State Racism, Fear, and Mass Incarceration:
Reexamining Foucault’s Contribution to Mass Incarceration Discourse
Myisha Cherry
Introduction
Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish is not only a historical anthropology of punishment but
also a descriptive analysis of the prison system. Written in 1975, Foucault describes the prison
system as a panopticon apparatus that engages in disciplinary practices in order to watch and
produce docile bodies. During the 1960’s-70’s prisoner rights groups were numerous partly
because humanities scholars saw, thanks to Foucault, prison as a mirror of society and the
prisoner as the “ultimate traitor to disciplinary societies.”1 Discipline and Punish came out of a
study of prisons in France by a group of intellectuals that included Foucault, Genet, and Sartre.
However, while the prisoner rights movement internationally was active, the prison population
in American was only about 200,000. In 1973, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal
Justice Standards recommended that no new adult correction facilities be built. In 1977, Leo
Bersani’s announced in his review of Discipline and Punish, “The era of prisons may be nearly
over.”2
In 2013, the era of prisons is not over. Instead we have entered into a new era of imprisonment,
from Foucault’s disciplinary power to David Garland’s mass incarceration. Since the
publication of Discipline and Punish, the prison population has increased from 200,000 to over
two million. The two eras of imprisonment are not only different in its numbers of inmates but
in practice. While Foucault’s analysis of prisons was directed on the inward self, mass
incarceration focuses on populations. Instead of a place of self-improvement, the prison is now
a warehouse. Because of such differences, thinkers such as Angela Davis, Loic Waquant, David
Garland, and Michelle Alexander appear to be more of a resource for analyzing mass
incarceration instead of Foucault. Jeffrey Paris concedes that it is a pity that Foucault’s insights
are a contribution to social theory but his analyses of disciplinary power cannot be transported
to the system of mass incarceration and the modern prison.3 It is this latter point I would like
to address.
In this paper I argue that Foucault is relevant to the discussion of mass incarceration beyond
his disciplinary analysis of prisons. I will respond to a popular critique of Foucault posed by
philosophers of mass incarceration, such as Angela Davis, that suggest that Foucault’s omission
of race fails to provide an accurate analysis of prisons in the United States. A discussion of race
is important since many philosophers of mass incarceration argue that mass incarceration is a
racist institution. I argue that an adoption of a Foucauldian conception of race, instead of Davis’
1
Simon, J. Beyond the panopticon: Mass imprisonment and the humanities
(2010) Law, Culture and the Humanities, 6 (3) , pp. 327-340.
2 Ibid., 4-5
3 Paris, Jeffrey (2007). Scholar's symposium: The work of Angela Y. Davis. Human Studies 30 (4)
conception, provides a more comprehensive analysis of mass incarceration. In doing so I hope
to show that Foucault is a resource for understanding and analyzing the rise, practices,
attitudes, and continual existence of mass incarceration. I will not limit his contribution to ideas
found in Discipline and Punish but will also include other work during this same intellectual
period of Foucault’s. I will first define mass incarceration and provide Angela Davis’ argument
for its racist roots. I will then offer a critique for why her concept of race and her slave analogy
is insufficient. Lastly, I will provide a Foucauldian conception of race as a more comprehensive
alternative to Davis’ view as well as critique “state racisms” moral problems.
Mass Incarceration
According to David Garland, there are two defining features of mass incarceration. Mass
incarceration is termed for its massive rates and size of prison population in the United States
that surpasses any other nation. It also refers not to the incarceration of individual offenders
but rather the systematic incarceration of whole groups of populations that for the United
States include black and Hispanic males. Garland notes that mass incarceration is not a policy
but is the result of policies and decisions such as the war on drugs, mandatory sentences, tough
of crime measures, etc. The cost of mass incarceration includes normalization of prisons,
alienation of populations, disenfranchisement, and a “criminalized underclass…. brought into
existence and systemically perpetuated.”.4
While some find a direct link between crime and punishment as an explanation for mass
incarceration, some thinkers believe that mass incarceration is caused by a different factor, race.
