Chapter 6 in Democracy in Captivity: Prisoners, Patients, and the Limits of Self-Government (University of California Press, 2023)

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Chapter overview

This concluding chapter synthesizes the book’s case studies—St. Elizabeths Hospital, community control movements, and the Walpole prison rebellion—to reassess the relationship between custody and democracy. It argues that custodial institutions are not simply sites of exclusion but organizational ecologies in which democratic capacities are made, remade, and sometimes suppressed. Across these episodes, efforts to expand participation unsettle what the book calls the “exclusion thesis”—the idea that wards fall conceptually outside the demos. Yet participatory reform also reveals a countervailing dynamic: democratic practices can be reshaped into instruments of containment.

The chapter introduces the concept of democratic erosion to capture this tension. Civic disqualifications should be treated as provisional, because competence and political capacity are historically and institutionally mediated. At the same time, all custodial designs are vulnerable to decay, retrenchment, and subtle forms of repression. Between optimism about democratic innovation and pessimism about institutional erosion, the chapter advances a modest normative claim: publicity and external scrutiny function as essential backstops against abuse. Democratic deficits in custody are not solved by design alone; they require a wider public willing to confront the political consequences of confinement.

Core contributions

  • Synthesizes three historical case studies to articulate a general account of custody as a dynamic organizational field rather than a fixed domain of exclusion.
  • Critiques the exclusion thesis while resisting romanticized visions of “democracy in custody.”
  • Introduces the concept of democratic erosion to describe how participatory gains decay through procedural retrenchment and organizational drift.
  • Argues that civic disqualifications are provisional, shaped by institutional arrangements and shifting democratic values.
  • Advances publicity as a normative safeguard, emphasizing transparency and external scrutiny as backstops against abuse and authoritarian drift.
  • Extends democratic theory into the analysis of prisons, mental hospitals, and other custodial institutions.

Where this chapter fits

The chapter contributes to democratic theory, socio-legal scholarship, and organizational studies by situating prisons and mental health institutions within debates about political equality, institutional design, and democratic decay. It engages discussions of participatory democracy, institutional reform, mass incarceration, and the politics of care, offering a framework for analyzing how democratic commitments are both tested and transformed under conditions of confinement.

Keywords

democratic erosion; custody; exclusion thesis; democratic theory; prison reform; mental health institutions; organizational politics; publicity; institutional decay; participatory democracy; mass incarceration; democratic legitimacy; confinement

How to cite

Chicago (author-date)

Berk, Christopher D. 2023. “Democratic Erosion.” In Democracy in Captivity: Prisoners, Patients, and the Limits of Self-Government. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.