The public perception of justice - the figure of its appearance – relies on the public not acknowledging that, which is generally known. This is the ideological work that the prison does. The atrocity that has come to be known as “mass incarceration” is possible because it is a public secret – a secret kept in an unacknowledged but public agreement not to know. Feminist Legal Scholar Catherine MacKinnon has analyzed the cultural pattern by which we are able to deny, ignore and assimilate atrocities that occur locally and globally on a daily basis:

Before atrocities are recognized as such, they are authoritatively regarded as either too extraordinary to be believable or too ordinary to be atrocious…. if it's happening, it's not so bad, and if it's really bad, it isn't happening...

Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues – Catherine MacKinnon

This is how the public secret comes into play – when there is something that is both too violating and too ordinary or pervasive to be acknowledged – in the US the human, systemic, economic and political abuses of the prison are atrocities that are hidden in the public secret.

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