Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media—in contrast to corrections officials—described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners’ lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the “thickening” of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners’ efforts to resist.
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I: The Boundaries of Mercy: Clemency, Jim Crow, and Mass Incarceration
- 1. Clemency in the Age of Jim Crow: Mercy and White Supremacy
- 2. Freedom Struggles: Clemency Hangs in the Balance in the Wake of the Civil Rights Movement
- 3. The House of the Dying: The Decline of Clemency underthe New Jim Crow
- Part II: Strange Bedfellows: Conjugal Visits, Belonging, and Social Death
- 4. Southern Hospitality: The Rise of Conjugal Visits
- 5. “It’s Something We Must Do”: The National Reach of Conjugal Visits
- 6. “Daddy Is in Prison”: The Decline of Conjugal Visits and the Strange Career of Family Values
- Part III: Weekend Passes: Furloughs and the Risks of Freedom
- 7. “To Rub Elbows with Freedom”: Temporary Release in the Jim Crow South
- 8. Conquering Prison Walls: Furloughs at the Crossroads of the Rehabilitative Ideal
- 9. The End of Redemption: Willie Horton and Moral Panic
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Text
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