Rethinking the Politics of the Family: Part IV

Recently, a PBS Frontline documentary called "The New Asylum" showed how our jails and prisons have become, by default, the nation's mental hospitals. This wasn't an exposé. The prison under examination didn't seem particularly bad. The staff seemed to be trying their best to deal with an impossible situation. But what, you might ask, has the topic of prisons to do with the culture war and family values, the subject of this series?

First, it shows how the culture war, with its focus on hot-button issues like gay marriage, end-of-life decisions, and obscenity on television, to name the most recent examples, crowds out discussion of serious social problems. More than that, however, the documentary illustrates the reductio ad absurdum of America's current political culture: its rhetoric of faith and family values combined with its tax-and-services-slashing policies, its deference to corporate power and accompanying sink-or-swim economy, its tolerance of growing inequality, its bread and circuses media, and the unprecedented reliance of the current administration on a strategy of lies and denial.

As a result of all this, prisons have become the social policy of last resort. No longer just the place to incarcerate violent offenders, the prison has become the final common repository of the social problems we are unwilling to prevent or remedy before they grow into crises. Only when these problems deteriorate into matters of crime and punishment can "government spending" be justified.