community, public domain, citizenship, information society, social justice, digital inclusion Secrets are the opposite of information. There are secrets that are kept from the public and then there are "public secrets" - secrets that the public chooses to keep safe from itself - like, "don't ask, don't tell." Such shared secrets sustain social and political institutions. The injustices of the war on drugs, the criminal justice system, and the Prison Industrial Complex are "public secrets". This paper will discuss the phenomenon of the "public secret" in the context information culture and present strategies for using information technologies to unmask such secrets. The presentation will reference an online audio database of statements by incarcerated women and injection drug users, which reveal the secret injustices of the war on drugs, the Criminal Justice System and the Prison Industrial Complex.
Abstract Secrets are the opposite of information. There are secrets that are kept from the public and then there are "public secrets" - secrets that the public chooses to keep safe from itself - like, "don't ask, don't tell." The injustices of the war on drugs, the criminal justice system, and the Prison Industrial Complex are "public secrets". The trick to the public secret is in knowing what not to know. This is the most powerful form of social knowledge. Such shared secrets sustain social and political institutions. The expansion of the prison system is possible because it is a public secret - a secret kept in a publicly unacknowledged agreement not to know what imprisonment really means to individuals and their communities. One in four prisoners in the United States is serving time for a non-violent drug law violation. These are prisoners of war - the US war on drugs - which, is essentially a war on race, a war on gender, a war against the socio-economic 'other.' The 'prison industrial complex' is a corporate/state collaboration designed to profit from the incarceration of marginalised communities on a massive scale, and to enforce their continual political disenfranchisement by law. The existence of the Prison Industrial Complex, its pervasive network of monopolies, its human rights abuses, are all extremely well documented yet wholly submerged and repressed. The growth of the prison industrial complex and the unimpeded violation of human rights within it are irrefutable testimony to the power of the public secret. Everyone knows, and knows they know, but still, If we admit that we know we will have to do something to stop it. In this paper I will address the cultural contradictions exemplified by the power of the "public secret," and the suppression of rights to privacy and free speech in a society that is identified as the "information society". I will focus particularly on the disenfranchisement of impoverished communities and persons of color by the US criminal justice system using both objective, statistical data available to the public and subjective personal statements made by members of impacted communities. The presentation will reference an online audio database of statements by incarcerated women and injection drug users, which reveal the secret injustices of the war on drugs, the Criminal Justice System and the Prison Industrial Complex. In the current political climate in the US - one that supports shutting down public access to information, increasing repression against people of colour and immigrants, the dissolution of civil rights and disregard for international human rights law - "truth is not a matter of the exposure of a secret but a revelation that does justice to it." URLS:
http://improbablevoices.net |
