Maya Schenwar > Quotes

“our democracy is controlled by a wealthy elite. Politicians who work for the wealthy need the police to protect them from the people. And so the whole chain of command protects the killer cop. The ruling class give carte blanche to law enforcement, who in turn press down on those most stranded by the neoliberal state, the poor-- and more so, the Black poor."
-- Nicolas Powers”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“[Trauma] freezes the soul, which is why as time moves forward, so many Black children fall bahind. They are punished more harshly and expelled more quickly... Stranded in the streets [they] are profiled as older, as a threat, as possibly carrying a weapon. When cops bully them, scare them, fuck with them, it's because our children aren't seen as part of the future."
-- Nicholas Powers”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“In 1970, the prison system in this country was perhaps one-tenth the size of what it is today. Many people attribute this immense growth to the war on drugs. But even more than that, the expansion of the prison system reflects a war being waged against people of color, against Black-Brown-Indigenous bodies—the very same colonial war brought to us by Columbus and the conquistadores. These European “civilizers” treated Black and Brown people as if their lives were worth nothing. In many parts of the country, the designated value of our lives continues to be zero.”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“Isolation does not “rehabilitate” people. Disappearance does not deter harm. And prison does not keep us safe.”
― Maya Schenwar, Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better

“Many types of treatment claim to be about fixing the so-called problems of madness. The real problem is that certain ways of experiencing the world are seen as categorical threats— to normativity, to capitalism, to hierarchy, to the system itself. And our society's answer to a perceived threat is, of course, confinement.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“There is unique gravity to an actual prison sentence, the violence of locking a human being in a cage. Yet the system is broader than the buildings called "prisons." Manipulation, confinement, punishment, and deprivation can take other forms - forms that may be less easily recognized as the violence they are.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“There’s a reason for the mainstream bipartisan consensus around community policing: it maintains and expands the status quo. As advocates call for fewer police and less policing and criminalization, community policing becomes a way to reshape the narrative to position police as friendly beat cops who know everyone’s name. But community policing doesn’t make policing more effective, less hostile, or more accountable to the communities they serve in. Instead it allows police to further entrench their presence in neighborhoods, justify increases in their numbers, and even mobilize community members to participate in policing by surveilling our neighbors.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“In activist and progressive communities, we’re accustomed to attending one training or reading one essay and then declaring ourselves leaders and educators on an issue. I believe that the notion of instant expertise is contrary to our liberatory values. ... We must practice community safety much as one practices an instrument or a sport: in slow, measurable and deliberate ways. Only by practicing can we build the knowledge we need to defuse and address conflict within our communities.”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too.”
― Maya Schenwar, Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better

“Unlike prisons, psychiatric institutions can be entered voluntarily, and people often turn to them in pursuit of treatment. But when used involuntarily as prison replacements, hospitals mimic persons in eerie ways— and the most oppressed people experience the brunt of the trauma and violence.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“Few people realize that Indian constables, who policed increasingly displaced Native populations during the early stages of US colonialism, and slave patrols, which captured Black slaves who had escaped their white masters, were this country’s first police. To understand these historical origins—along with the present state of law enforcement and the mechanics of the prison-industrial complex—is to understand that the role of the police in the United States has not changed substantially over time, though it has been rebranded. The main function of US policing remains the same: the management of people who have historically been identified as human resources, or human hindrances, by the prevailing power structure.”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“Our struggle for justice demands much more than any single indictment. It cannot be litigated, legislated or bought into existence. And there is no amount of money that could make up for the lives and human dignity lost to police and state violence against our communities. Instead, if we are to truly honor the magnitude of the injustice, we must commit ourselves to nothing less than the complete transformation of society.”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“Monitors and house arrest aren't rehabilitative or transformative - they don't support people in making changes that would be helpful to their lives, gaining needed resources, addressing harm or violence, or confronting the social forces that affect them.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“Most incarcerated parents were employed prior to their arrest, according to a 2005 study by the Urban Institute.2”
― Maya Schenwar, Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better

“The same factors that propelled mass incarceration - racism, "law and order" politics, the war on drugs, the destruction of the social safety net - also propelled mass supervision.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“The coercion to end your pregnancy or to give up your medical privacy because of the risk of having your child taken from you, all of these things basically force women’s cooperation to something that they don’t really consent to. This is coerced, whether you want to call it police violence or medical violence or both.”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“a ring of jailhouse informants-- or 'snitches'--... allegedly received lenient sentences as well as food, drugs, sex and special privileges from detectives... It's not difficult to imahine why a prisoner-informant would lie about overhearing a confession when it means real material benefits... [and] prosecutors are often motivated to make those informants sound believable to a judge. Testimony from a single jailhouse informant is enough to convict a person for a charge as serious as murder... [Snitch] testimony [is] the leading cause of wrongful convictions in US capital cases."
-- Aaron Miguel Cantu”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States