GRIID Class on the Prison Industrial Complex in Kent County – Week #2

In our last class we talked about several different items related to the Prison Industrial Complex in Grand Rapids. The first item was a news story that I had sent everyone from last year, a story featuring Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker talking about why the GRPD were not being charged for anything in the shooting of a Black man they thought was armed. 

Participants talked about how awful this news story was, since it not only didn’t provide adequate context for the mental health issues of the man that was killed by the GRPS, the reporter never questions or challenges what the County Prosecutor had to say. Here is a GRIID deconstruction of that story, which I wrote just before the holiday break.

The second thing we discussed in week #2 was some research that was done for the non-profit Linc Up, research that has some instructive data on race, class and other aspects of the Prison Industrial Complex in Kent County. The slide above is just one of the examples from this research, which you can access here.

However, most of our time in week #2, was spent discussing a two-part documentary entitled, Re-Visions of Abolition, which you can watch here. Some of the themes address in this documentary were:

• What is the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)
• Gender Violence and the PIC
• Mothers and how the PIC destroys communities
• The War on Drugs
• The Culture of the Carceral State
• Capitalism and the PIC
• Abolition: Past, Present & Futures
• Abolition Not Reform
• Critical Resistance
• The L.E.A.D. Project
• The Future of Abolition

The documentary generated a great deal of conversation, with important observations and input from the participants. There was great conversation around the the War on Drugs, Capitalism and the PIC and Abolition Not reform. Next week we will begin to read from the new book Beyond Courts, which was written by Interrupting Criminalization, Community Justice Exchange, and Critical Resistance. This book takes a critical look at how the court system in the US really functions, through an abolitionist lens.