V&A: Author Sylvia A. Harvey’s new guide explores how households are affected by mass incarceration

Posted On Jul 17, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

In Sylvia A. Harvey’s brand-new bible, The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family, the author explores how mass incarceration establishes gigantic obstructions for not only those inside, but for the families who live and enjoy beyond prison and penitentiary walls.

While recent criminal justice campaigns such as the Connecting Families movement have drawn attention to how private confinement phone services originate monetary inconveniences for people who want to stay in touch with their incarcerated loved ones, Harvey’s book explores some of the less mentioned actions the carceral system can tighten and separate familial ties.

The book hones in on three people’s stories–Dawn in Kentucky, Randall in Florida, and William in Mississippi–to explore how the criminal legal organisation jolts family bonds in peculiar ways depending on one’s race, gender, and the nature of the crime they were imprisoned of. In creating full paintings of each of these families, Harvey sheds light on how territory and federal programmes, as well as racist and sexist social attitudes, can not only impact individual lives but too ruffle through part family units, stroking everyone from a parent to a partner to an unknowing child.

Harvey sat down with Prism to discuss her diary, which was exhausted the following spring and is applicable through Bold Type Books.

This conversation has been revised and condensed for clarity and length.

Tamar Sarai Davis: You open and close the book discussing your own father, who was incarcerated, and the ways that impacted your life. Given your personal relationship to the subject, did you have a clear sense of the specific issues that you wanted to explore before you began reporting and writing? What are some of the other brand-new themes that developed as you were spending time with these genealogies that you knew you had to include?

Sylvia Harvey: Because I feel that there has been, certainly, coverage of mass incarceration, my original consider was I wanted to report on children of incarcerated parents. What does that definitely sounds like for “their childrens”? We’ve got 2.7 million children that have mothers behind tables. And I think that it’s been a population that is largely ignored or unseen, so the issues to was: What’s happening to them? What does this look like in terms of education? What does this look like in terms of stigma?

But there’s likewise the issue of age, when it comes to children. Children aren’t able to articulate exactly what they’re thinking or what they’re feeling in a way that a kid can carry a entire narrative. In interviewing some of these children, I time realized there’s no way to tell this story without telling the larger story of the entire family. So the question was, outside of the person that’s incarcerated, how does this make its way through the entire family? I actually is ready to just showing that houses as a contingent are either surviving or being torn apart as they deal with incarceration. It was really like, let’s go out there and insure what’s happening for pedigrees and along that travel, learning some of the issues that arose or that became common.

Obviously, I was thinking, what does this mean for Black servicemen? What kind of structural combating racism and biased legislation is at play for this demographic that we know is hit the hardest?

In Louisville, I mostly concentrates on white dames, looking at what it represented for white women impacted by the opioid epidemic, and how that’s affected their lives. What does it look like now that incarceration is touching a demographic that at one point was probably perceived to be untouchable?

In Kentucky, I looked at what this means for returning citizens. What does it mean to be labeled a felon? What does it “ve been meaning to” not be able to get a job? What does it mean to not be able to get an apartment? What does it mean for your children to go into foster care and everything you need to get those children out of foster care?

In Florida, it was the matter of what does a life sentence look like? And why are we problem life sentences? How does that impact the family structure?

Davis: I was truly intrigued by your discussions on the more nuanced but profound highways that prison tightens family ties, such as the idea that people can feel underappreciated for taking care of their children alone while their partner is inside, or the ways that short-lived calls make it difficult for kids to broach difficult conversations with their incarcerated mothers because they know that they won’t have enough time to mend any disagreements that might arise. What new laws, platforms, or societal shifts might address some of those less explored channels that captivity strangles familial alliances?

Harvey: I feel like there’re so many really big issues that we haven’t even been able to tackle, but I think that one of the things that would be really helpful is therapy. I repute for the family member on the outside–the mother or the leader that’s dealing with the incarceration–I think that there’s no real access to mental health. How do I discuss feeling responsibility by going on this prison call? How do I tell my partner that I don’t want to continue in this relationship because[ of] what it’s doing to me mentally, emotionally, spiritually? I think that there isn’t fairly area for speech around that.

And I think that for people who are inside these facilities, it’s the same idea, like what kind of programming do the government has? How can you start to think about, “Okay, how can I support the mother of my child? How can I be more understanding? How can I consider the burden that she has of creating our lad or daughter on her own? ” I think sometimes you’re so caught up in “Oh my God, how do I deal with the brutality that’s happening inside the facility? ” There are so many things I think they are dealing with and there isn’t seat in order to be allowed to even think about that.

I think that one of the programs that I mentioned early in the book, “Their childrens” of Inpatient, in Florida is a program that goes inside these penitentiaries, much like the Babies and Brains program. That’s a program that’s teaching these incarcerated parents about blooming, about how to take care of the child, about how to broach some of these topics that are difficult. I think more programming like that should be happening.

Davis: I was truly interested in Dawn’s story and how all of these different issues from domestic violence cases to social hopes around motherhood brought together to compile her knowledge distinct. Can you speak a bit more about how maids experience captivity and why, in your opinion, women’s knowledge are blurred in national speeches about mass incarceration?

Harvey: The percentage of women who are impacted by incarceration is really small compared to gentlemen. I don’t think that overshadows what they deal with, but it’s predominantly men who are in prison–though the number of women has been rising over the past 10 years.

