In the Black Mirror episode White Bear, a woman is subjected to the unusual punishment of being filmed while she believes she is fleeing for her life, while at night having the prior day wiped from her memory. Her punishment seems to serve less a purpose for her to be rehabilitated or even truly reprimanded for her crimes, but more to entertain the men, women, and children who pay to make an outing to the “justice park.” Her punishment serving to benefit others, although carried out in a strange manner, is comparable to the United States’ for-profit incarceration system.
Prisoners in the United States are often expected to do menial labor that everyone else deems beneath them, and two-thirds to three-fourths of prisoners are reincarcerated within five years of release. Prisoners are, under the 13th amendment, allowed to be forced into involuntary servitude and nationwide only earn between $.23 and $1.15 an hour for their service. In the United States, prisoners are treated as just that: prisoners. They are stripped of rights commonly protected by the Constitution. This penal system does little to help return prisoners to normal members of society or learn useful skills. As a country, we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and we are doing little to move away from this. There are other countries we could look to for reform if we were to want to.
In Norway (and the other Scandinavian countries) have low incarceration rates to begin with, and their reincarceration rate is staggeringly lower than the U.S. Why? Prisoners are treated as humans who just lack freedom. They can still learn skills and do labor. The country’s prison system is focused more on rehabilitation than only punishment. This success raises the question: Why do we not do this in the United States? Some may make the argument that our country’s population is much larger than any of the Scandinavian countries, making such a system harder to implement. I personally feel that the real reason for a lack of change is based in the fact that prisons are a source for cheap labor. As prisoners lack rites, they can be forced to work for pennies and do the jobs no one else wants to. While these punishments might not be considered cruel and unusual, the entire nation could benefit from a reform in prison systems. Families could be more easily mended and most less severe crimes could be significantly reduced, making everyone happier.
3 comments:
Great blog post and commentary. As a country, we focus more on the punishment than the rehabilitation because the Republicans believe in privatizing everything supplied by the government. They believe profit businesses is the ultimate good because they run more efficiently than governments. Notice not only prison are privatized; education within the public schools are as well.
Prisons should be a form of rehabilitation because persons go to prison as a form of punishment and not for punishment. Therefore, why not give them alternatives to make them useful to society because when they leave prison; they will eventually return back to crime. I also believe some people are victims of their environment to a certain degree because poverty drives crime. Black lives are lost daily not only by physical violence of crime and drugs, but by the social violence of devaluation, dehumanization, and marginalization caused by the social construct that enables Black and Brown (low income) people opportunities to merely survive.
Peyton, I especially agree with your statement about lessening the severity of certain crimes to reduce the amount of prisoners in the prison system. Regarding drug laws, I think punishments related to drugs such as marijuana should be reduced or only given a fine instead of time in prison. The amount of money needed to maintain that prisoner could have been spent on different expenses such as the public school system.
It's weird to think that running a prison could be such a lucrative business, and I think the White Bear episode makes a good parallel with that. They charge people money for tickets to participate in the park. It's not the same as cheap labor but I don't think justice is something to be used to make money.
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