Angela Davis writes “Racialization Punishment and Prison Abolition” as an alternative to
Foucault’s prison analysis, which she argues, is absent of any mention of race. According to
Davis, prisons in America have become a racist system and therefore must be abolish. She notes
that the 13th amendment, although it abolished slavery, has within it the acceptance of a type of
slavery as long as it is used as a form of punishment:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States,
or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” –13th Amendment
She therefore argues that prisons became a new form of the slave system as a way to control
blacks after emancipation. The existence of the southern black codes made it easier to convict
former slaves and incarcerate them. Today, the disproportionate amounts of blacks in prison
show “black codes” are still alive. Therefore, mass incarceration is a modern day form of
slavery; a system built on racism.5
Angela Davis is very critical of Foucault’s inattention to race in his analysis of prisons.
Referencing Joy James who notes that because of Foucault’s silence on the racialization of
prisons, one ought to move beyond a strictly Foucauldian genealogy of prisons in examining
4
Garland, D. (Ed.). (2001). “Introduction”. Mass imprisonment: Social causes and consequences. London: SAGE
Publications. P. 2.
5 Davis, A. Y. (2007) Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition, in A Companion to African-American
Philosophy (eds T. L. Lott and J. P. Pittman), Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, USA.
prisons. Angela Davis takes that charge in “Racialization of Punishment and Prison Abolition”.
She argues punishment in the United States has “transformed the character of punishment into
a means of managing former slaves” and that the modern day prison system is “an institution
that which preserves existing structures of racism as well as creates more complicated forms of
racism in US Society.“ 6 I will critique her argument and hope to show that her use of race is
problematic.
The Problem with “Race” and Racism
Angela Davis adopts an ideological view of race and racism. She accepts indirectly that races
are people with phenotype differences such as skin color. Therefore she subscribes to the view
that racism is the belief that certain races are biologically, intellectually, and culturally inferior.
She uses racism and white supremacy interchangeably in her work. To Davis, there are racist
practices in arrests, convictions, and sentencing practices and “ideological racism leads to
wholesale criminalization”.7 While she does admit that poor people are also targets she
differentiates between racism and classism in her analysis.
Davis describes mass incarceration as the new slavery, where blacks are incarcerated
disproportionally because of race and stripped of their freedom like black slaves were during
slavery. Her use of race and the slavery analogy is very close to other thinkers who use race
and the Jim Crow analogy to describe mass incarceration. However, this use of race and the
analogy of historical systems of racism are problematic. James Forman argues in “Racial
Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow” that philosophers of mass
incarceration have drawn attention to injustices created by the criminal justice by their use of
historical realities like Jim Crow (and in the case of Davis, slavery,) however the analogy fails
to provide a comprehensive understanding of mass incarceration.8 I agree with Forman’s
critique and I believe it forces us to seek a more comprehensive explanation.
This limited race analogy between slavery or Jim Crow and mass incarceration as well as
philosophers’ conception of race even when excluding the analogies does several things. Firstly,
it omits black attitudes toward crime and punishment. Philosophers’ of mass incarceration
conception of racism omits the historical contribution from the African American community
who embraced and is embracing tough on crime measures. For example, Forman notes that it
was Black New York community members in the 80’s who demanded and supported what
would eventually become the Rockefeller Drug Laws. He also sites DC, a black majority run
district, as also supporting tough on crime measures. If mass incarceration was merely a racist
system, as Angela Davis defines race, than it seems impossible that it will be supported and
policies enforced by blacks themselves.9 Secondly, philosophers of mass incarceration tend to
site unjust racially based drug laws as the major contributing factor to mass incarceration. By
doing so they ignore violent offenses. However among state prison populations, 20% are drug
offenders and 50% are violent offenders. The problem with this usage is that it excludes all
offenders from the conversation. It also fails to consider that if all drug offenders were released,
6
Ibid., 99, 105
Davis, Anglela 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? , New York: Seven Stories Press.
8 Forman Jr, J. (2012). Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow. NYUL Rev., 87, 21.
9 Ibid.,
7
we would still have mass incarceration.10 Thirdly, the socio-economic element of mass
incarceration is neglected. If mass incarceration were merely a racist system than all Blacks
would be victims of incarceration. While African Americans may be targeted by police because
of race such as instances of racial profiling; stops, arrests, and incarceration are not identical.
African Americans were enslaved because they were black. African Americans were victims of
Jim Crow policies despite their social standing. However, mass incarceration does not
incarcerate all Blacks. Instead, it seems to affect a certain class of blacks. High school dropouts
account for the increasing number of African American incarceration rates. While 1 in 3 Black
men who dropped out of high school will go to prison, a black man who attended college has
only a 5% chance of going to prison.11 Fourth, this concept of race ignores the fact that mass
incarceration affects other racial groups. One-third of the national prison population is White.
