The Violence of Incarceration

Abstract

Classified ‘feeble-minded,’ her offending behaviour was unspecified ‘persistent theft.’ Incarceration lasted forty-five years, behind bars of harsh regimes. By their silence and acceptance all involved in the processes and procedures of inhumane containment contributed to the timeless routine of institutional neglect and violence. Lack of public scrutiny and political accountability, alongside collective ambivalence and indifference, explains in part how psychiatric and penal institutions sustained excessively punitive and often unlawful practices. It is a remarkable testament to inability to imagine the suffering of ‘others,’ and the power of dehumanizing discourses that surround those communities that suffer the weight of violence and incarceration, that illiberal and markedly uncivil practices of violence and incarceration within liberal democracies have had so little impact on understanding within these states of values of ‘civilisation.’ Finally, a brief comment on ‘agency’ and resistance is necessary.

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