Editorial

Abstract

Editorial Christina Larocco Recently, as I explained to an acquaintance where the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is located, she asked a question that surprised me: “Is that near the Daniel Faulkner plaque?” Indeed it is, though I had not realized it until recently. Every time I leave my office for a midday Target run or an Indian lunch buffet, I traverse the initial site of one of this state’s most controversial pieces of carceral history. In 1982, a jury convicted black civil rights activist and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal of first-degree murder in the death of Faulkner, a white city police officer. Originally sentenced to death, Abu-Jamal is now serving a life sentence. Immediately, activists noted irregularities in the arrest, trial, and conviction, including possible connections to police abuse and corruption and a conflict of interest on the part of a state Supreme Court justice who heard the case on appeal. In 2019, Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner withdrew his objection to an opinion from the court of common pleas, clearing the way for a new appeal before the state Supreme Court. A case that began outside of HSP almost thirty-eight years ago will continue.1 Literally and symbolically surrounded by such stories, we have a responsibility to document their precursors. Thus this issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography is dedicated to exploring the history of incarceration in Pennsylvania. Due in large part to its Quaker heritage, Pennsylvania has long been a center of prison reform movements. At HSP, for example, researchers can find the papers of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (later the Pennsylvania Prison Society), founded in 1787. Yet today Pennsylvania stands out as the state with the largest population of incarcerated individuals in the Northeast and the fifth-largest in the nation. The racial disparities, too, are striking: the state incarcerates African Americans and Latinos at rates of 8.9 and 3.3 times that of whites, respectively.2 [End Page 231] The development of a mass incarceration infrastructure was a multi-decade, bipartisan project. As a younger and more diverse constituency holds politicians accountable for policies they advocated and/or implemented in the 1990s, this history haunts Democratic Party candidates in particular—including Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Pennsylvania native Joe Biden today. These issues are particularly important in Pennsylvania, not only because carceral control defines the lives of so many of our neighbors but also, and relatedly, because of the state’s role as a fulcrum of national politics. As activists and scholars have pointed out for at least a decade, the prisons needed to house the burgeoning population of incarcerated individuals have overwhelmingly been built in rural areas. While incarcerated populations count toward congressional representation, these individuals cannot exercise the franchise. When racial disparities are taken into account, the carceral state thus echoes the Constitution’s three-fifths clause. It also increases the political clout of overwhelmingly white, rural areas vis-à-vis that of cities, which lose representation when the criminal justice system sends community members to otherwise less populous portions of the state.3 Beginning with a review essay by guest editor Jen Manion, the articles in this issue ask, among other questions, how we got here. While historians are not equipped to chart a path forward alone, we also believe that looking back is a necessary prerequisite for doing so. Ending the crisis of mass incarceration is no exception. [End Page 232] Footnotes 1. On Krasner’s withdrawn objection and a potential new appeal, see, for example, Chris Palmer, “Philly DA to Drop Challenge in Mumia Abu-Jamal Case, Clearing Appeal to Reach High Court,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr. 17, 2019. As a journalist, Abu-Jamal supported MOVE members in their 1978 standoff with police; see Tajah Ebram’s article in this volume, “ ‘You Can’t Jail the Revolution’: Policing, Protest, and the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia’s Carceral Landscape.” 2. ACLU Pennsylvania, “Ending Mass Incarceration in Pennsylvania,” accessed Aug. 28, 2019, https://www.aclupa.org/our-work/current-campaigns/smart-justice-pa!sentencing. 3. See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New...