Prison Visits Under Threat, “Hamilton” Behind Bars, Art & the NYPD: Three Links from a Criminal Justice System

Last updated on: April 30, 2016 at 11:14 am by Eve Tushnet

Prison Visits Under Threat, “Hamilton” Behind Bars, Art & the NYPD: Three Links from a Criminal Justice System 2016-04-30T11:14:33-04:00 Eve Tushnet

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“Prison visits helped prepare me for life after release. Why are they under threat?”:

Leaving prison was one of the hardest times in my life. Re-entry is like falling out of a plane: it’s hard to land on your feet. Before I even left, six-plus years at York Correctional Institution developed in me an inability to function in a non-carceral environment. But I owe it to prison visiting rooms – which allowed some contact with the outside world – that my re-entry wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

During visits, my mother would tell me, “Lower your voice,” when I didn’t think it was elevated. She would observe, “You’re so angry,” when I wasn’t. She would ask, “Can I finish?” when I trampled her sentences. Those visits helped me to relearn the social graces that were lost while inside.

That’s why it worries me that several jails around the country have eliminated, or plan to eliminate and severely restrict, in-person visits. They want to use video visitation as a substitute. But virtual reality has never supplanted reality anywhere – so why do we expect it to in prison?

Of all the jails that have already implemented video visitation, 74% of them have closed their visiting centers permanently, according to research conducted by the Prison Policy Initiative. Too often, when video visitation becomes an option, real-life visitations cease to be.

more (and I missed #falladafriday but the main point of this article is also the main point of Hans Fallada’s flawed but powerful novel Once a Jailbird)

“‘He struggled and kept his guard up’: Hamilton in the Big House”:

…I often wish I could take the guys to the theatre. You may be able to imagine that a fair number of these men had no access to the arts as children. (That’s a separate post.) We make do with production photos and the occasional “adapted for television.” Until the cast of Hamilton beautifully and powerfully performed their opening number from the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre for the Grammy ceremony, and then performed at the White House. Until Lin-Manuel Miranda free-styled in the Rose Garden with President Obama. Which I promptly burned onto a DVD and waited for clearance to bring into the facility.

Tonight we watched Lin-Manuel perform a piece from his ‘concept album’ at the 2009 White House Poetry Jam, and we talked about how that audience received his work. We talked about what happens when people laugh and you’re serious, about the decision to stand one’s ground and follow one’s purpose, which is a hot topic in our rehearsal room as we get closer to sharing our months of work with the population of the prison. “He gets more confident as he goes.” Some of the men are worried that the population won’t understand Shakespeare; some are worried that they will laugh at the serious parts. Tonight, one of the elders in our circle says, “We have to tell the story.”

more (follow the author on Twitter)–wait AND I just read her truly powerful older piece about staging Our Town in the house of the dead. Dramaturgy + theology, your must-read link from this post.

“Off the Beat and Into a Museum: Art Helps Police Officers Learn to Look”:

…When forced to deconstruct paintings in group settings, people from different professions tend to respond differently.

“The law enforcement community is much more forthcoming,” Ms. Herman said. “Cops will outtalk you every time. Doctors and medical students are much more inhibited. They don’t want to be wrong, and they never want to show that they are ignorant about anything.”

more–I’m pro-this, but lol at “I’d collar the guy in pink.” Reminds me of that (truncated) Henry Adams quote, “In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at home[.]”

Art

Lin-Manuel Miranda

no more cotton-pickin' prisons

prayers to St Joseph Cafasso

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