“When we look at police brutality, when we look at violent conditions, you can't break a cycle of violence with more violence. And the prison is, if not the most profound and devastating state sanctioned and institutional expression of violence, it is a violence incubator.”
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Elizabeth Hinton and Elsa Julien Lora about their new book, Harm and Punishment: Incarcerated Writers on Violence and the US Prison. Along with two research assistants, Lora and Hinton pored over hundreds of essays by prisoners, found in the American Prison Writing Archive. They then selected and organized the essays found in this volume, offering illuminating introductions to each section.
Our discussion moves through many topics—the brutal, dehumanizing, and punitive nature of the prison system, the damage it does to lives both inside and outside prison, and the ways prisoners find to survive and offer each other support, despite being pitted against each other. At base, we consider how we, as a society, are “addicted to violence,” and why and how it is crucial to understand that violence can only produce more violence. These essays organically blend personal observations and stories with a deep understanding of the broad, systemic nature of violence.
(0:00) The violence incubator
(3:03) Harm and Punishment: Essay Collection
(4:18) Curating the American Prison Writing Archive
(8:29) A society addicted to violence
(13:00) A lack of cohesive theory
(15:23) Slow violence and medical neglect
(16:59) Childhood trauma and street corner refuges
(21:18) Rational responses to untenable conditions
(25:35) The picture of despair and heartache
(30:00) Razor wire, iron bars, and the slow boil
(32:47) Dancing in the penitentiary and moments of joy
(37:00) No one here gets out alive
(43:21) The logical response is abolition
(47:57) A silenced pedagogy for the future
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