Prison by Any Other Name Quotes

“Many types of treatment claim to be about fixing the so-called problems of madness. The real problem is that certain ways of experiencing the world are seen as categorical threats— to normativity, to capitalism, to hierarchy, to the system itself. And our society's answer to a perceived threat is, of course, confinement.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“There is unique gravity to an actual prison sentence, the violence of locking a human being in a cage. Yet the system is broader than the buildings called "prisons." Manipulation, confinement, punishment, and deprivation can take other forms - forms that may be less easily recognized as the violence they are.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“There’s a reason for the mainstream bipartisan consensus around community policing: it maintains and expands the status quo. As advocates call for fewer police and less policing and criminalization, community policing becomes a way to reshape the narrative to position police as friendly beat cops who know everyone’s name. But community policing doesn’t make policing more effective, less hostile, or more accountable to the communities they serve in. Instead it allows police to further entrench their presence in neighborhoods, justify increases in their numbers, and even mobilize community members to participate in policing by surveilling our neighbors.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“Unlike prisons, psychiatric institutions can be entered voluntarily, and people often turn to them in pursuit of treatment. But when used involuntarily as prison replacements, hospitals mimic persons in eerie ways— and the most oppressed people experience the brunt of the trauma and violence.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“The same factors that propelled mass incarceration - racism, "law and order" politics, the war on drugs, the destruction of the social safety net - also propelled mass supervision.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“Monitors and house arrest aren't rehabilitative or transformative - they don't support people in making changes that would be helpful to their lives, gaining needed resources, addressing harm or violence, or confronting the social forces that affect them.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms