Governor Stein declared April “Second-Chance Month,” calling attention to reincarceration rates and the challenges facing people “re-entering” daily life on the outside. I review 3 games that attempt to convey the horror, dehumanization and mind-boggling inanity of the U.S. carceral system.
“Witness to Mass Incarceration” was released earlier this year by the same-named non-profit group. The game was developed by students and volunteers who work in the field of prison reform. It is a 2D RPG that takes you through the case of a woman who is starting her 2-year sentence at a West Virginia federal prison.
Players follow her from the time she must leave her home and family to enter the deplorable conditions of Alderson Federal Prison. There, the realization of absolute control over her begins, from strip search to being expected to memorize her inmate number, her dehumanization happens bit-by-bit. Part One ends as the main character remembers the parting words of her Holocaust-survivor mother.
“Your experience in prison will be harder for you than even my time in the concentration camp.”
“I said, ‘What are you crazy?’ but in time I would realize how right she was…”
Parts two and three will be released later this year.
Players have recently been released from prison and must navigate the challenges of life on parole under capitalism. Managing money, time, resources and the unforeseen hiccups of daily life. Find a job, pay rent, get a car. All while meeting the demands of the parole system and dealing with the temperament of your assigned parole officer.
The game is meant to educate the public on the labyrinthine obstacles of life after imprisonment. What most of us already struggle with under an exploitative economic system becomes compounded and heightened with the added burdens of re-entry.
Imagine, if you will, being welded shut inside your car and given increasingly absurd tasks to complete as punishment for a crime. Well, that’s exactly what the zany old-school flash game “inCARceration” posits. You have 10 days, 10 tasks, parole hearings, no lawyer and no gas.
Maybe through completely obscene surrealism, this idiotic driving game captures the depravity of the U.S. IN-justice system better than any other. If you like ridiculous graphics, Wario-ware style mini-games and being told “you looooose” – this one is for you.
Before he helped lead Vietnam against imperialist domination, Ho Chi Minh was imprisoned for his revolutionary ideas. During his stay, he kept a diary and wrote, “When the prison doors open, the real dragon will fly out.”
His words were then famously used by the Black revolutionary George Jackson as a principle of organizing in prisons. He understood that every prisoner in the U.S. – Black people, poor people, immigrants, queers – were political prisoners.
While the U.S. economic system criminalizes the existence of the working-class and defends at every turn the right of capitalists to exploit, the rumbling from behind the bars grows. One day, the dragon will fly out, and a new world will bloom.
Play all three for free at the links below.
