“Mass Incarceration Reform” In the poem, “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane”, the Etheridge Knight talks about an inmate who they call Hard Rock, who is “known not to take no shit / From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it” (Knight Lines 1-2). He has his battle scars to prove that he is the toughest guy in the hospital, and no one is brave enough to confront him on his behavior. “ Split purple lips, lumped ears, welts above/ His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut/ Across his temple and plowed through a thick/ Canopy of kinky hair” ( lines 3-6). The poem goes on to further explain the impact Hard Rock had on the patients at the hospital. As the patients looked up to him for a change, a new direction, …show more content…
The inmates that idolized him thought back to old memories of when Hard Rock was so big and bad, how he use to act, and how he would fight the system in a sense. When he was sent to the hole for “smacking the captain in the face with his dinner tray,” it took exactly eight screws to keep him under control to be placed in the hole (Knight, lines 16-18). Another memory, “the jewel of a myth,” was when Hard Rock bit a “screw on thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit” (lines 21-22). After he was released, his behavior was not as hostile as it once was: wild and free. He became more so compliant in a sense. The frequent episodes of Hard Rock lashing out at the screws and doctors suddenly came to a halt after his special procedure. Some of the inmates believed that he had wised up, but before long they could not continue fooling themselves (lines 31-32). “He had been our destroyer, the doer of things/ We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do, / The fears of years, like a biting whip, / Had cut grooves too deeply across our backs” (lines …show more content…
“Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind” (Rafay 354). They put in place systems and traps that African Americans fall for when they think that governments and the criminal justice system are helping when it is not, but rather it is enduring the success and growth of our people as a whole. These programs and systems are put in place to keep the blacks below the poverty line, and black men from every becoming successful, so that they will continuously fall back into their old habits and
The US Justice Department statistics 2003 and onwards demonstrates significant disproportion in the incarceration rate of minority African American and Hispanic men between the ages of 25 and 29 years as compared to the rate associated with White men of the same age. Bell (2007), proposes that as minority groups grow in numbers within the dominant group they will experience greater equality. However, rate of incarceration among minority males remains alarmingly high and as compared to their White counterparts. As with health care there are racial disparities that will influence outcomes when an individual is brought before the criminal courts. Additionally, there is significant correlation between a person’s level of education and the likelihood of his involvement in criminal activities. Studies and statistics have shown that among male high school dropouts there is high incidence of unemployment, low income and rate of illicit drug use as compared to men with degrees from four year colleges. Further to this, although the rate of school dropout and even arrest is not significantly different across the race lines, literature alludes that African American men have a higher rate of conviction for the same crime committed.
road-life and drug abuse. When he came out of the coma the Dead made a tribute
These are the individuals that never give the guards a break. The stereotype given to these individuals is that they are respected by the other inmates, however the reality is that they are looked down upon due to their disregard for the negotiations and compromises which comprise the social order of a prison (Lovell, 1998). While the ball busters are portrayed in a negative manner by many inmates, the real men are the most admired in the prison world (Lovell, 1998). The ball busters tend to disrupt the social order of the prison, the real men on the other had do their time without confronting their captors by not acknowledging them. According to Sykes “it is the man who can stop himself from striking back at the custodians that wins the admiration and thus their image of the hero functions wittingly or unwittingly to maintain the status quo” (Sykes,
Brian Conniff's article, "Psychological Accidents: In Cold Blood and Ritual Sacrifice," explains how Truman Capote's nonfiction novel demonstrates the psychological trauma that the murderers and the townspeople of Holcomb face after the murders of the Clutter family. Conniff begins his article by stating that in the last twenty-five years imprisonment and execution has reached an all-time high level of obsession among the American public. Since this type of violence has been so normalized it is rarely properly understood (1). With this in mind, prison literature has continually suggested that "the most fortified barriers are not the physical walls and fences between the prison, and the outside world; the most fortified barriers are the psychological walls between the preoccupations of everyday life . . .and the conscious realization that punishment is the most self-destructive kind of national addiction" (Conniff 1).
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
...system that has existed in the United States or anywhere else in the world” (Alexander 234). W.E.B. Dubois argued that “The burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs” (Alexander 217). Our nation must address this burden and correct that racial injustices created by our so-called criminal justice system. The criminal justice system cannot continue to hide behind the front of being a colorblind system - racial inequality and injustice must be challenged.
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001. In theory if this trend continues it is estimated that about 1 in 3 black males being born can be expected to spend time in prison and some point in his life. One in nine African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently incarcerated. Although the rate of imprisonment for women is considerably lower than males African American women are incarc...
