[D66] From Asylum to Prison

[A.OUT]

Begin forwarded message:

 > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review at lists.h-net.org>
 > Date: January 28, 2020 at 3:35:59 PM EST
 > To: h-review at lists.h-net.org
 > Cc: H-Net Staff <revhelp at mail.h-net.org>
 > Subject: H-Net Review [H-Disability]:  Brewer on Parsons, 'From 
Asylum to Prison: Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass 
Incarceration after 1945'
 > Reply-To: h-review at lists.h-net.org
 >
 > Anne E. Parsons.  From Asylum to Prison: Deinstitutionalization and
 > the Rise of Mass Incarceration after 1945.  Chapel Hill  University
 > of North Carolina Press, 2018.  240 pp.  $29.95 (cloth), ISBN
 > 978-1-4696-4063-1.
 >
 > Reviewed by Amanda Brewer (Michigan State University)
 > Published on H-Disability (January, 2020)
 > Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison
 >
 > _From Asylum to Prison: Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass
 > Incarceration after 1945_ is a timely work that bridges the two,
 > largely separate, historiographies of the history of psychiatry and
 > mass incarceration through the lens of the carceral state. Anne E.
 > Parsons, an associate professor of history and the director of public
 > history at UNC-Greensboro, traces how the politics of the social
 > welfare state and criminal legal system in the United States were
 > intertwined, arguing that the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric
 > hospitals and the rise of mass incarceration and the
 > overincarceration of people with psychiatric disabilities went
 > hand-in-hand between 1945 and the late 1980s. As the book's title
 > indicates, Parsons provocatively argues that "the asylum did not
 > disappear; it returned in the form of the modern prison industrial
 > complex" (p. 3).
 >
 > Parsons's analysis rests on her argument that mid-twentieth-century
 > institutions "were carceral spaces--sites of social control that
 > limited people's freedom," which is informed by previous work by
 > scholars such as Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Thomas Szasz, and
 > Andrew Scull (p. 9). This lens of analysis allows her to examine how
 > the incarceration of the majority of people in state institutions
 > shifted from those in mental hospitals diagnosed with a mental
 > illness to, between 1945 and the late 1980s, those in prison labeled
 > as dangerous and criminal. The deinstitutionalization of mental
 > hospitals, beginning during the 1960s, was the major turning point,
 > and many of those diagnosed with mental illness released through
 > deinstitutionalization were reinstitutionalized in the prison system.
 > Parsons gives three reasons for this and the move toward mass
 > incarceration: the lack of community mental health services, the
 > recriminalization of mental illness, and the rise of law-and-order
 > politics after the 1960s.
 >
 > While the book's arguments are broad, they are based heavily on a
 > case study of Pennsylvania, especially the Philadelphia area. Parsons
 > blends politcal, social, and cultural history in this work. Many of
 > the archival sources come from state records related to individual
 > politicians or state agencies in Pennsylvania, while periodicals,
 > newspapers, novels, and secondary sources help to explain social
 > change and fill in connections to the national context. Although
 > Pennsylvania is a strong choice for a case study on this topic, this
 > book leaves room for further research on how deinstitutionalization,
 > and reinstitutionalization through mass incarceration, may have had
 > different paths due to different local politics beyond Pennsylvania
 > and the Northeast.
 >
 > The book is nicely organized into five chapters that advance
 > chronologically, based on the different periods of change argued by
 > Parsons. The site of the Pennsylvania State Hospital at Byberry
 > usefully brings the analysis full circle; the introduction begins
 > with one man's story of incarceration at Byberry until his release in
 > 1970 and the last chapter, before the epilogue, ends with Parsons's
 > discussion of the closure of Byberry as a potential model for future
 > efforts to remedy the mass incarceration crisis. Chapter 1 provides
 > an overview of the state of mental institutions and psychiatry
 > following the Second World War, and establishes Parsons's argument
 > that mental institutions were carceral institutions. Parsons's
 > discussion, not only of popular novels such as _The Snake Pit_ (1946)
 > by Mary Jane Ward (1905-81) but also of conscientious objectors'
 > writings about mental hospitals, illuminates postwar rhetoric
 > comparing mental hospitals to prisons.
 >
 > Chapters 2 and 3 work together to explain the major factors that
 > catalyzed deinstitutionalization. Chapter 2 focuses on the growth of
 > anti-institutional policies related to mental hospitals in the 1950s,
 > but also shows the growth of state correctional institutions based on
