A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States

In this impressive study, historian Hillyer (Designing Dixie) documents the relative openness of American prisons in the early 20th century and the subsequent “thickening and hardening of prison walls.” She explains that prior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, particularly in Southern states, governors were generous in commuting sentences and granting pardons, family (or conjugal) visits were encouraged, and inmates could expect furloughs, work release, and other opportunities to interact with the outside world. This all changed in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s as Jim Crow laws and practices were overturned and made illegal, and some politicians (she points particularly to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 election campaign) used white anxiety over the loss of racial control to stoke a fear of crime. Mandatory sentencing guidelines were instituted, and inmates were no longer assumed to have the potential to live law-abiding lives outside of prison. The “correctional subject” became even more “tightly tethered to his crime,” Hillyer observes. This thorough work of historical scholarship draws extensively on inmate newspapers to provide an eye-opening look at the high value prisoners placed on family visits, furlough, and the possibility of clemency, making their cancellation its own form of psychological punishment. Readers concerned by mass incarceration should take note. (Feb.)