BARE LIFE
Stripped of legal status and expelled from the political community, the prisoner is exposed, unconditionally, to the potential of being killed by anyone - police, guard, gang, fellow prisoner, or the state. The state decides which lives will be recognized as belonging to the community of political beings and which will be classified only in terms of biological fact. Stripped of every right by virtue of the fact that anyone can kill him without committing homicide. if the prisoner is reduced to a slave then the prisoner’s entire existence is reduced to bare life.
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S Y S T E M S
S E L L O U TO U T S I D E R
S E N T E N C E S
S O L D I E R
S E C U R I T Y
O R D E R
S N A R E S
S K I N
S A L V A T I O N
Until relatively recently the view prevailed that a prisoner “has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being the slave of the state.” This view is not now the law, and may never have been wholly correct. In 1948 the Court declared that “[l]awful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights;” “many,” indicated less than “all,” and it was clear that the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses to some extent do apply to prisoners.
More direct acknowledgment of constitutional protection came in 1972: [f]ederal courts sit not to supervise prisons but to enforce the constitutional rights of all ‘persons,’ which include prisoners.