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Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media-in contrast to corrections officials-described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners' lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the "thickening" of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners' efforts to resist.
List of contents
Acknowledgments 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
About the author
Reiko Hillyer is Associate Professor of History at Lewis & Clark College and the author of
Designing Dixie: Tourism, Memory, and Urban Space in the New South.
Summary
Focusing 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.