Hispanics account for 20% of U.S prisoners. Although African Americans are disproportionally
incarcerated based on their population, 60% of the prison population is not black.12 These facts
point to a weakness of the use of Davis conception of race and racism as the full basis for mass
incarceration. Therefore, a different conception of race and racism within mass incarceration
discourse is needed. I argue a Foucauldian conception of race and racism will make up for
where Davis’ limited conception falls short.
A Foucauldian Conception of Race and Racism
If According to Davis, Foucault neglects any use of race in his prison analysis, then where will
a Foucauldian conception of race and racism arise? The answer is found in his biopower
analysis. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault explains sovereign power and disciplinary power. In
Society Must Be Defended he explains another technology of power, that of biopower. Foucault is
not arguing that sovereign power and disciplinary power fade into the background as biopower
appears; rather these technologies of power operate simultaneously.13
While disciplinary power centers on the body and renders the body useful as it creates docile
bodies, biopower centers on life and protects the population.14 While disciplinary power focus
on individual bodies, biopower focuses on “massifying” bodies by administrating and managing
birth, death, production, and illness. Biopower practices include measuring things in statistical
terms such as ratio of births to death and fertility of population. It also includes forecasts,
public hygiene, insurance, safety measures, campaigns, institutions of care, insurance, and the
regulation of a safe natural environment. Biopolitics “deal with the population as a political
problem”. Biopower wants to achieve regularity and equilibration, so it intervenes in life and
biological processes and ensure they are regularized. Therefore, biopower is a regulatory
power.15
While sovereign power exercises the right to “take life and let live”, biopower “makes life and
let die”. The regulatory practices previously explained show how such practices can “make
life”. But how can these same practices “let die”? For Foucault, biopower uses racism to
Ibid.,
Ibid., 132.
12 Ibid., 136-138.
13 Foucault, M. (2003). " Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976 (No. 3). Picador. P.
253.
14 Ibid., p. 249.
15 Ibid., pp. 243-250.
10
11
accomplish this task. He also believes that a state that practices biopower is indeed a racist
state. Foucault believes that racism arises not by creating a polarity between two distinct races
but when a single race or society is split into a superrace and subrace.16 Racism fragments the
society. It creates distinctions, hierarchy, and assigns qualities to the superrace (good qualities)
and subrace (bad qualities). The superace is the true race and it defines the norm while the
subrace is the deviant from the norm and a biological threat. The subrace could be the sick,
madmen, criminal or Jews in the case of Nazi Germany. In order to normalize the population,
the subrace must be excluded and segregated from the superrace. Biopower’s focus is not to
defend the state against the threat of another state, but to defend the state against the threat
the subrace pose. Its no longer state against state, but the state is “protector of the superiority
and purity of the [super]race”.17 This is where racism is born for Foucault.
Racism not only fragments society but it also promotes the mantra that if you want to live, you
must take lives. There’s a relationship between my life and your death. The more the abnormal
are eliminated, the more the population can live. Their death makes life in general healthier.
This is the biological relationship between biopower and the subrace. Because the subrace is a
biological threat, killing is justified. Racism is the “precondition that allows the state to kill”. In
biopower, the biological comes under state control.18 Foucault suggests that this death is not
only physical but can include political death, rejection, etc. For Foucault, racism is bound up
with the workings of the state. He therefore calls it state racism.
Mass Incarceration can therefore be viewed as a biopolitical project of protecting the superace
of normal moral persons from the criminal subrace through state racism. The prison system
takes on the job of making life and letting die. The criminal and those viewed as associated with
criminality is a threat to the population and must be eliminated. This elimination takes place in
the form of harsh laws, unfair policing and sentencing practices, and massive as well as
inhumane imprisonment. The state feels justified in this “letting die.” Its reasons are bound in
the idea of defending society from the threat of criminals. Mass incarceration is a process that
helps with normalizing and protecting the rest of the population by operating under the mantra
of “eliminate criminals or the population will be eliminated.”
