The Roots of Imprisonment: New Book Unearths Global History of American Prison System

In prisons, archives and libraries in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama and even at Harvard University, Benjamin Weber spent 10 years learning how today’s prison system in the United States began centuries ago outside of its borders. 

“Technologies of oppression were pioneered in other places before they came back to the United States prison system,” said Weber, an assistant professor of African American and African studies in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. 

Weber’s new book American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (The New Press) tells the story of American incarceration, from its roots in racial slavery and colonialism to the present day, through the stories of the people who built resistance and freedom movements from within its confines. 

Telling stories of survival and resistance 

In Weber’s book, stories of survival and resistance take many forms. These stories show how criminal law and imprisonment have been used as tools to control and subdue groups who stand in political opposition. 

In Florida in 1837, the United States government and the Native American Seminole people were embroiled in a war that began with a disputed treaty that would remove the Seminoles from the state. It was that year when Coacoochee (Wildcat), the son of a Seminole chief, was captured and taken to Fort Marion prison. To escape, Coacoochee stood on the shoulders of medicine man Talmus Hadjo after both starved themselves enough to fit through a narrow window high in a 20-foot wall. Hadjo was caught and killed by armed militia. Coacoochee survived. 

In the Philippines in 1896, Felipe Salvador defeated 3,000 Spanish troops with 300 men in the Battle of San Luis during the country’s war for independence from Spain. Two years later, Spain transferred control of the Philippines to the United States. In 1902, new laws imposed by that government redefined Salvador as a criminal. He was soon after captured and charged with sedition. His escape en route to Bilibid Prison was seen as an act in the service of communal freedom. 

In 1976, Jalil Muntaquin, a former Black Panther and prison organizer, began drafting an appeal to the United Nations that it recognize the existence of political prisoners in the United States. Muntaquin had been imprisoned in 1975 and would not be released until 2020. In that time, he co-founded the Jericho Movement, which continues to challenge targeted persecution.   

Weber weaves stories like these through a tapestry that shows how ideas about race and control made their way from United States military actions in the Philippines, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Panama and elsewhere to the American prison system. It’s this global history, said Weber, that is largely left out in discussions about the American prison system.  

“The rise of the surveillance state was pioneered in the Philippines,” said Weber. “Slavery and involuntary servitude were used on chain gangs in the Panama Canal Zone around the time they were there in the American South. We have geographic blinders about the massive reach of our prison system, and this makes us shortsighted on the solutions.” 

Applying a Black Studies framework  

Weber said he became acutely aware of the prison system’s injustices when he was a public high school teacher in East Los Angeles. He taught there for three years before going to Harvard to start his doctorate. In that time, he said he saw people’s lives destroyed by over-policing in their communities. 

“I saw a lot of police violence,” said Weber. “I bailed kids out of jail and talked parents through a lot of stuff.” 

Weber said he knew long before he was accepted to Harvard that he wanted to work on racial justice. He also knew that he wanted to conduct that work with the approach of Black Studies. As an undergraduate at Oberlin College, Weber’s roommate was the son of Clyde Woods, a renowned Black Studies scholar at UC Santa Barbara.  

Woods’ work left a lasting impression. Weber said he found that Black Studies provided a level of intellectual rigor and a better toolkit than other disciplines for solving social and political problems because it takes seriously the realities of racism and the legacies of slavery and colonialism. 

“Black Studies has been the missing framework for so many of these complex social problems,” said Weber. “It starts with looking beyond supposed experts for solutions.”  

Creating shared knowledge  

Part of looking beyond the credentialed expert, said Weber, is by working with and in marginalized communities rather than treating them as research subjects. This engagement is central, said Weber, and working with people in community actually produces new knowledge.  

Weber has participated with a number of community projects as part of this work. One of these is Open Letters from Prison, a prison correspondence program he started with members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners in which 25 women in California prisons wrote about published open letters, then exchanged feedback before writing their own with calls to action.  

“Other approaches can create a kind of victimization,” said Weber. “Teaching African American history is about teaching what people have done in response to these forces, and these responses give us a wider set of possible solutions.” 

A system that affects everyone 

The book has already received widespread praise. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, a Harvard professor of history and African American studies, winner of the National Humanities Medal in 2014, called Weber’s book “field-defining.” 

The topic is especially important, said Weber, considering the reach of America’s prison system. There are about 100 million people living with a criminal conviction, which is roughly one-third of the entire population. Nearly everyone, he said, has a family member, friend or knows someone who has been imprisoned.  

“People may be ashamed or try to hide it, but this affects everyone, even as it has disproportionately devastated communities of color,” said Weber. “This is not the work of Black, indigenous, and people of color alone. Undoing the harm of these systems is everyone’s responsibility.”