at Irvine, Irvine, California 92717. Joseph Hickey is Director, Just Community Research Center, Connecticut Correctional Institution at Niantic. Introduction: The Paradoxes of Democratic Prison Reform The papers in this special issue of The Prison Journal were written on the theme of democracy and imprisonment: Is it possible to meaningfully share the power with prisoners? Is democracy a plausible avenue of correctional reform? What are the constraints against democratic participation behind prison walls? Revealingly, each of the contributors emerges with a paradoxical response to the queries posed above. Yes, democracy in prison represents an educational, political and social good. However, any effort to broaden the base of political power within the prison faces almost overwhelming obstacles. This paper seeks to introduce some of the issues central to the problem of democratic prison reform, in terms of both its promise as well as its contradictions. We will look at some of the educational, political, moral and legal rationales for democratizing the prison. As an illustration we look at the case of Thomas Mott Osborne’a &dquo;Mutual Welfare League&dquo; experiment focusing both on its obvious accomplishments, as well as the social and political processes which led to its early demise. We will offer that prison democracy, given the contemporary realities of the prison, reflects an almost hopeless enterprise. Unless, there is a massive reordering of both the prison

Thomas Mott Osborne And The Limits Of Democratic Prison Reform

Modern trade union movements, without exception, have as one of their goals the widest possible organization of the labor force. This has been achieved in only limited degree, however, in some major industrial nations like the United States and West Germany, where the percentage of organization barely reaches 30 to 35 of wage and salary employment. In other developed countries, the rate of organization is more than double that figure in Denmark, Belgium, and Norway, for example, the degree of unionization has gone beyond 60 percent; it approaches 70 percent in Austria, exceeds that in Sweden, and is over 80 percent in Israel.1 Experience in these very highly organized countries suggests that other nations, as they move toward higher levels of unionization, may encounter special types of industrial relations problems.2 It further suggests that, with high unionization, interunion conflict may become almost as important as union-management conflict.

What Happens When Everyone Organizes

The 1970s saw incarcerated laborers engage in an unprecedented battle to secure recognition, rights, and protections. This article traces the rise of the Prisoners Union, the largest and most prominent organization of its sort, as it endeavored to elevate the standing of captive labor. Through qualitative analysis of archival materials, this work unpacks penal laborers’ classification struggles aimed at advancing status in the penal field and rejoining the ranks of the working class. Investigating this movement's successes and failures enhances empirical knowledge of prison organizing as well as theoretical understandings of classification struggles, and helps contextualize historic penological developments.

The Ghosts Inside: The Historic Struggle to Reclassify Prison Labor, 1967–1979

The commitment to prison reform swelled during the early 1970s. While the West Coast was locked in a battle to transform it’s prisons, banner-waving contingents nationwide urged state legislatures to reconsider their position on incarceration. They argued that imprisonment was a capitalist endeavor: to capture America’s poor for the sole purpose of utilizing their labor. The political Left was transitioning itself, from late-1960s Vietnam antiwar rants and speeches beseeching American imperialism, into a movable social force within the national dialog about carceral reform. Universities sponsored prison “teach-ins,” and newspapers and books on prison conditions slowly peeled back the “iron curtain,” revealing to the public the atrocities of human rights violations occurring behind prison walls. Attorney groups also entered the fray. Fay Stender’s Prison Law Project, its later splinter organization the Prison Law Collective, and the National Lawyers Guild were receiving letters by the busload from inmates complaining of conditions and alleging unfair treatment from prisons all around the country.

From a Spark to a Raging Fire

Between August 21 and September 9, 2018, American prisoners were called to strike by several of their organizations. It is not the first time (...)

Prisoners on Strike in the United States

*Dr. Huff is Assistant Professor, Program in Social Ecology, University of Cal. ifornia, Irvine The history of prisoners’ movements is one of protest, conflict, and dissension within the ranks, as much as against the &dquo;establishments&dquo; they seek to reform. Although there certainly has been diffusion, there is no monolithic &dquo;prisoners’ movement.&dquo; There are, rather, several distinct movements around the world, some of which

Ronald Huff

Papers

The Development And Diffusion Of Prisoners' Movements