Here are some excerpts from five student papers this quarter. All of these student authors used different strategies to create a conversation between the authors who spoke about prison philosophies while at the same time creating analysis and interpretation that went beyond a comparison of claims. Consider some of these strategies in your upcoming graded papers (Assignment 2C and Assignment 3D). You will note that, although each of these examples could still be improved with revision -- even the best writing can be revised for the better -- these authors were nonetheless innovative in their interpretations and consistently remembered the golden rule of academic composition: always use grounding.
* Paper 2
Author 1: Ali Hadian
...Burger, in his “What is the Purpose of Prisons?” maintains that prisoners are victims of society, raised in poor conditions, with underprivileged or abusive parents, and are thus grown up to be dysfunctional parts of society, and that the only way to mend these broken pieces is by forcing them to work (23). He makes it “society’s moral obligation” to “fix” the broken people in our society through rehabilitative programs in prisons; thus, after having had time to heal in prisons, the formerly broken members of society can join the functional social unit and contribute to civilization (22, 23). By placing rehabilitative responsibility into society’s hand, Burger assumes that a safe environment, free from the clutches of criminals, is in society’s best interest, and that society will naturally be inclined to rehabilitate its existing criminals into law abiding denizens to preserve its overall security...
...Both Burger and Chinlund’s arguments are supported entirely by the assumption that prisoners, or people in general, are fixable in the long term (Chinlund 28). The long turnaround in rehabilitating prisoners, which takes as long as prison sentences to accomplish, would be a wasted effort if the prisoners continued to exhibit recidivism once they graduated the system. As such, some may insist that it is not possible to “teach an old dog new tricks,” as the old saying goes, while Burger and Chinlund firmly maintain that everyone is capable of changing for the better, including convicts. Were it not possible to rehabilitate prisoners, Burger and Chinlund’s suggestions for the prison system would be rendered completely useless.
Davis forthrightly discredits both Burger and Chinlund’s rehabilitative methods and pushes for the deinstitutionalization of prisons as racially controlling edifices in her “Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition.” She asserts that the United States’ national history played a huge fundamental role in forming society’s outlook on those it should punish; the role of slavery in the United States’ history has created an underlying tint of racism that reveals itself in the criminal prosecution of its citizens (41). She points at the disparaging statistics of the races of those currently incarcerated to justify her argument; while a minority of the United States’ population is black, the majority of prisoners in its prisons are of the black community (45). While Burger and Chinlund both rely on the assumption that society wants a safe environment and will thus choose to prosecute only criminals, Davis continues to cite that “only a small fraction of overall criminal activities are touched by the criminal justice system,” concluding that the reason a majority of prisoners are black is because society is inherently racist against black people and thus more inclined to punish them over criminals (45).
Davis’ proposition for the abolishment of prisons on the grounds of racism further demolishes Burger and Chinlund’s underlying assumption that convicts can change to become functional citizens. Because Davis’ model shows that most prisoners are innocent of committing crimes, there exists no capacity for rehabilitation and thus Burger and Chinlund’s arguments are shattered.
Burger and Chinlund carry their arguments on the basest assumption, that the criminal system we utilize to control our society is fair and just. Their models are suppositional to the validity of the body of Foucauldian texts; in a word, they are supported on reasoning that excludes “racial bias,” which, according to Davis, is a rampant problem in the prison system (Davis 38). While Davis considers racism an endearing facet of American history that has corrupted society’s view on criminal prosecution, Burger and Chinlund regard society as having matured past racism to the point where penal law is untouched by its influence.
Under the assumption, however, that Davis is wrong and racial profiling does not play a role in the prison system, Burger and Chinlund’s models provide two varying approaches to solving the same problem. While both authors are in favor of rehabilitative institutions built to repair and reintroduce formerly dysfunctional citizens into the flow of society, they differ in their exact methodologies. Burger would argue that warehousing is an inhumane punishment for the people of our society, and the appropriate method of correction should involve forcing inmates to work until they learn to change their behavior (22). Chinlund, however, realizes that forcing already disgruntled individuals to work might not be the most efficient method of rehabilitating criminals, and thus suggests a system where prisoners are punished through captivity but allowed the option of bettering themselves through labor (29). In their simplest forms, each author’s idea represents the three main ideological groupings of our society; while Burger’s model is reminiscent of a conservative view, in the sense that old fashioned hard work will put once troubled individuals on the right track in their lives, Chinlund upholds the moderate viewpoint by allowing inmates the option of participating in rehabilitative work instead of forcing them to engage in the program, and Davis’ abolitionist views represent a more radical take on the liberal views in our society. As such, the reasoning and methods being heralded by each of the three main ideological camps in society should be overlaid to model a prison system that adequately reflects society’s outlook on prisons and punishment.