Many of the topics we are going over now are extremely interesting. There is a strong realization that to be able to help, or advocate, for someone it is important to understand how the system functions. While I feel that there is still much of the information I haven’t quite yet grasped, I feel confident enough that I could find the information if I needed to. People in the social work program, I feel, will greatly benefit from this class. I know that it is a subject that can be difficult to grasp, but I think everyone is benefiting from this class (even if they make it sound like they aren’t).
Reading about the prison system was a real eye opener. I know that with every business, government or non-government, you will see corruption. The depths of corruption are another matter. While reading the undercover story about the prison you begin to realize that if it is happening there, then chances are it is happening everywhere. Everyone, prisoner or not, should have basic rights. I know that prison isn’t a place that should be fun but programing benefits not only the prisoner but the entire staff at the prisons. The prisons, I feel, are just making more work for themselves when they deny prisoners an outlet. All prisons should have programing to let them expel some bottled up energy. Private prisons should not be making an obscene amount of money either. It seems that goes against every ethical standard that exists.
The problem with excessive police force is something that I think everyone knows about but is still too blind to see. Ferguson is a prime example. The system is flawed. I also still fail to see the logic behind their actions. I know that they were giving excessive citations to raise more money for the city. When you look at the total cost of housing (in jail) those who cannot make bail or pay their fines, and compare that to the potential income from their fines, the city isn’t coming out ahead are they? I feel like people who make the “rules” are not seeing the big picture; they see only potential dollar signs.
I do feel like I have a grasp on the problems that exist. I can see where the money is coming from for the array of programs offered by local, state, and federal programs. The waters are still a little murky on how the government functions. I can look at it on paper and still not fully understand it. I think that my generation, and especially the ones after me, find it overwhelming to think that they could change any of these laws or policies. I am especially guilty of that. This class has definitely expanded my knowledge on the subject of social welfare.
At the state level I am certain that you can participate in changing laws. Some of the bills in the Illinois State House this semester that our professional organization (NASW) is supporting are likely to pass, but if the students will let their State Representatives and State Senators know about those bills, and educate them about how those bills are beneficial, then I think that could make a significant difference.
The Justice Department’s report on how the police department was operating in Ferguson, Missouri will horrify any reader who cares about justice and human rights. I do wish more people would look at that report or any of the excellent summaries of it. Our society suffers from a continuing reliance on harsh penalties and prison sentences, and our prisons and jails are not working to rehabilitate prisoners. The monstrous activities described in the historical survey by George Ives seem to to reflect a set of continuing problems: one of these is the human nature tendency that makes people embrace a sadistic and righteous attitude toward punishment, sometimes directed at children, but nearly always directed at persons accused of (or found guilty of) crimes. The other problem is that people imagine a horrible “criminal” in which the deviance and criminality of a person become their defining features (no doubt some people we imprison deserve this stereotypical generalization, but it must surely be a small minority of the 2.2 million people we keep locked up). It’s a form of dehumanization we use to justify our penal system’s orientation toward punishment rather than rehabilitation. It seems to me similar to the dehumanization and sadistic glee some Americans have when they speak of “being tough on welfare cheats” and “immigrants” when in fact they mean (but would not say aloud or admit to themselves) that what they really detest are the poor and the sick and the people who are made “different” by their disabilities or limitations. There is a fear of failure in the souls of many people, and so the condemned prisoners and the “failures” in life (paupers) are a psychological threat to such persons, and I do believe a kind of terror (or lack of love, at least) animates their animosity. I’m not a member of any Christian congregation, but I’ve read the Bible, and it is clear to me that the moral teachings of Christianity require, demand, and insist upon charitable behavior towards prisoners.
I will quote my cousin in closing:
Built on the model of the deity of Darkness, we find the villain of the novels and plays, in which either the authors have not followed human nature’s strange and many-motived workings, or, as is much more probable, they have exaggerated for effect and contrast. Thus the conventional villain is of course utterly bad, loves sin for sweet sin’s sake with fine disinterestedness, and is consigned to utter damnation, to the intense and very natural satisfaction of the indignant audience, and the great credit of the play or story.
Next to what we may call the petty devil of the melodrama stands out the “Criminal” of popular imagination, who is largely the creation of people who generalised without knowledge and imagined without thought; and he is almost as much a scarecrow of the fancy as was that other most unpleasant individual the “Economic Man.” This quite imaginary sort of person, one who should or would go about always contriving crimes and villanies, if he were not “deterred” therefrom by the terrific penalties that were attached to them, all the grim working of which was to be kept before him by their infliction on detected people. And every crimson tragedy the Law set forth, and every consignment of its captives, though to a doom far worse than death itself, was always justified upon its day of doing, by one well-worn, all-extenuating plea: that though such sights were sad yet they were salutary, because “the criminal” was then looking on, and he would slink away and be deterred.
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