The Language of Liberation: Unpacking carcerality and its impact on our communities
Community Reporting Fellow Lavonte Lucas sat down with Karen Evans to discuss the impact of carcerality and what it means for Louisiana as a carceral state.
Behind This Story | Louisiana currently has the second highest imprisonment rate in the nation, but our communities don’t feel any safer. What are the alternatives to mass incarceration? The Language of Liberation is a community resource produced by the Fall 2023 Community Reporting Fellows to make information on the prison abolition movement more accessible to community members so that we can begin to answer that question. This guide is part of a larger reporting series on youth incarceration and abolition. The guide features definitions of abolition terms, as well as the perspectives of local abolitionists. Have questions or comments? Email us at ledeneworleans@gmail.com.
By Lavonte Lucas
I spent last fall doing research and conducting interviews to learn more about the concept of the carceral state. In the process, I learned that how our government spends money can tell us a lot about systems and priorities. A carceral state prioritizes funding for stakeholders that seek to profit from mass incarceration and–by default–de-prioritizes funding for services and programs that aid people in the community like housing or food assistance.
In 2017, Louisiana spent $625 million on adult corrections, its third highest expenditure after health care and education, according to a report by the state’s Justice Reinvestment Task Force. A 2022 analysis from the Pew Charitable Trusts found Louisiana is spending about $153 million less each year on jails and prison, and overall prison populations are decreasing. That’s because of a set of criminal justice reforms Gov. John Bel Edwards signed into law in 2017. The changes made in 2017 implemented some of the steps abolition advocates are pushing for, including alternatives to incarceration for people convicted of less serious crimes, reduced prison terms for those who can be safely supervised in the community, and investing to remove barriers to re-entry for people who are formerly incarcerated.
Despite this, Louisiana is still one of the most incarcerated places in the world. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Louisiana has an incarceration rate of 1,067 per 100,000 people, a rate higher than the U.S. as a whole and that of most democratic countries. When compared to other parts of the world, Louisiana is still very much a carceral state, where funding and policies are still designed to support holding people in jails and prisons.
As a New Orleans public school student, I saw how the hallmarks of carcerality have even started showing up in our education system. For example, the student uniform policy was strictly enforced at my high school. Students who violated this policy were often taken out of class and escorted to what was called the “Positive Redevelopment Program.” It was a small room where students who got in trouble were forced to do work in isolation for the remainder of the school day.
As a freshman, I was often one of those students removed from class. Going to that room left me feeling confined and isolated. Students were being reprimanded for what seemed to me like the silliest things. There wasn’t much room to make mistakes, even though making mistakes is part of growing into adulthood. If we can’t make mistakes at school, then what happens after graduation?
Reflecting back, I can see how those school policies and punishment were a reflection of the criminal legal system and the carceral state we live in. The consequences myself and other students experienced weren’t necessarily about our positive development or aiding us in our educational advancement. Instead of confining and isolating young people, we should be providing them with adequate resources and support. The same goes for people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated.
After Hurricane Katrina, the Southern Poverty Law Center launched the School to Prison Reform Project in New Orleans to highlight and counter the fact that students with special education needs are often funneled into the prison system. Research at the time found that 85 percent of children in juvenile detention facilities nationwide had disabilities that made them eligible for special education services, yet only 37 percent had been receiving any kind of services in their school.
As I noted earlier, where state funds go can tell us a lot about our priorities. Take a look at the level of student aid funds available to help young Louisiana residents with college tuition and related costs, versus what the state spends to hold someone in jail or prison. My tuition at Dillard University costs me about $23,000 a year. I get a state merit scholarship that provides me with $2,500 in student aid, as long as I keep good grades. By contrast, Louisiana spent an average of $16,251 per person who was incarcerated in 2015, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.
With a lack of government support in essentials like education, housing, mental wellness and employment, Louisiana residents are more susceptible to the carceral system and all its features, including the school-to-prison pipeline.
Community Voice: Karen Evans
The carceral system is the inescapable reality that exists in America. Countless youth in New Orleans and across the country are just trying to survive it. It can be like navigating a maze with no exits.
I spoke with Karen Evans, executive director of the Children & Youth Planning Board, about this reality and what the alternatives are. The CYPB works with a range of local stakeholders to advocate for and develop plans to meet the physical, social, emotional and developmental needs of local children and families. Evans noted she’s fortunate that her role brings her into contact with young people who are thriving, not just surviving.
“I get to intersect with young people who are on their way, are moving and want to get into spaces where they can move even further,” said Evans, who adds that the support and compassion she received during her own upbringing in Compton, Calif., motivates and drives her grassroots work with young people.
Today, Evans spends her time galvanizing the community, putting meaning to movements in pursuit of a more productive infrastructure for Louisiana’s young people and the state’s future. She observed that one effect of living in a carceral system is that a lot of time, money and political action goes into designing stricter and more intense punishment, without consideration of alternatives.
Further, the carceral system subjects the people who are deemed “offenders” not to a rehabilitative process, but one that statistically expects them to re-offend. (A Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis found that about six in 10 prisoners released across 34 states in 2012 were arrested within three years. Seven in 10 were arrested within five years.)
“The folks who crafted the system say, ‘You’re going to be punished no matter what. No matter the intensity, no matter the truth, no matter what,’” Evans said. “We’ve got you named. You are going to receive your punishment.”
We don’t often talk about the mental strain people endure while incarcerated. There is a term for a person who can’t mentally escape the prison mentality: institutionalized. The process of becoming institutionalized creates re-offenders and takes away the potential of that person being a productive member of the community. Additionally, the re-entry process is difficult and our country openly discriminates against formerly incarcerated people. That cripples individuals and makes it tough for them to take on the responsibilities of being a free person.
Evans said chipping away at the carceral system is about recalibrating our concept of justice. Is justice about punishment or healing?
“We consider the system of incarceration as a punishment, because you did a crime no matter the crime… The real crime is the lack of intention on a systematic level to prioritize more human approaches to rehabilitation,” Evans said.
From my perspective, it’s hard to see winners in the carceral system. Activists who seek to dismantle the prison industrial complex argue that carcerality is oppressive to all stakeholders, including people who are not incarcerated. Here in New Orleans, the cycle of crime, incarceration, release and re-offense is detrimental not only to our sense of freedom as individuals, but also our collective sense of safety and community.
You don’t have to be incarcerated to understand the effects of carcerality. The thought of experiencing arrest and incarceration, and being sucked into the system is terrifying to me. That’s proof enough that the system has a mental bind on us, eroding our thinking and well-being.
The carceral process is about instilling fear. In my view, that fear deters most of us from questioning the system and investigating alternatives further. What might happen if more of the public started to question the system?
Lavonte Lucas, 23, conducted the interview for this piece. Lucas is a photographer and storyteller from New Orleans. Lucas, a Bard Early College New Orleans alum, found his passion for photography after working with Gigsy and as a photo contributor for the newspaper at Dillard University. He now runs his own photography business. Lucas is a Fall 2023 Community Reporting Fellow with Lede New Orleans.
Fellowship Producer Nijah Narcisse produced this piece. She is a New Orleans born-and-bred creative writer and journalist, and an alumni of the Community Reporting Fellowship at Lede New Orleans.
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