3 SEA (Socially Engaged Art) Project: Social Inequality/Mass Incaceration

Mass Incarceration

• Ana Beatriz Marroquim Bitar abitar@uw.edu   – Class Discussion

When our group decided to have our Socially Engaged Art (SEA) topic be mass incarceration and we had to decide how we could get our peers involved, we decided to ask them the question “What comes to mind when you think of the words Mass Incarceration?”. This question may seem simple, but we could not start presenting information without seeing what our peers already knew and how they personally saw this issue and possibly their feelings towards it, so we could make sure we were mindful when speaking on the topic. We ended up with many similarities between responses, some of the common words were “silence”, “punishment”, and “minorities”. This lets us know that our peers, at least to some extent, are aware of this issue, but also that there is more that we can teach them about, because despite mass incarceration and the system as a whole continually pushing people, especially minorities, down they are able to keep their resilience. Hopefully, since our peers were initially involved in the process it made them more invested in all the details we presented to them and want to get socially involved in the fight for a better prison system or the abolition of the existing one. We also hope that our presentation was able to aside from teaching them more on the topic it encouraged them to explore this from the point of view of resilience that inmates are able to show even when they are put in this system.

•  Ryan Van Vuitton vvuitton@uw.edu – Art and Statistics

Looking at the statistics of mass incarceration over time can seriously put its meaning into perspective.  If you compare the numbers of the amount of people being incarcerated across decades, they significantly differ. For example, in the 1970s  100 people out of 100,000 in a certain populace were incarcerated. If you compare this number to the statistics of the year 2018, almost four decades after, 655 people out of 100,000 were incarcerated. Now as you can tell the incarceration rate increases drastically over time. Why do you think this is? To me personally, even though equality has been heavily influenced in today’s generation, biased propaganda still ensues. What I mean by this is that any type of legal system is saturated with unjust civic, religious, and common laws. For example, the most common history many of us know is the mass incarceration of Africans. This horrible doing was, at the time, justified with many reasons including social status, skin color, and the words of the Bible. Yes. The words of the Bible. Because of these dominating aspects, incarceration has held a strong grasp on minorities in America. People develop schemas for each other, which are mental representations of a certain person, place, or thing. Through these schemes, associations such as minority people and drugs, food and minority people, theft, and minority people, can lead to the fruition of stereotypes. These reasons qualify the disproportionate effect incarceration has on Black and Latino people. In 2016, the incarceration rate for white people was 465 per 100,000, while Latino Americans made up 1,091 and Black Americans comprised 2,724. A baffling difference. Why do statistics have to be so daunting? After listening to the solidity of mass incarceration and Black Lives Matter vs Blue lives matter, hopefully, during breakout rooms, you can express your input, opinions, and possible experiences.

Art piece

Since our theme gravitates towards bright and vibrant colors, I decided to include this aspect in my mixed media piece. However, when someone usually thinks of an exciting color palette, happiness, positivity, or even disgust, if it’s too vibrant, is produced. In the case of my art piece, vibrancy is contrasted with its symbolism: the legal system and people that aren’t necessarily primary targets of mass incarceration. Their freedom is colorful. The two hands representing minorities are colorless, emphasizing difference and polarization. Another reason why I made the legal system represent color is because their “protection” masks over their deception. When making this piece, I really thought about how times have significantly changed. How the coronavirus is currently impacting us and the rise of several movements including Black Lives Matter fighting for equality. Equality. We seem so divided but at the same time so united.

•  Lina D. – Audience Interaction/Video

A vital part of the socially engaged arts is to involve the audience into the project and its purpose. What we hoped to achieve with our project is allowing the audience to look through their own lens first, which opens them up into thinking about our topic of Mass Incarceration. We posed the questions, “Do you think having higher education will reduce incarceration?” and “True or False? POC are more likely to be incarcerated.”. These two questions warmed up the audience for the coming material and artwork that would be presented and it allowed the audience to be more open in challenging their preconceived beliefs or learning new knowledge in general. During the festival, there was a visual display of a majority of answers being “Yes” in agreeing that having a higher education does reduce incarceration and “True” in support of the statement that POC are more likely to be incarcerated. After this brief assessment from the audience, we introduced a video that did a thorough job in outlining the basics of Mass Incarceration, which included thought-provoking statistics as well. This information touched on the answers to the questions we posed and further related to the other material we presented throughout our festival. The main idea that was kept in mind for the execution for this section was for the audience to develop a foundation that acknowledges mass incarceration as a social issue that affects and influences the communities we are a part of.

