Restoring Human Capabilities After Punishment: Our Political Responsibilities Toward Incarcerated Americans

Abstract

Why should non-incarcerated Americans invest in the wellbeing of incarcerated Americans? To date, our public discourse about penal reform has avoided this question, focusing on pragmatic reasons for facilitating “prisoner reentry” and “reintegration” while shelving unresolved, and deeply contested, philosophical questions about criminal justice and punishment. As a result, we as a society have engaged in much data-driven policy talk about the economic costs and benefits of reducing recidivism, but little normative reflection about the rights and responsibilities held by incarcerated adults who are at once human beings, members of society, persons convicted of crimes, victims of inhumane punishment – and, often, survivors of poverty. Thus, my first task is to clarify the individual and collective obligations that apply within our context of mass incarceration: the moral responsibilities that are held by and toward incarcerated Americans, non-incarcerated Americans, and our shared public institutions. My second task is to draw out implications for policy and discourse: to explain not only what reform measures we should prioritize, but how we should frame and assess them. In particular, I call for systemic changes that would provide all incarcerated Americans with opportunities to pursue higher education and to develop redemptive self-narratives; and I argue that we should frame and assess such measures not primarily as cost-saving devices, but as ethically significant efforts to secure capabilities that are essential to human flourishing and required by justice. In setting forth these arguments, my purpose is to spark deeper ethical reflection about correctional reform, and specifically to invite meaningful engagement with one key normative question: What do we, as a civilized society with a history of social and penal injustice, owe incarcerated Americans? Ultimately, I wish to underscore that the people confined in our prisons have legitimate moral claims upon us – insofar as they remain human beings and members of society and, as such, bearers of rights as well as responsibilities. Equally, I wish to establish that, in our collective efforts to repair the harms of mass incarceration, we can and should empower those Americans most directly harmed by our penal system to lead the way in transforming it.