Civil Rights In Prison: The Reform Of The Texas Prions After World War Ⅱ

This dissertation examines the reforms of the Texas prisons after World War Ⅱand how the inmates fought for themselves.It choose the Texas Prison system for a case study because this system once emerged as a national model for penal management.Texas replaced its notorious1940 s plantation/prison farm system with an efficient,business-oriented agricultural enterprise system.When this new system was fully operational in the 1960 s,Texas became a modern and pioneering Sun Belt state.But this reputation obfuscated the reality of a brutal system of internal prison management.This dissertation analyzes how the Texas prison system maintained its external reputation for so long in the face of the internal reality.When inmates inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and want to fight for themselves,this reputation collapsed.As the dissertation moves chronologically,my dissertation analyses the development of reforms.1940 s prison reform construted an economically productive system but failed to destroy the racial and power hierarchies.Especially the building tender system grown more formidable.When it came to the 1970 s,inmate civil rights movement was in the making.Civil rights organizations and the federal court advanced a new round of prison reforms But their efforts failed to humanize the internal life of prisons.What is even worse is that thses attempts lead to a vastly expanding prison system.Thus,inter-racial cooperation into racial balkanization and violent competition arised for the increased levels of inmate violence and gang organization.The new Texas prison utilized paramilitary practices,privatized prisons and rison expansion to establish a new system that focused much more on “ law and order ”.Placing the inmates and their struggle at the heart of the national debate over rights and “ law and order ” politics reveals inmate civil rights movement that asked the courts to reconsider how the state punished those who committed a crime whilealso reminding the public of the inmates’ humanity and their constitutional rights.This study offers a new perspective on the historical origins of the modern prison industrial complex,sexual violence in working-class culture,and the ways in which race shaped the prison experience.This study joins new scholarship that reperiodizes the Civil Rights era while also considering how violence and radicalism shaped the civil rights struggle.It places the criminal justice system at the heart of both an older racial order and within a prison-made civil rights movement that confronted the prison’s power to deny citizenship and enforce racial hierarchies.By charting the trajectory of the civil rights movement in Texas prisons,my dissertation demonstrates how the internal struggle over rehabilitation and punishment shaped civil rights and racial formation.