Carceral State Project—Documenting Criminalization and Confinement
DCC Newsletter, August 2020
Greetings and thank you for your continued support and interest in the U-M Carceral State Project’s Documenting Criminalization and Confinement (DCC) research initiative.
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As always, please check out our Documenting Criminalization and Confinement website: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/dcc-project/
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https://twitter.com/carceralinquiry
Updates and New Publications
July was a particularly exciting month for DCC’s collaborations with community organizations, as we released research reports in partnership with Detroit Will Breathe, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Michigan Center for Youth Justice, in addition to a fifth multimedia report based on the community organizations featured in our inaugural symposium series:
“What Happened to Cynthia Scott? A Brutal Murder, Blatant Coverup, and Cries for Justice”
The Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab has published a powerful multimedia investigative report about the police murder of Cynthia Scott, a 24-year-old African American woman, in the city of Detroit on July 5, 1963. This murder, and the subsequent coverup by the Detroit Police Department and the Wayne County Prosecutor, was a major historical turning point in Detroit’s anti-police brutality movement. The report, authored by DCC student researchers M. Mann and Brianna Wells, is based in part on the DPD’s Homicide File on Cynthia Scott–obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request and generously shared with our project by Prof. David Goldberg of Wayne State University. Read the report here:
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/47b9517555a94367a5fe877d0a24a568
Detroit Will Breathe, the Black Lives Matter coalition leading daily protests in the city, organized a full program about Cynthia Scott on July 5, 2020, on the anniversary of, and at the site of, her murder. Report authors M. Mann and Brianna Wells, along with Matt Lassiter (director of the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab), spoke at the Detroit Will Breathe event alongside a number of current BLM leaders and several longtime racial justice activists who had organized protests against police brutality in the 1960s. Detroit Will Breathe, the General Baker Institute, and the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab also issued a statement calling on the candidates for Wayne County prosecutor to commit to releasing all internal records, past and present, declaring police use of deadly force to be justified. Find out more about Detroit Will Breathe here: https://detroitwillbreathe.info
This important new white paper is the product of a collaboration between the American Friends Service Committeeand our Confronting Conditions of Confinement team (including coauthors Nora Krinitsky, Pete Martel, and Megan Williams). The white paper presents an evidence-based case for decarceration as the only humane and meaningful response to the COVID-19 pandemic in prisons, based on extensive documentation of current conditions from phone calls, letters, and other messages by people incarcerated in the state of Michigan. It includes an overview of the relationship between prisons and public health, details about the current conditions inside Michigan prisons, recommendations for policy changes that must be implemented, examples of compassionate approaches to communal care, and evidence that our elected officials are culpable for the deaths of dozens of people in prison. Read the full report here:
For more, see the considerable resources and commentary on DCC’s COVID-19 and Incarceration page: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/dcc-project/covid-19-and-incarceration/
Juvenile Justice Reform: Juvenile Record Confidentiality and Legislative Policy
At the request of the Michigan Center for Youth Justice, DCC’s Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab prepared a research memo on the legislative intent and political context of the 1988 amendments to Michigan’s juvenile code, which provided for the mandatory transfer to adult court of juveniles charged with “serious” offenses, gave prosecutors automatic authority to transfer juveniles for any reason, and unsealed juvenile records for the general public. Jason Smith, the Youth Policy Director for the Michigan Center for Youth Justice, utilized this memo in his testimony to the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee of the Michigan state senate, as part of the campaign to protect the confidentiality of juvenile records. Read more here:
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/dcc-project/juvenile-justice-reform/
Living on Loss of Privilege: What We Learned in Prison
Our Documenting Prison Education and Arts research team released four more amazing new episodes of the video series Living on L.O.P., one on each Friday during July. The series, initiated by formerly incarcerated artists and DCC team members Patrick Bates and Cozine Welch, features formerly incarcerated people sharing the lessons they learned in prison to help us all adjust to life under the pandemic. The latest installments include Jose Burgos on Career Planning, Romando Valeroso on Structure, Rick Speck on Time Management, and Eladio Niño on Keeping the Right People in our Lives. Check out the most recent episodes here:
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/dcc-project/living-on-lop/
Capitalism and the Carceral State
Our Community Organizations Documenting Project has released the fifth multimedia report in its ongoing series, Documenting and Confronting the Carceral State. The Capitalism and the Carceral State report includes 22 powerful video excerpts from the participants in our 2018-2019 symposium series, with contextual material, to document the role of capitalist ideology, extreme economic inequality, and the criminalization of poverty in the growth of mass incarceration in modern America. View the report here: https://arcg.is/1K1H1a0
Policing and Protest 2020 Webinar (July 28, 2020)
DCC faculty leaders Melissa Burch, William Lopez, and Matt Lassiter participated (along with Prof. Matthew Countryman of History and DAAS) in a webinar on “Policing and Protest 2020” sponsored by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Michigan. More information at this link (https://events.umich.edu/event/75046) and the video will be available on the Policing and Criminalization section of our website soon.
DCC faculty leader William Lopez, the director of the Ice in the Heartland project, continues to be very active in publishing commentary about general immigration-related policy matters as well as COVID-19 specifically. Please see Lopez’s advocacy on behalf of criminalized, marginalized, and undocumented populations, including three coauthored pieces:
We Must Advocate for International and Undocumented Students (Michigan Advance, 7-21-20)
College Students Will Bring Racial Economic Disparities of the Pandemic Back to Campus. Are Universities Ready?(Washington Post, 7-20-2020)
Colleges Must Consider the Inequities of Reopening Campuses in the Fall (Bridge Michigan, 7-8-20)
Look for more DCC reports to be published this summer, and information about programming for the upcoming academic year, in our September newsletter.
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