Thinking about the Past
An ex-cohost returns as a guest, and I ponder the history of modern politics
My former co-host Alex Suarez is coming back on the show to talk about his book and his experiences in trying to gain educational certifications from the state of Florida. It will be good to talk to Alex again. So be sure to join us Sunday 10/01 at 8AM Pacific time/11Am Eastern time!
Before I get all up in my feelings about the upcoming show and my general emotional state lately, I want to write a bit about last week’s show with Connor Exum. During that show, I spoke a bit about a very social science-y article on criminal justice reform by Jonathan Ben-Menachem. The basic premise is the honest recognition that money drives research and the results of research tend to benefit the people putting up the money for the research. This is plain common sense, and it is championed as such when appealed to in bad faith by anti-vaxers. The way reactionaries attempt to weaponize common sense against itself is truly terrifying when it comes to criminal justice reform.
“As the movement against mass criminalization continues apace, the “evidence-based paradigm” (EBP) for criminal justice reform has become increasingly influential.”
Ben-Menachem is better than I am at not burying the lede.
“By ‘evidence-based paradigm,’ I mean a ‘data-driven’ approach to criminal legal reform in which researchers like myself aim to identify “what works” in the quest for decarceration.”
Everything is “evidence based” today. The words “data-driven” are frequently included these days when people want to be taken especially seriously. People want to sell their ideas as scientific so they can promise the results their policies are designed to produce. The capitalist incentive is perverse. Bad scholarship that seizes the popular imagination is more commercially successful than good scholarship. Why? Because it can be marketed as good scholarship by the system itself.
“While EBP proponents can claim partial credit for prison population declines in the early 2010s, it seems fair to say that the movement’s primary interest has been the cost effectiveness of criminalization.”
Here Ben-Menachem makes a direct reference to one of the capitalist goals incentive-ized by capitalist funding for criminal justice reform scholarship: reform is most likely to pass through the system and become policy if it benefits the bottom line. This directly serves the interests of the carceral state. They want to cut costs and justify convict leasing schemes.
I frequently joke that Calvinism was a bad idea because some things can’t be reformed. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the roots of the American carceral state lie in British reforms of the penal system built on the idea of “penitence.” The idea that prisoners were repaying a debt to society incurred by their crimes, gaining forgiveness, and becoming better people is where the word “penitentiary” comes from. “Penitence” is the sincere feeling that motivates repentance. This is why prisons have chaplains.
As I said to Connor on the show, the US is what happened when religious fanatics who were also entrepreneurs started a business. This is why capitalism and the credentials that lead people to be taken seriously by capitalists are often closely linked. Jonathan Ben-Menachem’s piece is, in my opinion, an excellent demonstration of the inherent value of reform to those of us who actually want to change the system. Reform is about protecting the system, it needs to be replaced.
Alex coming on the show as a guest has me thinking about my other co-hosts. That is always a melancholy process. I frequently feel that past colleagues have benefited as much as possible from our collaborations and then cast me aside as somewhat embarrassing once they are taken seriously. I am objective enough to understand that they believe they have justified complaints about me but I am also self-interested enough to point out that they didn’t want to rock the boat when they felt they were benefiting from me. Instead they passive-aggressively distanced themselves from me and then made me the villain.
The fact that Alex and I have been able to avoid that dynamic makes me feel as if I am learning and growing a bit from time to time.