ingest
cdrApp
2017-07-06T12:35:59.060Z
ccd64451-f0fc-4a42-94ad-226f4041fa4f
modifyDatastreamByValue
RELS-EXT
fedoraAdmin
2017-07-06T13:15:51.759Z
Setting exclusive relation
modifyDatastreamByValue
RELS-EXT
fedoraAdmin
2017-07-06T13:16:00.528Z
Setting exclusive relation
addDatastream
MD_TECHNICAL
fedoraAdmin
2017-07-06T13:16:01.246Z
Adding technical metadata derived by FITS
modifyDatastreamByValue
RELS-EXT
fedoraAdmin
2017-07-06T13:16:17.981Z
Setting exclusive relation
addDatastream
MD_FULL_TEXT
fedoraAdmin
2017-07-06T13:16:26.970Z
Adding full text metadata extracted by Apache Tika
modifyDatastreamByValue
RELS-EXT
fedoraAdmin
2017-07-06T13:16:42.984Z
Setting exclusive relation
modifyDatastreamByValue
RELS-EXT
cdrApp
2017-07-06T13:18:12.405Z
Setting exclusive relation
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-01-25T11:52:20.753Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-01-27T11:58:21.616Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-03-14T09:00:23.875Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-05-17T20:32:00.019Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-07-11T07:29:54.622Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-07-18T03:39:53.823Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-08-16T16:49:08.009Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-09-27T03:25:32.586Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2018-10-12T03:48:41.519Z
modifyDatastreamByValue
MD_DESCRIPTIVE
cdrApp
2019-03-21T13:26:49.124Z
Stephanie
Gaskill
Author
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound.
Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
Spring 2017
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Religious Studies
Laurie
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION
CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation
emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression
and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran
Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons
diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice
policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era,
Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among
Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging
religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the
prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and
state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith
in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to
resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral
rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that
faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative
perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes
have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans.
Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often
emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice
system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways
that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison
environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique
“sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the
prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for
life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however,
reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual
redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable
limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of
victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as
religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental
ways.
Spring 2017
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting
institution
Religious Studies
Laurie
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
Spring 2017
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Religious Studies
Laurie
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017-05
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Religious Studies
Laurie
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Religious Studies
Laurie
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
2017-05
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Religious Studies
Laurie
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
2017-05
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Religious Studies
Laurie
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
2017-05
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
Religious Studies
Laurie F.
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
2017-05
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Degree granting institution
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
Religious Studies
Laurie F.
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
2017-05
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Degree granting institution
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Religious Studies
Laurie F.
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
2017-05
Stephanie
Gaskill
Creator
Department of Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
MORAL REHABILITATION: RELIGION, RACE, AND REFORM IN AMERICA’S INCARCERATION CAPITAL
This dissertation explores differing understandings of rehabilitation emerging from Louisiana’s Angola Prison, notorious for its history of racial oppression and, more recently, religious revival. Scholars such as Angela Davis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad have asserted that the increasing proportion of African Americans in U.S. prisons diminished public support for rehabilitation and fueled more punitive criminal justice policies. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, the height of the “tough on crime” era, Warden Burl Cain’s “moral rehabilitation” signaled increasing interest in reform among Angola’s majority-black population. Cain gained widespread acclaim for encouraging religious activity and personal morality to curb violence and hopelessness inside the prison. Critics have charged that Cain’s efforts violate the separation between church and state and the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, he expressed faith in the rehabilitative ideal even as racialized calls for “law and order” continued to resound. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this study uses moral rehabilitation as a means to examine how race shapes reform. Cain contends that faith-based rehabilitation should motivate the public to reconsider its negative perceptions of people in prison and the laws that keep them there. Yet religious tropes have been just as likely to provoke scorn as elicit sympathy for African Americans. Similarly, rehabilitation offers the possibility of social acceptance, but often emphasizes individual responsibility rather than systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Still, incarcerated African Americans have reinterpreted rehabilitation in ways that challenge traditional understandings of how this concept should function in prison environments. This dissertation examines how race reconfigures reform in four unique “sites.” Popular documentaries about Angola redefine rehabilitation as a means for the prison’s majority-black population to find purpose inside prison rather than prepare for life on the outside. Media produced by incarcerated people themselves, however, reinterpret rehabilitation as a mode of structural critique as well as individual redemption. This more expansive understanding of rehabilitation is subject to considerable limitation in Louisiana’s legislative arena, where racialized understandings of victimization re-frame rehabilitation as a cost-saving measure. In short, race—as well as religious worldviews--shape approaches to rehabilitation in fundamental ways.
2017
Religion
eng
Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Degree granting institution
Laurie F.
Maffly-Kipp
Thesis advisor
Yaakov
Ariel
Thesis advisor
Lauren
Leve
Thesis advisor
Ashley
Lucas
Thesis advisor
Grant
Wacker
Thesis advisor
Jerma
Jackson
Thesis advisor
text
2017-05
Gaskill_unc_0153D_16822.pdf
uuid:daeb92ca-6f2e-4f00-a1b9-e128aeac10da
2017-04-06T22:38:36Z
proquest
2019-07-06T00:00:00
application/pdf
1210466
yes