 > an ideal of rehabilitation of criminals rather than incarceration.
 > Most convincing is Parsons's discussion of the growth of the juvenile
 > delinquency system based on concerns about the future development of
 > both mental illness and criminality among juveniles, particularly for
 > African Americans. Chapter 3 explains the major factors on the
 > federal and state levels that influenced deinstitutionalization in
 > the 1960s, including funding cuts as well as the cultural currents
 > that led to an "anti-institutional impulse" (p. 16). Court rulings
 > serve as the most important aspect of this chapter, with Parsons
 > highlighting the 1970 Pennsylvania case _Dixon v. Attorney General_
 > that changed the state's involuntary commitment laws so that a
 > diagnosis of mental illness alone did not mean that a person could be
 > institutionalized. While courts did protect people in prisons and
 > hospitals by identifying important negative rights, explains Parsons,
 > positive rights such as access to adequate mental health services
 > were not recognized to the same degree.
 >
 > Chapters 4 and 5 hold the most innovative arguments in the book.
 > Chapter 4 builds on chapter 3 by looking at how
 > deinstitutionalization impacted prison reform during a brief period
 > in the late 1960s and early 1970s--turning quickly from
 > rehabilitation and anti-institutionalism to a "renewed custodialism"
 > (p. 122). Parsons attributes this to the state government's concern
 > for public safety over protecting individual freedom during the rise
 > of law-and-order politics. Because of this shift to people being put
 > in prison for criminal acts or behavior deemed dangerous, rather than
 > being institutionalized for mental illness, Parsons argues, mental
 > illness became criminalized. In chapter 5, she shows how the politics
 > of social welfare institutions and correctional institutions were
 > intertwined and how the Pennsylvania governor's choices to cut social
 > welfare funding for those diagnosed with mental illness were tied to
 > increased spending on prison construction. Then, in one of the most
 > innovative parts of the book, titled "The Asylum Becomes the Prison,"
 > Parsons explains this shift and charts how a "reinstitutionalization"
 > occurred as at least seventy state institutions were directly
 > converted to prisons (p. 145). The example in Pennsylvania of the
 > conversion of Retreat State Hospital to the State Correctional
 > Institution--Retreat during the 1980s is particularly convincing.
 >
 > _From Asylum to Prison _also includes an essential analytical theme
 > of race, with Parsons noting how "as mental hospitals closed and
 > corrections grew, more African Americans were entwined in the
 > carceral state" even during the era of civil rights and desegregation
 > (p. 47). Throughout the text, she discusses the role of racial
 > prejudice and rhetoric in political and legislative decisions as well
 > as rising rates of African American incarceration at key points.
 > However, although Parsons argues that "race, gender, and sexuality
 > were central" to the changes brought on by deinstitutionalization,
 > there is very little discussion throughout the monograph of how
 > gender or sexuality factored into this history, especially given the
 > large social and cultural changes surrounding gender and sexual norms
 > that occurred between 1945 and the late 1980s (p. 47). One thing at
 > which Parsons excels throughout the book is her use of carefully
 > chosen terminology to describe the historical actors (e.g., as
 > "diagnosed with mental illness" rather than as "mentally ill"). She
 > also uses the term "psychiatric disabilities," thus placing the work
 > in conversation with the larger history of disability connected with
 > institutions (p. 18).
 >
 > Despite any critiques, _From Asylum to Prison _is an important work
 > that urges scholars to consider how the contemporary mass
 > incarceration crisis and overincarceration of people with mental
 > illness in the United States has roots in a longer history of
 > state-funded custodial institutions. In the epilogue, Parsons reminds
 > readers that history has much to teach us about the usefulness, or
 > lack thereof, of incarcerative institutions as a solution for the
 > treatment of mental illness or of social deviance. This book should
 > garner much discussion in graduate seminars and would be a valuable
 > read for anyone interested in the history of psychiatry,
 > institutions, and the carceral state.
 >
 > Citation: Amanda Brewer. Review of Parsons, Anne E., _From Asylum to
 > Prison: Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass Incarceration
 > after 1945_. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. January, 2020.
 > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54305
 >
 > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
 > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
 > License.
 >