The power of control may often change an individual’s character. Within the prison system, lies a prison guard subculture in which, the power of control is stressed. Control and power are the means of successively managing a prison. Throughout the novel New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing, author Ted Conover (2001) writes of his experience as a Correctional Officer at Sing Sing maximum-security prison. Behind the prison doors, a different world takes flight.…
John Swain: Eastern Penitentiary Worksheet Part I: General Questions: Answer 3 (1 point each) What was the correctional philosophy of Eastern State Penitentiary when it opened? Eastern State’s philosophy was the Pennsylvania System- a system where prisoners were isolated in their own cells with only a bible their thoughts. This complete silence and isolation was essential to repentance, however it was a maddening system that could (and I’m sure has) driven many prisoners insane. Name two prominent Philadelphians who were involved in conceptualizing Eastern State Penitentiary and how they were influential in the penitentiary movement.…
The memoir, Picking Cotton; Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption, by Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton, tells a real-life story, that is broken into two perspectives. In one perspective, a young lady, Jennifer Thompson, is sexaul assault by a man she thought was Ronald Cotton. The other point of view is a man, Ronald Cotton, which is convicted for a crime he did not commit that causes him to be in prison for more than ten years. Ronald and Jennifer made separate life decisions which influenced benefited their circumstances. However, these decisions are both helpful and libel for themselves.…
Guilty as Charged I met Deluca in a once quiet prison, which was now scurrying in a manic manner as the correctional officers and the Governor tried to assess the prison’s most recent situation. Behind a strengthened distressed steel door was an abundance of handpicked inmates all awaiting their fate. A select few of the inmates did not seem amused by the situation, and some could care less. More than half of the prisoners were clenching the posts of the door in a rage, screaming at the top of their lungs “Justice! Justice!”…
The Yuma Prison, like all prisons, had their own punishments and consequences. Some prisons in the 1800’s had their punishments for their prisoners, like them getting lashed 25 to 50 times. The YTP had its own punishment which was the Dark Cell. Only if you had committed a very serious offense in the prison you would be taken to the Dark Cell. For example, if two prisoners got into an argument, they would both get at least 3 days in the Dark Cell.…
Everyday there are people who struggle with some type of incarceration whether its physical or emotional. Being incarcerated can happen to anyone at any point in their life, some people are convicted at birth making it an uphill battle from the start, while others become incarcerated by the decisions they make at some point in their life. St. Francis, both Wes Moore’s and Robert Peace have all experienced some type of incarceration in their life, but were not all incarcerated in the same way. Each person had their own battles they had to fight to get out of being incarcerated. Some of these people fully got out of the situation or environment that was incarcerating them in order to free themselves and start a new life, while others are currently…
Within the book , A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women, Erin George portrays her time at the Fluvanna Correctional Center , in which she serves her 603 year sentence. Before she entered the judicial system, she was an ordinary middle class, suburban mother. All of this changed when she was charged with the murder of her husband. In her book, George talks little of her trial , aside from the fact that she “found out the case was entirely circumstantial: there was no forensic evidence linking [her] to the shooting of [my] husband, no witnesses, and of course no confession”(George, Page 6). She then reminisces of her time being detained at Rappahannock Regional Jail.…
“California artist, Sandow Birk, was inspired by the colonizing of the landscape by prisons to produce a series of thirty-three landscape paintings of these institutions and their surroundings” (14), Angela Davis describes in her introduction to Are Prisons Obsolete? Through the eyes of Davis, Birk’s paintings reveal our ideologies about prison. Birk uses location, appearance, and natural setting to help focus that lens. The use of these techniques, along with others, helps enhance the reader’s ideologies of prison that focus on isolation, taking prisons for granted, and alternatives for prisons. Predominantly, Birk uses the location of the prisons in his paintings to show isolation.…
Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Davis, explores the history of prisons in the United States of America, as well as their social, political, and cultural facets. Additionally, she makes the argument for the abolition of prisons within America. Throughout the book, Davis forms three main assumptions: racism is real and wrong, prisons are racist institutions, and prisons should be considered obsolete. To start, Davis argues that racism is real and wrong by examining the history of racism in the United States, and the way in which minority children are raised. Secondly, she points out that prisons are racist institutions due to the history of prisons themselves, as well as the way in which prisoners are treated.…
Report on the Stanford Prison Experiment for PSYC 1111 The Office of Naval Research sponsored a study at Stanford University to "develop a better understanding of the basic psychological mechanisms underlying human aggression" and to identify which conditions can lead to aggression when men are living in close quarters for a long period of time (Haney, C., Banks, W.C. & Zimbardo, P.G. (1973)). This experiment took form within a model prison created in the basement at Stanford University to discover the variables found in prisons that can lead to aggression in people, i.e. guards and prisoners. The hypothesis explored was that ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ would react in different ways and their behavior and state of being would differ from each…
Module 9 Reading Response Introduction and Questions due November 14, Midnight (4 points) From the Lecture: 1. What is the Prison Industrial Complex and how does it generate profit? Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is private industry that run prisons by using a business model. PIC’s main goal is to generate as much profit as possible.…
To enter into a prison, with the weight of one’s crime, is the most loss anyone could feel. Reid however feels that this feeling of loss can be a good thing, because you are stripped down to the basics and your outlook on one everything that is good and bad…
The 20th Meeting “So, how did you get here?” mumbled a tall, sweaty, bearded cellmate. “I did my fair share,” I replied with cold eyes. We were in a dim, cold, depressing prison cell. With a bunk bed that had one pillow on each mattress, and two prickly uncomfortable blankets.…
Renting an apartment can be a wonderful experience, though there are quite a few things that can turn this dream into a nightmare. Having a horrible landlord is one example of that. In Langston’s Hughes poem “Ballad of the Landlord”, the speaker of the story is talking to his landlord about the many things wrong with his home. With this poem, Hughes shows the corruption of landlords, and the lack of help received by the speaker from the justice system.…
Hayes uses imagery of physical structures and birds to represent the racial oppression while using juxtaposition and repetition to challenge white America. The physical structures of confinement are images of the oppressive power structure, and birds represent the vulnerability of African Americans. The opening lines of the poem trap the reader in, just like society has trapped African Americans: “I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,/Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame (Hayes 1-2) .” All of the places of confinement impose a feeling of fear.…