Some of the specific things that happen are, first if we look at the level of access to the outside world, you go into these visiting areas where women are incarcerated and they’re chiefly empty and if they’re not, it’s Mom coming in, or it’s your sister coming to visit, or Grandma coming to visit. So it’s mostly maidens patronizing women once they get locked away. You go into a male equipment and that equipment is filled with women because women are supporting the men, whether it’s their partners or their mother, Mom is there, girlfriend is there, sisters are there because we assume this almost as our job, as its own responsibilities, as our duty to make sure that they are supported and that they survive this experience, and I don’t think that the commitment is the same for women once they are incarcerated.

I think a lot of fathers too must be addressed[ wondering] what is going to happen to my child if the father is not present or willing to take them? If there’s no momma or grandma to take care of[ “their childrens”] and if they indicate that they don’t have that support system, then the child goes into foster care. Then we’re looking at the Adoption and Safe Families Act and what it means to be incarcerated for an extended period of time. If their own children is in promote care for 15 of the recent 22 months, then the state has to file a end of parental rights and in some states it’s even less than 12 months. So then you have to deal with, how do I get the child out of foster care? How do I make sure that the foster parent or the child welfare system is supporting me by making my child up to visit? You’re merely various kinds of there figuring it out on your own.

Davis: I is ready to waste a little of occasion discussing this particular moment that we’re in right now and the explosion of interest in the impact of the criminal legal system on Black parties. Even though a good deal of these objections are explicitly around policing, how do you think that they will impact or vary the system universally past this moment?

Harvey: I always think of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, and he said it so long ago, I can’t even imagine that it’s still genuine, but he was indicated that the riot is the language of the unheard, right? So I think that the most recent murder–for us to see this level of destructive brutality, by the police–I think was really really a prompt. It was, like “theyre saying”, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I think that this is really a combination of Black people just having endured centuries of repression. It’s not just policing; we could look at all these other things that are happening too. We’ve been under siege forever and it hasn’t gotten considerably better.

That’s why I focus on a couple of different organisations in the book–some of our most important social foundations in its own country. We can think about the criminal justice system, the child welfare system, the healthcare organization, the educational system, and in all of those, Black people was also being subjugated, we’re still fighting for freedom.

Davis: I think that the intersection between all of these various organisations, from education to child welfare to the criminal justice system, is something that you illuminate really well in the book and I think that’s what good storytelling can do–it humanizes issues and can help us see how people’s lives sit in the crosshairs of all these systems. That accompanies me to something that I memo when reading your epilogue: You was pointed out that over half of the state prison population is composed of people who have been convicted of viciou and serious crimes, but we tend to shy away from talking about that. How do you hope that the book and inserting books to these references will change public attitudes towards people convicted of violent crimes?

Harvey: This is hard, but I reflect the reason I preferred these serious crimes is because I think we need to understand how people get to these residence and we need to think about whether or not we believe in redemption. The detail is that people are supposed to be refurbished inside these prisons and are not being refurbished. We can’t really made them in prison and throw them away and “ve forgotten” them. I merely don’t think that is effective and I think that exemplifying the fuller life of these parties and using their fibs[ helps us understand ], how did this person get here?

When we think about Randall, he said to me, “I don’t know why you’re picking me because I’m not a compassionate person, ” and I was like, “This isn’t about compassionate reputations. This is about real people and summarizing your tour. You have been convicted of a serious offence and we have to acknowledge that, but also we want to think about how we got to this point.”

We go back to his childhood and think about, where were Mom and Dad? Was Dad around? How numerous responsibilities did Mom have to work and how far away from home are those places? How much coin was she bringing in? What does it mean to be a latchkey kid?

And then what does it mean to be in school and get into trouble or get into a fight and not be taken to the principal’s office and reprimanded or talked to in a way that clears feel, but instead we prescribe this zero tolerance. What was that first instance of him being arrested in school, and what does that means for him? I remember looking at that first interaction with the juvenile justice system is very telling, because now you’re in the system and now[ you’re] previously labeled as a distressed minor. The plan throws away all of these their children to simply make it easy.

All of these things are connected. We have to look at how underresourced places affect young person, how inadequate schools repercussion these young people, and I merely thought it was important to illustrate these small things that really had a huge role in where he intent up.

Davis: Your part about Randall not considering himself a “sympathetic character” is really interesting. What has the response been from him, and other formerly or currently incarcerated parties and family members to your record?

Harvey: People who are incarcerated–specifically the people who are in the book–cannot get hardcover diaries in their facility. So because they can’t get hardcover books, they don’t even know what the book says. I was thinking maybe I can find them a pdf and etch it out or something but Ruth,[ the partner of William ], told me, “No , no it’s okay, I’ll read it over the phone and we’ll enjoy it.” I believe for her it’s actually feelings to be taken back into her life.

She told me, “To visualize my naivete, to be recognised that I accepted them when they said that he should take the request deal and then he’ll exclusively “re going to have to” do 10 times and he’ll come home.” To think that there was a time that she believes in our justice systems. I think that was really interesting to hear, but principally beings are happy to have their narrations told.

Tamar Sarai Davis is Prism’s criminal justice organization reporter. Follow her on Twitter @TheRealTamar .

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit story store that centers the person or persons, sits and issues currently underreported by our national media. Through our original reporting, analysis, and commentary, we challenge reigning, poisonous narrations continued by the mainstream press and work to build a full and accurate record of what’s happening in our democracy. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.