If you're still having trouble as you revise Assignment 1E in organizing a conversation between authors that delves deeply into analysis, look at the approach these two authors took. NOTE: These papers are using a set of different authors (Burger is the same, but students last quarter read through a different essay from Angela Davis and a third essay by someone who's not in this quarter's reader, Francis T. Murphy). Pay particular attention to how each author grounded any interpretation they did. This is one of the big things I'm pushing in conferences this week: to always make sure that your analysis or interpretation is backed up by evidence.
Paper 2
Paper 1: Solutions to Flaws in Prison System for a Defined Inmate
by Emily Wu
Warren E. Burger, Francis T. Murphy, and Angela Y. Davis, each have their distinct constructed image of a criminal. By defining how these inmates landed in prisons in the first place, they pinpoint the flaws in the current prisons, and propose solutions to how correctional system should serve the inmates. Despite the different perspectives on the issue of criminals and imprisonment, they share the same objective of reforming for the good of our society. As we examine each author’s argument, we can see its strengths and weaknesses. Their ideas of the criminal shape what they perceive as the problem in the correctional system and establish different solutions they believe resourceful.
The three authors have their distinctive image of inmates, their motivation of committing crime or why they are sentenced to imprisonment. Both Burger and Davis believe their social background is the root cause. Burger describes the inmates as being “maladjusted.” By maladjusted, he means unable to cope with society due to lack of self-esteem, work ethics, and moral values. Due to these anti-social behavior, they are unable to respect and concern the rights of others (21); thus turning to crime. However, Davis would argue that most inmates did not commit any crime in the first place. They are subject to prison because their adverse social conditions are conveniently labeled as “crime.” By sending them to prisons, it “conveys the illusion of solving the problems” (46). Both Burger and Murphy would argue that inmates must have committed a crime to be sentenced. They had the objective and motivation to commit crimes. Burger claims that criminals commit crimes because they are at “battle with themselves,” (20) whether it is due to “too little discipline or too much; too little security or too much; broken homes or whatever.” (23) For Murphy, criminals violated the law because they lack moral values and chose to “challenge the conception of man’s moral responsibility.” (27)
Burger, Murphy and Davis identify unresolved problems and flaws in the correctional system. Burger asserts that our penal institution are becoming like “human warehouses,” where they waste away in confinement. Not only are these multi-billion dollar construction of prison programs costly, these expenses do not reduce crime, nor do they help inmates gain the necessary values to be reintegrated back into society. Describing how those sent to prisons are squirreled away to these penal infrastructures, Davis shares the same image of a warehouse-prison. They observe that prisons are a way of dismissing and ignoring the problems. Burger claims how “the prisoner and the problem are brushed under the rug.” (23) Similarly, Davis contends how prisons perform a “feat of magic” that “do not disappear problems, [but] they disappear human beings.” (46)
To explain the statistics of exceedingly double in the rate of crime, Murphy taking the other end, argues that crime rate has increased not because prisons do not destroy the cause of crime, but because the lost of morality in American values. Comparing to the 1800’s, Murphy claims that “moral passion has not declined; [i]t has disappeared.” (32) Warranting that American lost its moral values is contentious. He is measuring it out of proportion and out of time since moral values changed when culture is evolving. To evaluate contemporary culture in terms of 18th century’s philosophers is incomparable and not standardized.
Murphy believes the problem in the correctional system is the introduced-idea of what he reproaches as rehabilitation in prison system in addition to how they should be a place for punishment and deterrence. He believes that it is the “right idea in the wrong place” (26) because “penal policy is too narrow a platform” (27) for rehabilitation when prisons should punish. Punishment and rehabilitation cannot be integrated because one cannot be punished if we seek to “cure” them. He believes that criminals “must be atone for his crime – and have his sentence erased from his forehead.” (27) However, he believes that rehabilitation may be competent outside the prison setting. (27)
To go even further on the subject of problems in our prison system, Davis identifies the existence of a corrupted industrial complex. Evaluating on the numbers, she examines that more than seventy percent of the imprisoned populations are people of color. She contemptuously illustrate how prisons practice a bewildering method of disappearing “vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant and racially marginalized communities” (46) to “deliver up bodies” (47) for “parasitic seduction of capitalist profit.” (47) Davis speaks at the extreme claiming that inmates are not at all responsible for their crime. Burger, who does not see the “racist practice in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns,” (47) would point out that the greater percentages of inmates are people of color because their social condition puts them in a state of being the most vulnerable to crime. Murphy would argue similarly, that crime is at high numbers in that population because their situations led them to override moral values. Davis argues that people do not see this racist tactics in this industrial complex because it is “masked” (as she titles her argument) because of the known stereotypes that people of color are associated with crime. “Racialized assumptions of criminality” is how people are tricked into believing the efficacy of prisons and the working of this prison industrial complex.
By defining these inmates and how they came about being sentenced to prisons, each author has their idealistic role and purpose of prisons. Since Burger believes that inmates are “maladjusted,” the establishment of an educational system and placement in some sort of job would allow inmates to “earn and learn his way” to integrate back into society (22) with reduced recidivism. The education he is to receive would not only be vocational training, but basic skills of life such as reading, writing, arithmetic, work ethics, and moral values. Murphy would agree that a good judgment of moral values is what criminals are lacking and by gaining these values, they would not perform the criminal activity. However, he would not agree upon the idea of a rehabilitative correctional institution. As discussed earlier, he asserts that one cannot be punished while undergoing rehabilitation. Burger argues that it is society’s moral obligation to change the inmates before they return to society. Murphy believes it is this resulting promotion of lack of moral accountability that is the problem. Murphy, in response would argue that it instills a “sense of dependency, a seeking out of comfort and self-awareness, a flight from pain and personal responsibility.” (27) Criminals are then more prone to crime because they do not hold responsibility to their actions. Therefore, penal policy must act on “just punishment, the swift punishing of blameworthy behavior to the degree of the offender’s culpability” (27) to reaffirm moral accountability for criminals.
Davis would agree with Burger’s idea of “converting prisons into places of education and training” but not the proposal of “factories and shops for the production of goods” (23). It is this idea of placing inmates to work that forms this corrupted industrial complex. Furthermore, she does not see how it would help build self-esteem; but rather forms a “vicious cycle of punishment which only further impoverishes those who impoverishment is supposedly ‘solved’ by imprisonment” (50). Furthermore, factories would lead to self-profits for those running the imprisonment system. She proposes to eradicate prisons and establish programs such as subsidized housing for homeless, public education for the poor, drug rehabilitation programs for addicts, or affordable health care system. Davis argues the need for a social welfare, rather than social control. (49)
As we see the different perspective of each author’s view on crime and punishment, they focus on a single-sided issue. “Crime is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon reflecting the actions of diverse populations of people responding to wide range social, personal and situational events,” (20) whether it is social conditions, lack of morals, or conveniently-labeled crime. Having a defined inmate, they can point out the flaws in the correctional system that must be resolved. Each one of them came up with a solution, but only for their specific inmate under specific conditions. Therefore, “crime and punishment [do not] go hand in hand;” it only does if the crime is coordinated with the specific punishment. In Davis’ case, we are not speaking of crime, so punishment should not be factored in. Instead social welfare is the solution.