NYC (location to be sent after RSVP)
2:00PM -- 5:00PM
Avlana Eisenberg (BC): Carceral Agency?
There is power in victimhood. Whether advocating for victims of crime or criminal defendants, those seeking legal reform often assert claims about an individual or group’s victim-status in pursuit of their aims. Increasingly, so do critics of our modern carceral system. In recent years, a broad coalition of scholars and activists who condemn the pathologies of mass incarceration have highlighted the vulnerability of prisoners in the face of harsh prison
conditions, endeavoring to substitute the characterization of prisoners as predators—and even “super-predators”—with a narrative that casts prisoners as vulnerable victims of an oppressive legal system. While reformers and abolitionists differ with respect to their aims and what they imagine to be possible, both groups deploy the rhetoric of prisoner victimhood in support of their goals.
There is overwhelming empirical support for the proposition that many incarcerated individuals are subject to inhumane, overcrowded conditions, and that their dire medical and mental health needs remain unmet. Yet, while descriptively resonant and rhetorically powerful, there are significant drawbacks to the treatment of prisoners as one-dimensional: as victims above all else. The “prisoner-victim frame” is incomplete; it tends to depersonalize, and it is
both static and categorical, locking individuals into a singular identity that emphasizes passivity and powerlessness. Paradoxically, by stressing the extreme oppressiveness of prisons, advocates who care deeply about the plight of incarcerated individuals may inadvertently skew possibilities for reform by diverting focus away from prisoners’ humanity and capacity for agency.
While acknowledging that prisons are sites characterized by extreme levels of deprivation, a reconceptualization of prisoners that centers their capacity for personal agency is necessary to avoid further deprivation. Cultivating prisoner agency would require not only a rhetorical shift away from identifying prisoners as primarily victims but also a wholesale rethinking of carceral institutions and the provision of educational, vocational training, and
other rehabilitative programs therein, paying close attention to the “practices of incarceration” that may be either agency-depriving or agency-enhancing. A necessary precondition to designing a system of practices to enhance prisoner agency is to imagine prisoners as neither predators nor victims, but rather as complex evolving humans with the capacity to fulfill and inhabit myriad roles and relationships, including as workers, caregivers, mentors, and experts.
There is power in victimhood. Whether advocating for victims of crime or criminal defendants, those seeking legal reform often assert claims about an individual or group’s victim-status in pursuit of their aims. Increasingly, so do critics of our modern carceral system. In recent years, a broad coalition of scholars and activists who condemn the pathologies of mass incarceration have highlighted the vulnerability of prisoners in the face of harsh prison
conditions, endeavoring to substitute the characterization of prisoners as predators—and even “super-predators”—with a narrative that casts prisoners as vulnerable victims of an oppressive legal system. While reformers and abolitionists differ with respect to their aims and what they imagine to be possible, both groups deploy the rhetoric of prisoner victimhood in support of their goals.
There is overwhelming empirical support for the proposition that many incarcerated individuals are subject to inhumane, overcrowded conditions, and that their dire medical and mental health needs remain unmet. Yet, while descriptively resonant and rhetorically powerful, there are significant drawbacks to the treatment of prisoners as one-dimensional: as victims above all else. The “prisoner-victim frame” is incomplete; it tends to depersonalize, and it is
both static and categorical, locking individuals into a singular identity that emphasizes passivity and powerlessness. Paradoxically, by stressing the extreme oppressiveness of prisons, advocates who care deeply about the plight of incarcerated individuals may inadvertently skew possibilities for reform by diverting focus away from prisoners’ humanity and capacity for agency.
While acknowledging that prisons are sites characterized by extreme levels of deprivation, a reconceptualization of prisoners that centers their capacity for personal agency is necessary to avoid further deprivation. Cultivating prisoner agency would require not only a rhetorical shift away from identifying prisoners as primarily victims but also a wholesale rethinking of carceral institutions and the provision of educational, vocational training, and
other rehabilitative programs therein, paying close attention to the “practices of incarceration” that may be either agency-depriving or agency-enhancing. A necessary precondition to designing a system of practices to enhance prisoner agency is to imagine prisoners as neither predators nor victims, but rather as complex evolving humans with the capacity to fulfill and inhabit myriad roles and relationships, including as workers, caregivers, mentors, and experts.
Aliza Hochman Bloom (Northeastern): Known to Police: Enforcement of Modern Juvenile Curfews
Responding to reports of increased crime in 2020, many cities revived a familiar tool—enforcement of juvenile curfews. Yet unlike prior iterations, modern juvenile curfews are promoted as non-carceral alternatives that help adolescents and the communities in which they are enforced. Cities lack empirical evidence that curfews reduce juvenile crime or victimization but view them as a benevolent (even progressive) response to crime.
This Article explores Philadelphia’s and Memphis’s recent experiences enforcing a juvenile curfew. Drawing upon city council transcripts, media, police manuals and interviews with local stakeholders, it examines the theories of action influencing legislators’ decision to revive the curfew, what these intentions profoundly miss about police engagement with young people, and what curfew enforcement facilitates in the Fourth Amendment realm.
Robust curfew enforcement compromises Fourth Amendment rights within the architecture of publicly shared spaces for young people associating in groups. Because curfew ordinances provide police with reasonable suspicion to stop anyone that they perceive to be under eighteen, these laws compound police discretion for interactions that are themselves harmful and fuel additional channels of criminal liability in the present and future. Despite being heralded as non-carceral alternatives, modern curfews operate more like disturbing historical narratives that overcriminalized youth than it may seem. Amidst an already atrophied Fourth Amendment, curfews widen the onramp for young people to become known to police.
Responding to reports of increased crime in 2020, many cities revived a familiar tool—enforcement of juvenile curfews. Yet unlike prior iterations, modern juvenile curfews are promoted as non-carceral alternatives that help adolescents and the communities in which they are enforced. Cities lack empirical evidence that curfews reduce juvenile crime or victimization but view them as a benevolent (even progressive) response to crime.
This Article explores Philadelphia’s and Memphis’s recent experiences enforcing a juvenile curfew. Drawing upon city council transcripts, media, police manuals and interviews with local stakeholders, it examines the theories of action influencing legislators’ decision to revive the curfew, what these intentions profoundly miss about police engagement with young people, and what curfew enforcement facilitates in the Fourth Amendment realm.
Robust curfew enforcement compromises Fourth Amendment rights within the architecture of publicly shared spaces for young people associating in groups. Because curfew ordinances provide police with reasonable suspicion to stop anyone that they perceive to be under eighteen, these laws compound police discretion for interactions that are themselves harmful and fuel additional channels of criminal liability in the present and future. Despite being heralded as non-carceral alternatives, modern curfews operate more like disturbing historical narratives that overcriminalized youth than it may seem. Amidst an already atrophied Fourth Amendment, curfews widen the onramp for young people to become known to police.