By making laws that restrict the rights of formerly incarcerated individuals, their sense of belonging and value in society is diminished, according to Reuben Jonathan Miller.
“[Citizenship] is not just legal status,” Miller said. “It’s about belonging. It’s about community and being recognized, being a part of a human community. It’s having a role in that community. Citizenship is a practice—it’s something that we do together.”
Boston College’s Gerson Family Lecture featured Miller, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and former chaplain at the Cook County Jail, on Wednesday.
Most states restore voting rights to individuals after they are released from prison, but citizenship is about much more than voting, Miller said.
“Citizenship is also about belonging to a political community,” Miller said “It’s about recognition as someone of value who can fully participate in the political economy and culture—and what we have is an alternate legal reality for people who have made mistakes.”
Miller explained that even after release from prison, full reintegration into society is challenging because there are 44,000 laws across the United States that place restrictions on people with criminal records.
“Your parental rights can be revoked, you may not live in public housing, your job application can be denied, you may be fired or evicted on a whim,” Miller said. “And therefore, your relationships look fundamentally different.”
Miller emphasized that people of color are disproportionately affected by mass incarceration. Black people are twice as likely as white people to get arrested and five times more likely to be incarcerated after arrest, according to Miller.
“Mass incarceration is an American problem,” Miller said. “We overwhelmingly punish racial and ethnic minorities. We overwhelmingly punish our poor.”
Miller said that while people are in prison, they are made to feel like they are voiceless and powerless.
“More than anything else, it tells them that their voice doesn’t matter, that they’re a group that we shouldn’t care about,” Miller said. “It sends a message about their democratic participation being unwanted. It tells me that their voice is unwelcome. There’s no place for them here.”
The prison system goes beyond mere punishment, inflicting lasting harm on vulnerable people, Miller said.
“If [mass incarceration] attacks the vulnerable in the ways that I’m suggesting, it is a form of violence itself,” Miller said.
Mass incarceration is closely tied to many other inequalities, including lack of access to mental health treatment and affordable housing—formerly incarcerated individuals are seven times more likely to be homeless, Miller noted.
“Mass incarceration is a series of crises,” Miller said. “It’s a public health crisis. It’s a housing crisis. It’s an employment crisis. It’s a political crisis. It’s a problem of citizenship. It’s about how we prey on our most vulnerable among us.”
According to Miller, formerly incarcerated people are more likely to experience homelessness, and in many cities, homelessness can lead to legal consequences or arrest—a policy that perpetuates the cycle of incarceration.
“It filters into dynamics of everyday life,” Miller said. “How do we respond? We respond by criminalizing poverty.”