This biopolitical view of racism is different from the modern view that defines racism as an
ideology of oppression, discrimination, irrational prejudice and exploitation based on biological
difference. State racism, for Foucault, is a form of auto-referential racism. Auto-referential
racism “targets the self (us) while hetero-referential racism negates the value of the other and
follows a logic of domination. Auto-referential racism affirms the superior value of the self and
follows “a logic of exclusion and results in stratified social order based on processes of
racialization”.19 Foucault’s state racism is concerned with development of populations by
isolating and excluding the abnormal (criminals) based on a “biological caesura within a
population” between worthy and unworthy life.
Ibid., pp. 241-263.
Ibid., p. 81.
18 Ibid. pp. 240, 256.
19 McWhorte, Ladelle. Racism and Sexual Oppression. Indiana University Press. Indiana. 2009. P.38.
16
17
A Foucauldian conception of race and racism applies to the exploitation of people based on their
location of “scale of normed development”. 20 This is not merely an idea for Foucault, but a
historical one. At the end of the 19th century, racial differences were not based on skin color but
rather healthy development based on the characteristic of the human race. Racial difference was
interpreted as deviation from the norm. The superior race was the human race. The subrace
was those whose development was unlike the norm. This lack of development was less rational,
impulsive, and criminal. Therefore children, women, and criminals were “developmentally
suspect”. Racism was a way to purify this process of human development and to purge the
population from the subrace.21 Prisons would become, (I argue that they currently are) a way to
protect the superrace from the undeveloped subrace. This is state racism for Foucault. Mass
incarceration is rooted in state racism with the purpose of eliminating the threat of criminality
from society in order to protect the population.
One may argue that if criminals are threatening society, the state should be justified in
protecting it citizens. If Kathy kills Amy, the State should do what it can to protect citizens
from Kathy’s tendency to kill. I am of the view that “incarceration” based on criminality is not
prima facie a wrong act by the state. The state is obligated to protect its citizens. However,
what makes “mass incarceration” different from mere incarceration and what makes mass
incarceration of philosophical concern are the ethical and political concerns it poses. If the state
is creating laws, sentencing requirements, and profiling practices that lead to the incarceration
of millions of people based, not on grounds that appeal to justice but on elimination based on
fear and polarity of the “subrace” abnormal state of criminality or the possibility of it, than we
have an ethical and political philosophical concern. Empirical studies on mass incarceration that
shows the disproportional amounts of minorities and the poor, irrational and unfair tough on
crime laws, is evidence that the target is not merely individuals who break the law and must be
punished, but is motivated by the idea to rid itself of anyone that may appear criminal and
therefore a threat, even if the threat is not real or warranted.
Another may argue that a Foucauldian conception of race and racism forces us to turn a blind
eye to the “ideology racism “that is very much present in society. I am aware that black men are
disproportionally incarcerated. Many scholars such as Angela Davis believe it is the result of
racist practices. I am not suggesting that ideological racism does not exist or have no role in
the criminal justice system. What I am proposing is that the view is not the full picture of mass
incarceration. Consider once again the ideology of race based on biological prejudice. A police
officer in the Bronx may be accused of racial profiling a black teen in a stop and frisk procedure.
An ideological view of racism like the one Angela Davis holds, would accuse the officer of
stopping the teen on the grounds that he is a minority. A Foucauldian view of race and racism
would suggest that the minority teen was not stopped merely because of feelings of superiority
and discrimination on behalf of the arresting officer to the teen based on his minority status but
because the teen’s skin color, in the mind of the officer, became synonymous with criminality; a
presumed criminality that is a threat and should be feared. In the biopolitical framework, it is
this criminality that is the threat and must be protected from. It is this connection with
criminality, however irrational it is, that motivated the officer’s practices of stopping the team.
It was not merely white supremacy, but a biopolitical rationale. Angela Davis recalls in ‘Are
Prisons Obsolete’ Frederick Douglas’ acknowledgement of the South linking crime to color.
20
21
Ibid. P.110.
Ibid.,p.139.
Davis calls this “racialization of crime”. She cites the case of Susan Smith who after murdering
her children claimed the car jacker was black; the case of Charles Stuart who murdered his
pregnant wife and then blamed an anonymous black man; and the racial profiling instances like
the Bronx officer I explained above.22 However, while she states that this racialization of crime
occurs because they are targeted only because of the color of their skin, a Foucauldian view of
race goes a little bit further. It adds that this targeting in not limited to skin color qua skin
color, but because that skin color represents criminality. This criminality becomes the object of
the politics of fear. It is this criminality that society must be defended from. This may come at
the cost of humiliating and eliminating (”letting die”) the so-called criminal at the risk that she
is no a criminal at all. It is the stereotype of the “criminal black man” and not merely the
stereotype of the “black male” that makes state racism have its biopolitical power.
