Given the sheer amount of word salad she tosses up on a day-to-day basis, it makes sense that Marjorie Taylor Greene was bound to accidentally tell the truth at some point. Much like how a billion hateful monkeys on a billion typewriters will eventually hammer out Shakespeare, the controversial congresswoman might have just inadvertently exposed the horrors of the American carceral system to her rabid fans, and a wider audience of conservatives.
While appearing on the far right Newsmax channel, Greene described the terrible conditions of those arrested as a result of their participation in the failed insurrection at the Capitol. The congresswoman discussed how many of the alleged insurrectionists were having their human rights violated while in jail, with defendants spending hours scrubbing, cleaning, and painting the walls of their squalid prison. She also claimed many were kept inside for 23 hours a day, although no sources have confirmed this.
Anybody with a passing knowledge of the U.S prison system will be aware that this sort of flagrant abuse is hardly rare. Ironically, the “land of the free” has long had one of the largest prison populations in the world, both in terms of sheer numbers and as a percentage of the total population. There’s also plenty of evidence pointing out that American prisoners are kept in disgraceful conditions, although because the vast majority of those incarcerated are poor, Black, or both, it tracks that Greene wouldn’t have cared too much about this information. But, now that her own fans are suffering, she seems to have finally realized what a terrible state of affairs the U.S prison system is currently in.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Marjorie Taylor Greene story if she didn’t also somehow shove her agenda into what could have been a bipartisan attempt at righting a wrong, and a useful drawing of attention to one of America’s greatest shames. In a recent tweet, she claimed that these horrific circumstances were happening under a “two-tiered justice system,” with the implication being that conservatives — specifically, the January 6th rioters — are subject to grim conditions that other prisoners aren’t because of their political persuassion. However, the fact is, the insurrectionists are simply suffering from the same issues millions before them have also had to face — but at least they have a loudmouth congresswoman in their corner.
With that said, it isn’t wrong to imply that America has a tiered justice system. However, it’s the wealthy and connected who seem to be able to commit crimes with impunity, as opposed to it being a left versus right issue (although a lot of those who get away without jailtime for their crimes are conservatives with deep ties to the Republican party).
Part of the disgraceful conditions in American prisons is due to the explosion of for-profit jails, which try to eke out every cent of profit they can, to the detriment of the inmates being housed. But federal prisons aren’t much better when it comes to things like prison staff abusing inmates, prisoners being denied vital healthcare, and horrific overcrowding. And that’s not mentioning the number of prisoners murdered by guards while in the care of the state, especially in southern states like Alabama. Although the actual deaths themselves are harrowing, what’s even worse is the lenghts that the state goes to in order to protect bloodthirsty corrections officers from facing justice for their crimes. As the Equal Justice Initiative’s website states:
“In the face of rising homicide rates, Alabama officials misrepresented causes of death and the number of homicides in the state’s prisons. The Justice Department reported that Alabama officials knew that staff were smuggling dangerous drugs into prisons. But rather than address staff corruption and illegal activity, state officials tried to hide the alarming number of drug overdose deaths in Alabama prisons by misreporting the data.”
Contrary to Greene’s claims, those who tend to suffer the worst conditions in the U.S prison system aren’t conservatives who tried to overthrow the government, but people who have been detained for immigration reasons. Some of this stems from their inherent lack of rights because of nonexistent citizenship, but much of it is due to politicians like Greene demonizing those escaping from horrific regimes and societal conditions to try and make a better life in America, thus making it easier for malicious actors with power in the system to enact their abuse. Again, from the Equal Justice Initiative:
“The fastest-growing incarcerated population is people detained by immigration officials. The federal government is increasingly relying on private, profit-based immigration detention facilities. Private detention companies are paid a set fee per detainee per night, and they negotiate contracts that guarantee a minimum daily headcount, creating perverse incentives for government officials. Many run notoriously dangerous facilities with horrific conditions that operate far outside federal oversight.”
Some critics argue the American prison system is broken because of all of the above, as well as high rates of recidivism and the fact that many jails act as conveyor belts that turn petty criminals into hardened ones. But, for its architects, the system might actually be working exactly as planned. Many academics who study the U.S prison system have concluded it’s never been about reforming criminals to become better members of society, but instead is just a legal means of continuing the instutition of slavery. The 2016 documentary 13th delves into the intersection of race, criminal justice, and slavery to make this compelling argument. The fact that Black people are massively overrepresented in the prison system is also another bit of evidence that points to this interpretation of the system being correct.
So, despite broken-clock Greene finally being correct about something, she’s still managed to get the details wrong in an embarrassing and harmful way. However, if her attempts to help out the January 6th insurrectionists do end up with prison reform gaining a foothold in the government’s priorities, all her attention seeking might have finally had a good outcome, for once. With that all said, it’s doubtful that anything meaningful will change, even with Greene on-side. We’ve spent too long demonizing inmates, and too many people are lining their pockets under the current regime. Like many of America’s deeply-rooted problems, the prison system will take time and a lot of good will to fix, and we just have to hope those suffering right now can bear it until that point.