Author: Lucy Feickert
The upcoming Incarceration Awareness week gives students the chance to extend a dialogue on the United States prison system from the classroom to the quad. The event, organized by students passionate about issues of incarceration, provides the opportunity to learn about problems with the criminal justice system and how to get involved. Incarceration Awareness Week runs from April 8 to 12 and includes a panel discussion and lecture, a documentary screening and an open mic to educate and engage students.
Although the Office of Community Engagement is coordinating the events, interested students are spearheading the week, according to Assistant Dean for Community Engagement Ella Turenne. This is the third year for Incarceration Awareness Week at Occidental, and the event continues to grow each year in student involvement and number of events.
Critical Theory and Social Justice major Alex LaRosa (junior), one of the students organizing the week’s events, wants to use this time to bring students together around the topic of incarceration in a larger, more open discussion.
“My hope is to have a conversation start,” LaRosa said. “Now little, secluded conversations happen in classes or among people who have personal connections or personal experience, but I would much rather have a broader conversation. This is something that is really big in our country that people don’t understand, that affects everyone daily.”
Sociology major Julia Gould (sophomore), also involved in organizing the event, hopes this week will prompt students to question certain social systems and gain greater understanding of the injustices therein.
“We find the answer to societal problems and deviant behavior to be prison – let’s just send them away and lock them up, so that we don’t have to worry about them,” Gould said. “Part of this week’s goal is to have people rethink ways that we can address crime in society without sending these people away for 10 or 20 years.”
Different events throughout the week are designed to highlight various elements of incarceration. A panel discussion and lecture will introduce students to the topic of incarceration and the Prison Industrial Complex, a common term for the web of prisons in the U.S. and the corporate interests that run them, according to the event’s Facebook page. The week will also feature a documentary screening and a staged reading of a play, both of which address incarceration.
The week concludes with an open mic night on Friday. The open mic night will feature writers from the program Inside Out Writers, which teaches creative writing classes in prisons and jails, according to Turenne. LaRosa explained that the open mic was designed for students to creatively express their thoughts on incarceration.
LaRosa developed Incarceration Awareness Week after taking a class with incarcerated youth in a facility in Sylmar, Calif.
“We left the class super passionate about it and decided we needed to have a more campus-wide discussion because that classroom with six women wasn’t enough,” LaRosa said.
Occidental’s classes on incarceration and the criminal justice system also inspired Gould to become involved in the event.
“I was just shocked that this type of inequality took place in the criminal justice system,” Gould said.
Gould wants to overturn students’ understanding of the system and bring injustices to light.
“There’s this sort of myth that this is an equitable system, that everyone is equal under the law, that people get what they deserve,” Gould said. “But that’s just not the case, and we’re a country that finds the solution to all of society’s problems in prison.”
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