

Alpha Books.

Salinas, C. (2011). Penalizing the Museum; Museumizing the Penal. (unpublished

manuscript).

Western, B. (2006). Punishment and Inequity in America. Russell Sage

Foundation.

Wright, P. (2000). The Cultural Commodification of Prisons. Social Justice. Accessed on http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3427/is_3_27/ai_n28811188/ (26 October 2011).

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Other Recommended Resources:

A large volume of research exists on the topic of incarceration and several

excellent sources are listed below each article in this issue. This list provides

additional information to those who wish to research this topic further:

Website:

American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project

This comprehensive site lists legal and other informational sources that support

those advocating that prisoners are treated in accordance with human rights

principles.

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rightsCenter for Rational Correctional Policy

Journal of Prisoners on Prison

A forum for research by convicts, ex-convicts and scholars

www.cspi.org/books/p/prisoners.htm

Prison Legal News

This independent 56-page monthly magazine provides up-to-date analysis of

prisoner rights, court rulings and news about prison issues.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/FAQ.aspx

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Prison Visitation and Support

PVS trains and coordinates motivated volunteers to visit with inmates in maximum

and medium security federal prisons.

www.prisonervisitation.org/

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