Bianca Tylek
Appearances
Flightless Bird
Prisons
In the United States, we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. We have 4% of the world's population and 20% of the world's prison population.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And so in our country, we really like to criminalize people, arrest people, and put them in jail, and then often sentence them, sometimes for really minor crimes, sometimes for obviously more aggressive crimes, but either way for excessively long times.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
We're not the safest country in the world. We're not even near the top. And so we incarcerate a tremendous number of people because we really don't believe in liberty and freedom in the way that we claim to. And we have nothing to show for it. There are many, many countries across the country, I mean across the world, excuse me, that are safer than we are.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And so there's nothing about our carceral system that is producing the results that we would intend it to if we say we want a justice system.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
The carceral boom started really in the 1970s. That was when we went from a much more modest number of people who were incarcerated to this exponential growth over the last, let's say, 50 years or so, where we have seen the prison population increase by hundreds of percent. Right? We saw the peak actually happen in 2009. So thankfully, we know we are seeing a little bit of a decline.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
But we're still at really, really aggressive and extensive levels. And so, you know, where did this come from? It came from a number of things. I mean, many would say that, like, in the 1970s is when we started the war on drugs.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Then, you know, we, in the 1990s, we had sort of the tough-on-crime era. When we passed the 1993-94 crime bill, that included mandatory minimums and three-strike laws and truth in sentencing, all of which dramatically increased the number of people who are incarcerated, so much so that the federal government, to incentivize other states to...
Flightless Bird
Prisons
take on some of these same laws the federal system was passing, offered funding to states to build more prisons and jails because they knew that that would be the outcome. And so since then, you know, we continue to maintain the largest prison population in the world. And as I said, with little to show for it.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And obviously this is a system that is deeply embedded or dependent on issues of class, issues of race, issues of gender, right? All of sort of our social failures around racism, classism, poverty, loss of education, loss of job opportunities manifest themselves in a prison population.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Absolutely. I mean, you know, we're a country that deeply believes in state rights. And what that means is that every state, plus the federal system, right, gets to have its own laws, which makes everything about enforcement very hard. Because, you know, what's a crime 10 feet away may not be a crime, you know, 100 feet down the other street, right?
Flightless Bird
Prisons
So we have a 80 plus billion dollar industry in the US that is sort of built around prisons and jails. And I think if we were to say, and that is uniquely American to start because we have the capitalist sort of mindset and experiment that we're absolutely dedicated to under every single circumstance, okay? Except for, I always sort of joke,
Flightless Bird
Prisons
that, you know, Americans are capitalists until somebody starts selling drugs. American are capitalists until somebody starts selling sex, right? Like Americans are capitalists until they start doing something that are like prude, you know, and conservative family values say, wait, hold on, you can't make money doing that.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And I'm like, well, then in that case, like maybe there are other things we shouldn't make money doing. And one of them should be putting people in cages.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
We are one of only two countries in the world that has a commercial bail bonds industry. And when we think of that as just one example of the sort of crazy ways that we allow industry to infiltrate our quote unquote justice system, which is anything but just, we have an industry that preys on
Flightless Bird
Prisons
having people incarcerated so that they can pay to sort of get them out and charge people, you know, astronomical rates to do so.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
I mean, if you go down to Alabama, to Mississippi, and not just there, even up in New York and in California, these prisons are grotesque. I mean, we have facilities infested with rodents and and insects. We have food that's being delivered to people who are incarcerated that have, like, rodent body parts or feces in them.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
We, you know, have mildew, and we have places in Pennsylvania, for example, where people are getting sick from, like, toxic water. A huge number of prisons in our country are actually built next to toxic land sites that otherwise, like, housing can't be built on. You have facilities that are fully falling apart.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
In Texas, where the temperatures can easily reach 120, 130 degrees, you have people dying inside because there's no air conditioning, and you can't survive in that type of heat if you have conditions. There's just no way you could refer to this system and suggest that it is any type of luxury. even in the newest facility.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And I always think some of these construction and architecture companies that build these prisons, they'll say things like, oh, so much light is being let in by the white paint on the walls. What does that mean? Are you in, like, what?