Moral Problems of State Racism
The politics of fear rooted in state racism has the ability to resurrect political values. Corey
Rubin illustrates this point by noting Abraham Lincoln’s use of publicizing the rampant
violence of his day. Lincoln’s advertising and warning of eventual savagery was enough to
renew the people’s commitment to political values of law and order and civic engagement. Even
a political danger like war or terrorism, has the tendency to unite citizens around political
values as well as breed a respect for the law. However, the outcomes can be detrimental. It can
also affect public policy, create laws and overturn others, and also include and exclude groups
of people.23 In what follows I will argue for the moral problems state racism creates.
Reasons for why state racism is morally wrong fall within similar reasoning provided by
philosophers of race in their various accounts of racism and its moral problems. For example,
Micheal Philips argues that racism is immoral because it manifest in behavior that causes harm
to the racialized group.24 A racist who vandalizes a home of an immigrant family could be
characterized as causing harm to the family, and therefore the racism because of the harm it
caused was morally wrong. But how does state racism within mass incarceration cause harm to
criminals? Isn’t the state through incarceration protecting its citizens from potential harm by
the criminal? My response is that harm in the name of justice is not justified. While punishment
could be considered harmful, punishment qua punishment is not harmful within itself although
it is something that the offender would rather not experience. However, harm occurs within
mass incarceration when as a result of state’s need to eliminate criminality, the courts neglect
contrary important evidence, does not provide a fair and speedy trial, force the innocent to
accept plea deals, create laws that are too harsh, overcrowd prisons to the extent that safety is
compromised, target and humiliate people that are deemed ‘suspicious’ but are innocent, and
place criminals in super max prisons where they are confined to a cage 23 hours of the day.
Justice is not one sided. Justice also includes treating even suspects and criminals, fairly and
with dignity. State racism is morally wrong because of the harm it causes to criminals. This
harm is continued through collateral consequences of incarceration. Woodruff calls this
“expressive harm”.25 When offenders are released from prison and are back among the
“superrace”, they are treated as the “subrace”. This occurs because as a result of their
22
Davis, Anglela 2003. P. 30.
Robin, Corey. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. Oxford University Press. 2004. Pp.2-5.
24 Phillips, Micheal. Racist acts and racist humor. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14:75-96.
25 Woodruff, Paul. What's wrong with discrimination? Analysis 1976 36: pp. 158-160.
23
incarceration they are now stigmatized and face limited opportunities because of employment,
housing, and job restrictions.26 This post-mass incarceration existence allows the ex-prisoner’s
very existence in the polity to be viewed as a threat and one to be feared. This causes harm to
the offender and also her family members.
Jorge Garcia argues that racism is a moral issue because it is opposed to the virtues of
benevolence and justice. Racism for Garcia is a matter of the heart and includes ill intent and
malevolence. However, state racism, like ideological racism is not only rooted in evil intent.
Lawrence Blum critiques Garcia on this point. Blum suggests that racism contains other
emotions as well and not merely malevolence. I argue that Foucault’s state racism contains not
only the emotion of evil.27 Because Biopower’s focus is to defend against the internal threat the
“subrace” pose, state racism can be rooted in other emotions such as fear and disgust. It is no
longer state against state, but the state is “protector of the superiority and purity of the
[super]race. Fear and disgust manifest itself in mass incarceration through the profiling of
criminals, harsh and strict sentencing laws, and can also occur in our implicit bias about
criminals and groups we believe are associated with criminality. I must state again that it is not
incarceration that is problematic but rather state racism that operates through the biopolitical
practice of mass incarceration. State racism’s fear, disgust, polarity, and eliminative goal create
laws and practices that are not based on rational deliberation and fairness but are instead based
on irrational fear, disgust, polarity and eliminative goals. Mass incarceration becomes born out
of these emotions, no matter how unfairly, irrational and baseless they may be.
