Brittney Griner’s Hollow Homecoming
New York Magazine, December 16, 2022: Brittney Griner’s Hollow Homecoming
“When WNBA star Brittney Griner was arrested at a Russian airport in February for carrying hashish oil, as many as 30,000 people were in prison in America for simple marijuana possession. By the time she was released on December 8 as part of a prisoner swap that sent arms dealer Viktor Bout back to Russia, President Joe Biden had pardoned ‘thousands’ who had been convicted of the same crime at the federal level. The exonerations were meant to correct our government’s ‘failed approach’ to criminalizing cannabis, he said, but they also helped the Biden administration save face: Russia had invaded Ukraine a week after Griner’s arrest, cementing its status as a global villain, and its decision to prosecute her was seen as an extension of this villainy — even as the country lobbying for her release was persecuting thousands of people for the same offense. But if Biden was trying to wash America’s hands, Griner got a face full of dirt. Throughout her detention, right-wing media figures blasted her as an anti-American ingrate because in the summer of 2020 she’d voiced opposition to playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ before her team’s games. Now ‘she expects that country to come in full bore to take care of her,’ said Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro in August. The criticism ramped up after Griner’s release with some people proclaiming that Paul Whelan, an ex-Marine imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges, should’ve been exchanged for Bout instead. Rather than interrogating whether the U.S. and Russia should be imprisoning people for minor crimes at all, Americans were subjected to an argument about which prisoner deserved to suffer more.
“This mentality reflected an ethos that has helped make the U.S. and (to a lesser degree) Russia world leaders in incarceration, accounting for almost 3 million total prisoners between them. Each has built its justice system on punishment unmoored from any clear standard of harm. Yet Griner’s story is being read as a straightforward parable of Russian iniquity rather than as the indictment of Russo-American criminal policy and political gamesmanship that it is.”
Additional reading:
NPR, December 16, 2022: Brittney Griner says she'll play in the upcoming WNBA season
The New York Times, October 6, 2022: Biden Pardons Thousands Convicted of Marijuana Possession Under Federal Law
The Marshall Project, October 15, 2022: Don’t Expect Mass Prison Releases From Biden’s Marijuana Clemency