•  Valencia Simbolon valeucia@uw.edu – Poems

As we were visualizing what art pieces we should do, we came up with the conclusion of the usage of poems, resilience poems. While in the process of thinking to make our own poems, an idea came up that my group agreed so quickly on. When thinking about resilience in mass incarceration, the first thing that comes to mind is if and how the prisoners learn this hard characteristic trait. After doing some research, we found a website that actually provides us poems for prisoners that learned resilience in their situation. This way, we as a group and our audience can see a different view of what prisoners actually do. The first poem by Barbara Williams was written on January 21, 2021 and has been incarcerated since 2014. Her poem illustrates how much of her time is just trying to learn something new and gaining new knowledge to better herself. The second poem by David Richardson was written on December 19, 2020, and has been incarcerated since 2010. Even through the situation he is currently in, he still proceeds to further his education and remain indomitable. He wants his voice to be heard by others and hopes that the audience can learn from him. Last but definitely not least, the third poem is by Anton Rigney. His poem was written on November 29, 2020, and has been incarcerated since 1988. His poem portrays how other people perceive him and how quickly people are to judge as soon as someone sees him. He tries to let the audience know that quickly judging others is something that shouldn’t happen. These three poems were the ones we chose because they all have a different meaning to what their poems mean but they all surround what resilience means. Though they are still incarcerated to this day, they are slowly but very surely bettering themselves in the situation they are in which is the meaning of resilience.

• Moises Dominguez  moid67@uw.edu  – Resilience/Rehabilitation

The US prison system is riddled with issues that continue to feed the ever growing problem of Mass Incarceration with the US counting for about 25% of the prisoner population across the globe. For a prisoner in order to survive and make it through the prison system on a day-to-day basis, they require enormous amounts of resilience. With a prison system almost designed to see them fail it seems that only the most resilient of the 2 million incarcerated (the largest prison population/per-capita in the world) in the US are able to make it out of the prison system successfully, unfortunately, more than 75% of inmates in the US aren’t that fortunate and are rearrested within 5 years. But fault shouldn’t fall on the inmates but the broken system that cares little about rehabilitation and preparing inmates for life following release, instead more about punishment and hard time. This is why I created a video detailing the failings of the US prison system while mostly focusing on the issues revolving around rehabilitation, and comparing our current situation to how other countries handle mass incarceration and rehabilitation; with a major concentration on Norway’s prison and rehabilitation system. I chose Norway as when it comes to their own prison system they are doing almost the exact opposite to the US but are succeeding in every aspect when compared to the US and maintain one of the lowest prisoners per capita rates in the world. Norway focuses on Restorative Justice; with no death penalty or life sentences with the main objective for prisons in Norway is to rehabilitate and ensure prisoners have the proper resources to re-enter society as better people. With luxury prisons, open prisons, far less overcrowding, and major emphasis on education and job training; Norway’s prisons are more like 4-star hotels rather than what we think of as a traditional prison. More importantly, all of these tactics help encourage their prisoners to follow a path of rehabilitation and re-enter society in a positive way. With less than 20% of prisoners being rearrested within 5 years, Norway is definitely doing something right and I believe the US can learn a lot from the compassion and resilience Norway has for their prisoners and people.

• Kirsten Bjerkeset kbjerk@uw.edu – Art and Why Mass Incarceration is Important

As I did more research for our project and brainstormed for what we were going to incorporate, I also wanted to create an art piece for a singular part of the many reasons why mass incarceration is important. After reviewing sources on why the incarcerated population is important, it’s not only because it connects to people within the system but locals and communities that also get influenced by this high rate of people around this punishment. It is something that seems forgotten until it actually affects you which is why it’s even more important to think about all the external factors and educate yourself on them before it does happen. Prisons are the worst place to effectively treat people for education, rehabilitation, or anything else a fully functioning human needs to grow up. The lack of resources and opportunities creates a set of stigma, outcast, and circle within and around the system. Having awareness and understanding like giving a second chance can really change the world and hopefully decrease the rate of incarcerated.

Art piece: Social mobility behind bars

Sources

1. The United States of Incarceration | The Marshall Project
2. Slavery to Mass Incarceration – YouTube
3. https://tedxbeaconstreet.com/speakers/monalisa-johnson/#:~:text=CEO%20%26%20Executive%20Producer%2C%20TV%20Personality%2C%20Advocate&text=She%20is%20also%20the%20CEO,%2C%20businesswoman%2C%20visionary%20and%20mother!
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaPBcUUqbew   (what is incarceration info video)
5. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-cant-we-end-mass-incarceration-166420/  (artwork image)
6. https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/07/31/revoked/how-probation-and-parole-feed-mass-incarceration-united-states  (artwork image)
7. https://www.amacad.org/publication/incarceration-social-inequality
8. https://www.heysigmund.com/building-resilience-children/
9. https://www.ntdaily.com/the-negative-effects-on-the-economy-caused-by-mass-incarceration/
10. https://writeaprisoner.com/inmates/barbara-williams-18029-041/poetry (poem)
11. https://writeaprisoner.com/inmates/david-richardson-00520117/penpal (poem)
12. https://writeaprisoner.com/inmates/anton-rigney-000413179b/penpal (poem)