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Views from the Inside Out by Robert
Taliaferro
News & Letters, July 2001
American colonialism continues
We often hear various statistics on the incarceration of Blacks
as compared to whites in the nation's prisons, and tend to
forget that the statistics of "others" incarcerated
are just as viable an argument against the prison-industrial
complex.
In Hawaii, the prison-industrial complex takes on a new
dimension that extends well beyond "just" the simple
fact of incarcerating someone for a crime, especially when that
individual is removed from the Hawaiian islands to a prison on
the mainland. It should not be surprising then that one of the
premier court cases that supports the transfer of prisoners just
about anywhere in the country, away from family, friends and
support networks, is a case with origins in Hawaii.
The 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olim v. Wakinekona, in
essence, stated that prisoners had no rights with regard to
transfers from one prison to another, and that the states had
all the right in the world to ship their prisoners anywhere in
the United States.
Justice Thurgood Marshall, along with Justices Stevens and
Brennan, filed a rather scathing dissent from the majority
opinion, exemplifying the plight of Hawaiian prisoners, and the
treatment of native Hawaiians in general. Of Wakinekona's
transfer to a prison on the mainland in California, Justice
Marshall wrote that it was synonymous with
"banishment" from his homeland, "...a punishment
historically considered to be 'among the severest'."
In the case of Hawaiians being shipped to the mainland, 2,000
miles of ocean would separate them from their home, family,
friends, culture, and land. In essence, removing people from
Hawaii and shipping them to the mainland is very similar to
removing Blacks from the continent of Africa and moving them to
the Americas.
Native Hawaiians are being incarcerated in such rampant numbers
that Hawaii has the third fastest incarceration rate (per
capita) in the country. As Healani Sonoda writes in COLORLINES
(Summer 2001), "Though we were an independent nation,
Hawaii was colonized because of American imperial, strategic
interests in the Pacific and Asia. The United States overthrew
our government and stole millions of acres of Native lands. Now
a colonized people, we inhabit the islands' lowest socioeconomic
strata." As with any colonial conquest, the indigenous
peoples of the occupied territories--in essence--become slaves
to the invading party, and anything that is not consistent with
the ideas of the colonial power is criminalized.
On the mainland, the indigenous peoples of the Americas were
exploited by virtue of Wild West shows. In Hawaii, indigenous
peoples are exploited through tourism. Even with the amount of
capital derived from such exploitation, it is only the corporate
sponsors of those contemporized and encapsulated traditions that
are allowed to continue and reap the benefit from the trade. The
obvious result of such actions is poverty.
Poverty is always followed by laws which tend to criminalize the
concept of being poor, laws that are designed to glamorize the
traditions of capitalism by clearing the streets of alleged
unwanted societal elements, and the prison-industrial complex,
like a thief in the night, is quick to capitalize on such fears
and prejudices.
Hawaii, like many states, has decided to utilize the services of
corporations like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA),
claiming, as Sonoda writes, "to save $50 per inmate daily
by sending prisoners to continental private prisons. In
addition, CCA offered the state financial incentives to house
all Hawaii inmates in CCA facilities at a discount."
And when prisoners are so far removed from their homes, the only
profit derived is for the whole of the prison-industrial
complex, which includes more than just the profits reaped by the
keepers. Exorbitant overseas phone costs in order to maintain
some semblance of familial and cultural contact, lower prison
pay, extreme changes in diet and environment--all of these
things are factors that play a role in the growing attempts to
deculturalize and further colonize Hawaii.
Of course, if you remove so many men and women from the island,
the children of those individuals will ultimately suffer,
further fueling the self-perpetuated existence of the
prison-industrial complex. "While Hawaiian children make up
35% of juvenile arrests," writes Sonoda, "they
comprise 52% of Hawaii's youth correctional facility
population."
As on the mainland with Black prisoners, Sonoda writes that most
Hawaiians have family members, or friends, who were
incarcerated. Hawaiians are twice as likely to be incarcerated
after going through what she calls "the colonial legal
process" as whites or Japanese on the islands.
We must be careful, when speaking of racism, discrimination, and
prejudice, that we are inclusive with the dialogue. We must take
care that we do not preclude the discrimination incurred by
indigenous peoples when we discuss issues of Black and white in
conjunction with the prison-industrial complex, for if we do, we
lessen the universal struggle for freedom that is inclusive of
all people.
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