BOOK REVIEW: Reflections on “Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System” by Alec Karakatsanis
By Ronald Quiceno, Hutchinson Correctional Facility
Ronald Quiceno is a writer, activist, musical artist, and father currently incarcerated at Hutchinson Correctional in Kansas. He believes love and compassion will lead us to a better world.
Dear Liberation Lit Team,
I want to thank you for the book, Usual Cruelty by Alec Karakatsanis, and the real picture he paints to show the world what mass incarceration is and how it hurts us as a nation. Please extend my thanks to author/civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis as well. Your thought (and Alec’s) toward us as human beings with rights worth fighting for is just what we need to dismantle this systemic eye-sore in communities across this nation—and any other nation in the world that chooses to adopt the practice of caging human beings as if we are animals. I agree 100% and support the idea of a “massive intentional effort to change the way society talks and thinks” about “the punishment system,” and those of us incarcerated within it. And yes, it starts with education.
I also love when Alec suggests the employment of “the language of life against the language of a bureaucracy—songs instead of shackles, poems instead of police reports.” And the Angela Davis quote, “Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings,” is especially close to my heart as she is one of the few people that took the time to get to know George Jackson before he was killed by prison guards in San Quentin on August 21, 1971. I used to own Blood in my Eye by George Jackson but have since lost that in transit going from one prison to another. Now I hold my copy of Soledad Brother by George Jackson close to me as one of the priceless gems in my personal library. The first time I read both books was in the late nineties when I was doing time in the California Department of Corrections. I’ve also been to San Quentin myself in my younger years, so I relate closely to some of the things George talks about in his writings.
Unfortunately, I must admit I was raised in the system from foster care to group homes to juvenile, youth prison, and ultimately state prison. And as I look back on it, none of the punishment approaches worked to curb my enthusiasm for criminal activity and drug use. That system only made me more rebellious, as I didn’t have anyone that cared enough to invest in my unique individuality, or my creative spirit, or to see if I had any hidden talent or abilities I hadn’t yet discovered. If only they did, they could have possibly discovered the next Michael Jackson, or Prince—or who knows what I could have been other than a prisoner in a cage like I am today. (Even though now I realize I’m so much more than that.)
But my point is that human caging did nothing to reduce my criminal activity or drug use; it only made me worse. And that’s what it’s doing on a mass level in our nation today, which seems to be just as bad these days as it was 20-30 years ago (if not worse in some cases, depending on what state you’re doing your time in). Because now it seems that the system has moved in a direction to run prisons as a business and for profit rather than for rehabilitation or education and enlightenment.
Greater minds need to come together and see that we are doing society a great injustice by treating people as less than human; especially when the math clearly points out that about 95% of those incarcerated will be back in society again, and be someone’s neighbor at some point in the free world. But whatever the math says is less important than the value of a human life lost, abandoned, abused, and neglected in our prisons across the country today, in our country where we call this “Land of the Free,” “Home of the Brave.” Well, we need to take brave steps outside of the boxes of bureaucratic thinking and boldly go further into the spirit of humanity as God created us to be. We need to believe again in the inherent good within each of us and build on that, to find something good in someone we dislike, and take risks to love our fellow human beings. See what it brings to your/our lives; that belief in something greater than ourselves to meet us where we plant our seeds of faith; to drop our stones and offer mercy more instead of judgment…a listening ear rather than a curse…acts of kindness that no one expects…
Look, I have to be honest, I’ve been convicted of second degree murder going on 10 years ago, which is why I’m in prison now. And although the real story never came out at trial, in hindsight I admit there are many things I could have done differently that night to prevent this from happening. But what I am clear about is that I could have used more love and compassion in my life during that time, as well as during my upbringing. Knowing that now doesn’t change the tragedies of my life, but it does enlighten me to make positive changes as a man today. Two lives could have been saved, had we just been treated like human beings when we spent time in prison. That’s what I can say looking at my reflections today.
Sincerely and respectfully, Ronald
P.S.—This piece of transparency is very painful to reflect on and at times I still have a hard time grasping the reality of that night’s events. Yet this is also why I am so passionate about changing prisons into something greater. Where most might have a hard time imagining with me, especially from one convicted of murder. But with God anything is possible.
Join Ron and Liberation Lit in reading Usual Cruelty by Alec Karaktsanis! You can buy a copy here.
About the Book
Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System by Alec Karakatsanis
From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society's normalization of the caging of human beings, and the role of the legal profession in perpetuating it.
Alec Karakatsanis is interested in what we choose to punish. For example, it is a crime in most of America for poor people to wager in the streets over dice; dice-wagerers can be seized, searched, have their assets forfeited, and be locked in cages. It's perfectly fine, by contrast, for people to wager over international currencies, mortgages, or the global supply of wheat; wheat-wagerers become names on the wings of hospitals and museums.
He is also troubled by how the legal system works when it is trying to punish people. The bail system, for example, is meant to ensure that people return for court dates. But it has morphed into a way to lock up poor people who have not been convicted of anything. He's so concerned about this that he has personally sued court systems across the country, resulting in literally tens of thousands of people being released from jail when their money bail was found to be unconstitutional.
Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings—an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color and for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.
About the Author
Alec Karakatsanis
Headshot of Alec Karakatsanis. / Image courtesy of Civil Rights Corps
A former public defender, Alec Karakatsanis is the founder of the Civil Rights Corps, an organization designed to bring systemic civil rights cases on behalf of impoverished people in the criminal justice system. He was named the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year by Public Justice and was awarded the Stephen B. Bright Award for contributions to indigent defense in the South by Gideon's Promise. He lives in Washington, DC. Usual Cruelty (The New Press) is his first book.
