Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits in states ranging from Mississippi to Massachusetts, Reiko Hillyer examines the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to occasionally experience life beyond prison walls.
Trade Review“Drawing on meticulous research and amplifying the voices of prisoners and their families and advocates,
A Wall Is Just a Wall is materialist history at its best. Reiko Hillyer’s beautifully narrated historical lessons and analyses of the contested sites of clemency, conjugal visitation, and furlough policies spur us to newly imagine the porosity of prison walls and, ultimately, prison abolition as justice long overdue.” -- Sora Y. Han, author of * Letters of the Law: Race and the Fantasy of Colorblindness in American Law *
"In this impressive study, historian Hillyer documents the relative openness of American prisons in the early 20th century and the subsequent 'thickening and hardening of prison walls.' . . . This thorough work of historical scholarship draws extensively on inmate newspapers to provide an eye-opening look at the high value prisoners placed on family visits, furlough, and the possibility of clemency, making their cancellation its own form of psychological punishment. Readers concerned by mass incarceration should take note." * Publishers Weekly *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I. The Boundaries of Mercy: Clemency, Jim Crow, and Mass Incarceration
1. Clemency in the Age of Jim Crow: Mercy and White Supremacy 27
2. Freedom Struggles: Clemency Hangs in the Balance in the Wake of the Civil Rights Movement 46
3. The House of the Dying: The Decline of Clemency under the New Jim Crow 65
Part II. Strange Bedfellows: Conjugal Visits, Belonging, and Social Death
4. Southern Hospitality: The Rise of Conjugal Visits 89
5. “It’s Something We Must Do”: The National Reach of Conjugal Visits 109
6. “Daddy Is in Prison”: The Decline of Conjugal Visits and the Strange Career of Family Values 129
Part III. Weekend Passes: Furloughs and the Risks of Freedom
7. “To Rub Elbows with Freedom”: Temporary Release in the Jim Crow South 13
8. Conquering Prison Walls: Furloughs at the Crossroads of the Rehabilitative Ideal 174
9. The End of Redemption: Willie Horton and Moral Panic 194
Epilogue 213
Notes 229
Bibliography 303
Index 335