In addition, state racism is morally problematic because it looks at criminals as threats and not
as citizens. Within state racism, the target is no longer an outside one, but the target becomes
“those criminals” within society. Those members of society are no longer considered one of us,
but the enemy. This is manifested in the language of war used to describe policing efforts such
as “The War on Drugs” and “The War on Crime.” As long as criminals are looked at as
enemies and not citizens deserving of fair treatment, the United States reneges on its promise
of rights and fairness for all and individuals who by right of citizenship deserves it. The state
also fails to live up to its democratic project of equal treatment under the law. Instead
criminals are perceived as outsiders who no longer have the rights or the freedom as the
superrace. There is a difference between the right to be treated as an equal and right to be
treated equally. While offenders may forfeit their right to be treated equally because of criminal
activity, as persons they ought to be treated as an equal; equal in respect and dignity 28
State racism is also morally problematic because it uses elimination as the cure instead of
providing other productive means of punishment that appeal to offenders’ sense of humanity.
Instead state racism views criminals as threats with fixed immoral character traits and as those
who lack affective or rational ability to choose moral aims. State racism views criminals’ moral
failures (actual and assumptive) as a permanent and inheritable inferiority. As a result, state
racism views the criminal as being unable to change through community engaging alternatives
26
Travis, Jeremy. “Invisible Punishment: An Instrument of Social Exclusion” From Invisible Punishment: The
Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, eds. 2002. P 15-36.
27 Faucher, L., & Machery, E. (2009). Racism Against Jorge Garcia's Moral and Psychological Monism. Philosophy
of the Social Sciences, 39(1), 41-62.
28 Here I borrow this expression from Tommie Shelby in “Race”. The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy.
Ed. David Estlund. Oxford University Press. P.343.
and therefore must be eliminated in society through imprisonment. This practice is immoral
because it views offenders as means to an end instead of an end in themselves. It goal and
problems are very similar to those posed in Locke’s state of nature in that it not only uses
elimination as a goal, but as a result it makes punishment bias and excessive.29 I am not arguing
as Davis, that prisons should be abolished. However, I am suggesting the state should find
more productive means of dealing with its criminal population instead of using elimination as it
sole aim. Not all crimes committed deserve a penalty of prison or an eternal sentence. As long
as elimination is the sole solution, mass incarceration will not disappear and these moral
problems will remain.
The Benefits of a Foucauldian Conception of Race and Racism
The benefits of framing the problem of mass incarceration through the lens of Foucault’s “state
racism” make up for the weaknesses of framing mass incarceration under ideological racist
terms. Reconsider Forman’s critique of the Jim Crow analogy, a critique that I believe also
applies to the ideological racist’s view. If using the ideological racist view to provide a picture
of mass incarceration omits black attitudes toward crime and punishment, then state racism
includes it. If the ideological racist view focuses on drug laws and not other types of crimes,
then state racism includes it. If the ideological racism concept does not take into account the
socio-economic element of mass incarceration, state racism does. If ideological racism ignores
the fact that mass incarceration affects other racial groups, then state racism includes those
other groups. How so? State racism defined as an exclusion of criminals, presumptive criminals,
those stereotypically associated with criminality in society depicts the state, not merely its
whites citizens but all citizens, as fearful of criminality and certain groups of society even if it is
a myth or has an irrational basis. It depicts members of the state as willing to do what ever it
takes to segregate those people from society. State racism explains not merely the mass
incarceration of drug dealers but all criminals; not only blacks but whites, Hispanics, Asian,
immigrants, the poor, etc. as targets of the state that need to be eliminated.
Conclusion
Mass incarceration is a state practice of fear, malice, and disgust rooted in irrational conception
of parts of the population as biological threats to society. While ideological racism can describe
some of the criminal justice system’s practices, it fails to give the full picture of mass
incarceration as an eliminative system of perceived criminality whose targets are the
marginalized and those who are feared and misunderstood in society, but all who must “die
socially” in order for normal citizens to live. Foucault’s conception of race and racism when
applied to mass incarceration helps us gain a more comprehensive understanding of mass
incarceration.
29
I am referring to the problems John Locke sees in his “Second Treatise of Government” as one acting as one’s
own executor in the state of nature. Although some would suggest that individual victims of criminals are not
creating the punishment themselves and so therefore this analogy is false, I suggest that in state racism, the state
not only acts on behalf of the population, but because it is apart of the population, it also acts one behalf of itself.