Latino Liberty and the Meaning of Security: On Prison Nations and Liberal States

Year 2015, Issue: 42, 227 - 247, 01.10.2015

Michael García

Abstract

Critics view the prison system as a mechanism and an institution that produces and reproduces prison populations that reflect institutional racism in society. Alternatively it is said that democratic societies fail to protect society’s most vulnerable members, and thereby erodes prisoners’ liberty. The only way to ensure the liberty of anyone is to protect it for everyone, and the only way to safeguard the freedom and security of the democratic majority is to also guarantee liberty, equality, and justice to democracy’s minorities. American prisons reify these notions, give them concrete form. Predation and extortion casts in lurid reflection unfair advantages in society outside the prison, such as through white privilege the tyranny of the majority as ethnic gang and by ever-increasing transfers of wealth to the rich — without any subsequent mechanisms of redistribution

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