How The Prison System Violates People Like Bobby Shmurda
Did he commit violations, or is the prison system a violating environment?
Bobby Shmurda was denied parole last week, and won’t be released from jail until December 2021. He was reportedly denied because of 11 violations he committed while in jail. For people conditioned to “good behavior” as a necessity of early prison release, his misdoings are his rightful undoing. But did he commit violations, or is the prison system a violating environment? Bobby doesn’t deserve to be ensnared by the parole system — and neither does any other incarcerated person. His plight reaffirms why the carceral state needs to be abolished.
The parole and probation industry is a tentacle of the prison system with arbitrary, racially-biased decision-making processes about who deserves jail. Perhaps it isn’t as easy for people to be as outraged for Bobby as they were for Meek Mill’s treatment — but the justice system is the common enemy.
Meek Mill was seen as a perfect victim during his probation nightmare. It was exposed that he was initially framed by a dirty cop in his 2009 gun and drugs case, had a vindictive probation Judge who asked him to write a song about her, and a probation officer who held a neighborhood grudge against him. It wasn’t difficult to determine that no one deserved to be entrapped like that, and the world stood up in his defense. His rap friends made #FreeMeek go viral. Jay-Z spent millions on a high-powered defense team. Philadelphians marched for him on multiple occasions.
It seemed like a no-brainer to most that Meek deserved justice — but not everyone. In 2017, Philadelphia Magazine writer Victor Fiorillo disagreed with Meek advocates, surmising in his Meek Mill Got Exactly What He Deserved piece that the rapper was a “wealthy celebrity who has broken the rules time and time again and now must face the consequences.” That’s the kind of crime and punishment rhetoric that the establishment uses against rappers like Bobby Shmurda.
Bobby’s “Hot Nigga” hit wasn’t used in court, but the exhilarating, boastful record raised his profile — and made it easier for the prosecution who arrested him and his GS9 crew to paint him as “the driving force” of what they deemed a gang. “Hip-hop cop” Derrick Parker told Vulture that “the police really fixated on [Bobby] and really wanted to bring down his organization,” because “the NYPD sees rap groups as gangs committing crimes, and they see the rapper as someone who has money and public influence.”
Based on the hefty sentences handed out to alleged GS9, some as high as 117 years, it wouldn’t have been difficult hard for the prosecution to convince a potential jury that he was a menace based on “Hot Nigga” alone. That may be why he ended up pleading out to seven years in prison for one count of third-degree conspiracy and one count of weapons possession. He told XXL in 2016 that, “everybody show me love from Bloods to Crips,” in jail but it appears his experience wasn’t as smooth as he indicated.
The year before, he almost faced an additional seven years after his girlfriend tried to smuggle a knife into Rikers Island for him in 2015. It was undoubtedly an ill-advised move to attempt to smuggle a weapon into jail, but a deeper systemic conversation should be had on why he felt he needed one. The rampant violence on Rikers is one reason that criminal justice reform advocates fought to have the jail closed within the next decade.
Most people should be able to acknowledge that prison is not a venue for “rehabilitation” as America claims. A 2019 report about Alabama prisons found “a high level of violence that is too common, cruel, of an unusual nature, and pervasive.” The issues plaguing Alabama reflect nationwide problems: prisons are overpopulated and understaffed. The correctional officers and other staff that regulate the carceral state often foster a brutal atmosphere. There were “sanctioned” prison fighting rings exposed in South Carolina and California, where guards reportedly threatened “physical abuse, sexual abuse, transfers to more dangerous jails, and the loss of lucrative jail job assignments” if the incarcerated people refused to fight.
Late Columbia Law School professor Robert A. Ferguson surmised that “suffering of the convicted is carefully arranged to take place somewhere out of sight.” That place is prison, where guards aggressively confine people suffering from mental illness, a lack of coping skills, and other traumatic factors that lead to violence. Then, after they’re violated for violence or self-medicating, their sentence gets sustained — and the prison industrial complex strengthens with cruel efficacy.
Juelz Santana and Fat Joe recently spent several minutes on Fat Joe’s “Joprah” Instagram Live show talking about their jail experiences. Santana, who did two years for gun possession, recalled getting into a fight after being accosted by someone believing a (false) rumor that a rival rapper would pay to have him “knocked out.” Fat Joe then noted his verbal argument with a “cock diesel” peer who allegedly threatened, “we don’t like how you walkin’ around here, and we ready to go to the box” after hypothetically beating him up. Both artists agreed that there were people in jail so jealous of them that they’d purposely pick a fight to get them more time. Imagine Bobby’s position as not just a high-profile rapper, but someone who the state framed as a gang member.
The New York state is notoriously stocked with gangs such as the Bloods, Crips, Trinitarios, and others. Justin Hightower, who was serving time in Greenhaven Correctional Facility, explained in an insightful Prison Writers essay how the gang violence committed in prison was fear-based:
When you cut a man’s face — say, with a folded can top whose edge you’ve serrated with a pair of toenail clippers — you are making a statement on behalf of your set: Look at this guy’s face. You could be next. This simple act, which has all the earmarks of an airfield filled with wooden fighter jets, is how prison gangs maintain respect. The reason prison gangs crave respect, despite what you may have heard, is because gang bangers live in constant fear. This fear is so powerful, so virulent, it spurs a member to abandon his personal self — his individuality, his sense of right and wrong, his humanity — and join a group of cowards who, by sheer numbers, seek to avoid harm by inflicting it upon others.
Maybe we should get rid of the fear instead of condemning the fearful. Hightower also noted that he was ambiguous about whether “prison gangs are either positive or negative. Their existence strikes me as a reaction to the climate of violence created by corrupt Corrections Officers. “
Instead of viewing Bobby’s violations as justification for his parole denial, one should consider the reality that his violent actions (and self-medication) are a manifestation of the carceral state. If he didn’t defend himself, what would have happened to him? Shouldn’t those incidents serve as a warning to the parole board that prison isn’t the safest place for him (or anyone)? The board’s refusal to let him continue his career is a reflection of the system’s desire for his recidivism, as well as another instance of racial disparities in parole denials. The system runs on fundamentally inhumane logic, which renders it illegitimate.
That’s why prison abolitionists are imagining a world with alternatives to punitive punishment focused on improving people instead of warehousing them. So while Bobby, like anyone else, deserved to face accountability for whatever violence he committed, prison is not the answer.
Meek was framed as the perfect victim because he had a case where everyone involved was flagrantly in the wrong. It was easy to scream to the mountains against the evil judge and the dirty, lying cop. And while Bobby isn’t as easy to stump for, his plight parallels Meek to expose the illegitimacy of the justice system. The fight for justice isn’t always going to be one without qualms, but it’s one worth fighting. A systemic overhaul means advocacy that affirms even those guilty of violence, because of the state’s complicity in cultivating violent environments. These artists, and the millions done wrong like them, deserve justice.
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Venmo: Andre-Gee
This is really hard to admit, but we need a way to properly rehabilitate terrible people rather than give them dehumanizing isolation and fear based groupings. Thank u for this Andre.
A couple questions, I guess:
1 - would Bobby have been able to grow his career past Hot Boy if he hadn’t been incarcerated?
2 - why do white genres never have police departments that are targeted this heavily?
3 - Fat Joe went to prison too?
4 - have you ever witnessed the carceral system firsthand, or is it something people around you have told u about?