The United States’ criminal justice system has received its share of controversy over the years, and one University assistant professor had the opportunity to voice his thoughts in a book on the topic.
Bryan McCann, assistant professor of rhetoric and cultural studies, contributed to the new University of Illinois Press book, “Working for Justice: A Handbook of Prison Education and Activism.” McCann worked on the book with fellow members of the Prison Communication, Activism, Research and Education group.
“We began meeting, collaborating, holding sessions at conventions, and working on publications together, and it generally just grew into an informal working group of scholars, teachers and activists who believe that our country’s rate and level of incarceration is a human rights catastrophe,” McCann said.
The general topic applies directly to Louisiana, he said.
“Our current level of incarceration is unsustainable,” McCann said. “Prisons are really kind of a black hole of state money. [In] Louisiana, we incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than any other state, and our schools, universities and several other public resources are going broke. There is certainly a very strong connection between those two things.”
More than 1 in 100 adult Americans are imprisoned, and 1 in 86 in Louisiana are behind bars, according to a news release regarding McCann’s contribution.
McCann has a theory that stems back to the 1980s and 1990s, saying that today’s high incarceration rates are the result of the “war on crime” that occurred decades ago.
He noted that the issue spread into the White House, and the result was a nation that was more aware of criminal issues in society.
“Crime really became this national issue, and for the first time, you saw the federal government funneling loads of money into local police departments,” McCann said. “At no point prior to this moment in the ’80s and ’90s was the federal government so involved in local law enforcement.”
McCann referenced presidential administrations from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, saying how candidates during the election would have to favor the death penalty and harsh punishments for drug offenses or risk losing the election.
The death penalty debate is still one that continues everywhere from high school classrooms to the highest seats of political authority.
The U.S. is the only western industrialized nation that still uses the death penalty. McCann said more than 60 percent of the population still supports it, but in the ’80s and ’90s, an even larger percentage of the population supported capital punishment.
Using the knowledge he has acquired and the experiences he has witnessed, McCann is currently working on a book of his own. The work will focus on gangster rap from the ’80s and ’90s and how it became the “resistance culture” decades ago.
McCann said that every generation had its own form of “resistance culture,” with the latest example being mainstream rappers and television shows like “The Wire.”
His main focus, though, is of a time when rap became a primary influence on society and politics.
“What I’m interested in is the way gangster rappers used the same rhetoric of crime that political leaders were using, but using them in ways that were certainly opportunistic and commercial,” McCann said. “It celebrates an area like Compton or Long Beach rather than frame it as this hellacious area of crime.”