Caging compassion: Recognizing and resisting carceral humanist narratives in criminal justice reform

by Emmett Sanders

Advocates for criminal justice reform are often caught between the immediate need to address the dehumanizing conditions people are subjected to and the need to make actual lasting reforms to the systems in which carceral harm is perpetuated. Sometimes, they are faced with reforms, often proposed by prison systems themselves, that fall under the label of “carceral humanism”. Carceral humanist reforms co-opt our compassion and use it to suggest minimal improvements to the carceral system without changing the dehumanization at the core of mass incarceration. Carceral humanist reforms are not genuine change, but rather a public relations strategy that seeks to remove the objection to harm rather than to remove the harm itself.

On February 25 at 1 PM ET, join the Prison Policy Initiative and guests James Kilgore and Mon Mohapatra as we discuss our new toolkit, Caging compassion: Recognizing and resisting carceral humanist narratives in criminal justice reform. We offer useful tips for advocates seeking to avoid superficial carceral humanist reforms in their quest to make genuine, lasting systemic change.

This new guide:

• Explains how carceral humanism manifests in different areas such as jail expansion, halfway houses, and prolonged post-release supervision, as well as in electronic monitoring and other alternatives to incarceration.
• Helps identify some commonly used carceral humanist narratives, as well as offers useful counternarratives and examples of how people have successfully responded to these narratives.
• Offers advice for those seeking to determine whether the proposed reform offers real change or is a carceral humanist reform, and
• Offers advice on identifying non-carceral humanist responses to harm.

This guide is part of our ever-expanding Advocacy Toolkit, a series of resources for criminal legal reform advocates. We hope you'll join us for this important conversation.

Register for the webinar here.