Stating The Obvious: Prisons Don’t Work
July 4th, 2009 by SocProf and tagged Mass Violence, Social Deviance, Social Inequalities, Social Institutions, Social Sanctions, Structural Violence
At least some people seem to realize this, Case in point, Scotland:
The counter-example, of course, would be the United States where the penal policy has not changed much since the conservative turn and the War on Drugs: lock ‘em up and throw away the key… and subsidize private prisons. The result? Mass prison population, overcrowding, violence for no benefits except for a few politicians, the prison-industrial complex and the guards unions. This system contributes in no small part of the near bankruptcy of California and human rights organizations regularly point out the massive violations that take place in there. And so, unsurprisingly, the recidivism rate is high.
And one would think that after Philip Zimbardo’s experiment and the more recent cases of Bagram prison in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib in Iraq, one would finally realize that the institutional context itself is a site of major dysfunctions that does not produce better adjusted individuals.
But, just as the case of health care, there is hardly any discussion of successful alternatives to mass incarceration. And no connection is being made to the corresponding higher levels of social inequality that correlate with greater violence in society in general, and lead to a less humane and more punitive society.
Posted in Mass Violence, Social Deviance, Social Inequalities, Social Institutions, Social Sanctions, Structural Violence | No Comments »
