The U.S. may be the “land of the free,” but our nation leads the world in mass incarceration. Over the last 40 years, there has been a 500% increase in the prison population, totaling 2 million people. Prison has become the de facto response for addressing violent crimes, despite mounting evidence that suggests its ineffectiveness. The popular narrative that prisons and police keep us safe goes virtually unchallenged, which obscures a hidden prison labor system linked to hundreds of popular consumer brands.
Mass incarceration is designed to exploit people who are incarcerated — people who are overwhelmingly Black. In the hit new Netflix reality series “Unlocked,” even their private lives behind bars are exploited for entertainment.
“Unlocked” is glibly positioned as a roadmap for improving a system that is broken beyond repair. It directly undermines work done by organizations like Common Justice, which I am a part of, the nation’s first alternative to incarceration and victim service organization.
A typical structure for a day in a maximum security prison is often referred to as “23 and one,” meaning 23 hours in a cell and one hour for recreation. Framed as a “six-week experiment,” the Netflix series documents what happens when Sheriff Eric Higgins decides to keep prison cell doors at Pulaski County Detention Facility in Little Rock, Arkansas, unlocked 24/7 with minimal guard intervention. The idea is that when people who are incarcerated are given more freedom of movement within a jail, with added privileges like free phone calls and increased family visitation, the improved conditions will help them become less violent. “They’ll make a safer jail and less crime when they get out,” Higgins says with reserved confidence.
In a conversation hosted by the NAACP, Higgins described his rationale for televising the experiment as a way to “humanize people.” He added, “I want to empower people to have an impact on their culture, environment, and community.”
At best, Higgins is incredibly naive, and at worst, he is a true cynic. His decision to experiment on incarcerated people under his power and record that experiment for television proves how little he understands “empowerment.” Studies have shown that reality television does the exact opposite of “humanizing people,” instead frequently reinforcing negative stereotypes about Black people. The racist spectacle of “Unlocked” has succeeded in garnering impressive ratings, but that doesn’t help the show’s “participants.” Only Netflix and Higgins stand to benefit in any meaningful way.
Beyond the dubious premise of the show, the series also operates under three dangerously false mainstream narratives: that people who commit harm are inherently dangerous; that prisons help make people better; and that Black people are inherently violent and more deserving of punishment.
The series opens with a montage of violent scenes from infamous prisons across the country, including Rikers Island. These scenes, depicting assaults on officers and incarcerated people fighting, serve to instill fear in the viewer and reinforce the dangerous idea that people who commit harm are violent and need to be severely punished. As with prison populations across the country, Black men are overrepresented in the show, but no commentary is offered to condemn the numerous ways the criminal justice system is rigged against Black people.
Although the show features commentary from some of the incarcerated men, viewers are told very little about their backstories. Without highlighting the way society’s systemic racism has negatively impacted these men’s lives and choices, viewers are left to think they are born this way. This furthers the harmful narrative that Black men are inherently dangerous, as opposed to people who are trapped by a predatory system. The fact that most of the men have been incarcerated multiple times may lead viewers to believe crime is in their nature, rather than considering that incarceration didn’t help them find a different path.
“Unlocked” also fails to account for how prison staff contribute to violence in jails. In a 2009 study of assault in male prisons, the percentage of men who report being assaulted by prison staff is higher than those who say they’ve been assaulted by other incarcerated men. While “Unlocked” features minimal guard intervention, it does not acknowledge the violent abuses of power incarcerated people are frequently subjected to. “Closing the door and leaving us stuck like that without being able to do anything for yourself, all you can do is be victim to this environment and this system and this cycle,” says Crooks, a Black man who is incarcerated and featured in the show. While explaining the experiment to the incarcerated men, Higgins seemingly acknowledges this failure. “There are people who think what you need is just to be locked behind a door,” he says. “That’s not helping.”
After witnessing how the incarcerated men organize to create structures and support groups that minimize violence, Higgins declares the experiment a success and plans to keep the open-cell policy in place. But if we really want to address the root causes of violence, I would challenge Higgins to rewatch the first episode and confront the question asked by Willie Lovelace, one of the men featured in the show. “What about programs that help people get out of jail instead of being comfortable in jail? I want to go home to my family and start anew and become a man and join society.”
The bottom line is that the open-door policy presented in “Unlocked” is not a radical approach to incarceration, but neocolonialism in 4K. Open cell doors don’t change the fact that these men remain locked away, where real freedom does not and cannot exist. “Unlocked” is nothing more than a perverse spectacle that makes a mockery of the actual challenges faced by incarcerated people.
At Common Justice, we believe solutions to violence should be survivor centered, accountability based, safety driven and racially equitable. We practice a restorative justice approach, in which the person who committed harm and the person who was harmed come together to talk through conflict. Every single one of our cases has resulted in agreements where the responsible party takes accountability and makes things as right as possible with the harmed party.
What we have learned from our work is that those who commit harm are usually victims of the same or similar harm. Data from the Alliance for Safety and Justice shows that people who have a past conviction are 140% as likely to report having been a victim in the past decade, compared to people who have never been convicted of a crime. And they are nearly twice as likely to report having been the victim of a violent crime.
Mass incarceration in any form does not work to end the cycle of violence. Higgins is grossly mistaken if he thinks this experiment does anything to address the indignity and trauma imprisonment causes. Only restorative justice, community support and prison abolition can begin to undo the damage the prison industrial complex has done.
Related
Long prison sentences are cruel and ineffective: here’s the proof
The United States incarcerates nearly 2 million people. More than half are serving sentences of 10 or more years. Long sentences were promoted with weak evidence, and the evidence of the harm they do is clear — so how did we end up here?
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