Many would argue that the reason why the incarceration rate for African Americans is sustainably higher compared to white American is because of economic situations, and because of past arrest patterns. While it is true that the economic opportunity someone has will affect their decisions, this argument doesn’t fully explain the real reason of why the rates are higher. To fully understand the reason why one must look back on America’s history and how African Americans were treated. The past arrest patterns do not explain why the gap continues to increase, however it is clear that the past arrest patterns is more an indicator of institutional racism that exists in this country. One study found that African Americans believe the reason for the high incarceration rates is becau...
Alexander (2010) describes the New Jim Crow as a moment where society have already internalized the stereotypes of African American men as violent and more likely to commit crimes and where mass incarceration has been normalized – especially in poor areas– . That is, today is seen as normal that black parents are missing in their homes because they are in institutions of control (p.181). She also stresses American society denies racism when they assume the justice system works. Therefore, she claims that “mass incarceration is colorblind” (p.183). American society does not see the race biased within the institutions of control.
Chapman’s research shows evidence of 211 stabbings taking place in three years at one prison in Louisiana. Bloody riots, rape, robberies, and exhortation are just a few of the everyday occurrences that can be expected when entering a penitentiary.
In this critic, I will be analyzing and comparing two books. The first book is “A question of Freedom a Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison” by R. Dwayne Betts. The second book is “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing” by Ted Conover. In this comparison will first give a short summarization of both books. Second I will be answering the fallowing questions, what prisons are discussed? What types of prisoners are there- age, race, sex, level of crime? How current is the information? What are the conditions of the prisons? How are the prisoners treated? How are the guards and their viewpoints represented? How are the prisoners and their viewpoints represented? What forms of rehabilitation are there? What are the social relationships with other inmates? What opportunities are available to occupy prisoners? What point of view is the author taking – critical, Positive, does she/he write from the viewpoint of a guard, a prisoner? What evidence is/are the author’s points based on and how is the evidence presented - for example, first hand observations, Statistics? Also what changes, if any, are proposed or discussed by the author? How does the information in this book compare with what you’ve read in the text and articles and what you have observed on a class trip? Lastly what is your opinion of the information and viewpoint expressed in the book?
Living up to his name, Hard Rock is shown to have a hard demeanor and appearance. “Split purple lips, lumped ears, welts above/ His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut/ Across his temple and plowed through a thick/ Canopy of kinky hair” (lines 3-6). Knight presents Hard Rock as someone who has been abused often through the numerous thick scars on his face, as well as adding that he was “known not to take no shit” (line 1) to add to the imagery of Hard Rock having a tenacious
The bad has an obscure early history. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were childhood friends in 1951 at Dartford Maypole County Primary School. Jagger said, “I distinctly remember this conversation I had with Keith. We lived in the same block and I asked Keith what he wanted to do when he grew up. He said he wanted to be like Roy Rogers and play guitar. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the Roy Rogers bit, but the part about the guitar did interest me.” (Schlesinger, 15-16) The two boys were separated in the mid fifties because their families moved. However, Jagger and Richards were reunited in 1960 on a train in October. They shared a passion for R&B. Keith Richards said, “We started talking about Berry and people like that. I only had a few records at the time, but Mick had a fantastic collection, so we decided to get together and listen to them.” (Hayward, 10)
While Riff outpours his personal issues, he is pushed from Jet to Jet, each impersonating a figure with some role in youth management, symbolising the way troubled teens are treated by institutions. When mock-arrested by Tiger’s portrayal of a policeman, Riff implores ‘Deep down inside us there is good!’ (W&R dir.1961 min.1:04:31). The boys enact a journey in which Riff is taken to court, only to be ruled ‘psychologically disturbed’ (W&R dir.1961 min.1:05:25) and sent to a psychiatrist, only to be instructed to find ‘a useful career’ (W&R dir.1961 min.1:06:23) and sent to a social worker who at last decides Riff ‘needs a year in the pen’ (W&R dir.1961 min.1:07:26), declaring ‘deep down inside him he’s no good!’ This final lyric, which is then heartily taken up by the gang—‘We’re no good, we’re no earthly good[…] the best of us is no damn good’ (W&R dir.1961 min.1:07:35)—expresses to the audience that the boys misbehave because that is how they are expected to act by society. After being told so often that they’re bad, they cannot behave otherwise. ‘They believe everything they read in the papers about us cruddy JDs,’ says Riff, ‘so that’s what we give ‘em—somethin’ to believe in’ (W&R dir.1961
...ly makes for fresh conversation among inmates, at the same time truly violent acts remind the prisoners of the harsh realities of prison life.