From The Brennan Center:
This essay is part of the Brennan Center’s series examining the punitive excess that has come to define America’s criminal legal system.
It all starts with a label. Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and American slavery all hold that in common. In each case, targeted groups were assigned names that had the psychological effect of dehumanizing. Once you’re not seen as a human, you don’t see yourself as human — and inhuman treatment begins that could cause your end.
Mass incarceration started with labels, too. The n-word accompanied the Black Code laws that returned freed slaves to plantations to work the fields, unpaid (under “convict leasing” schemes) for minor, often made-up offenses like vagrancy or not signing a labor contract with a white plantation owner. Under Nixon, when it had become politically inconvenient to call Black people the n-word, they called us “criminals” and proceeded to build prisons focused on punishment instead of rehabilitation to discipline behavior born of oppression and intergenerational trauma, rather than offering reparations or healing. The tag “super-predators” launched the locking up of kids, sentencing teenagers to multiple life terms, then housing them in adult institutions. One label ran alongside all the others and helped balloon the prison population in America to over 2.3 million. That term is “inmate.”
Webster’s defines “inmate” as “a person confined with others in a prison or mental institution.” But calling a person an inmate doesn’t describe where you are, it says who you are. It identifies you as your incarceration, as an outcast.
Not all labels are harmful, of course. Calling someone a student or a mother brings up positive images and reactions. Not so the word “inmate.” Continue reading >>>
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