Final Flashcards

1
Q

Weapons of Math Destruction

A
  • policing “nuisance” crimes is just a matter of being there–not reported to police otherwise
  • difference between crimes of poverty and massive financial crimes–but only one type gets policed (criminalization of poverty)
  • WMDs favor efficiency, the Constitution favors fairness
  • Amazon model for recidivism vs what actually happens
  • the actual “broken windows” study was based on community policing
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2
Q

Role of Punishment

A
  • philosophy of punishment (what ought to be) conflicts with sociology of control (what is really happening)
  • by what right do you punish? (Tolstoy)
  • gov is supposed to let us go around free of crime
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3
Q

Eastern State Penitentiary

A

1829-1970

  • embodiment of reformer ideals–had running water and central heating before White House
  • wanted to be ideal–go beyond punishment
  • middle of Philadelphia, and massive
  • each prisoner got private exercise yard and skylight
  • no slacking off–if in cell reading Bible or making craft
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4
Q

Auburn Prison

A
  • also considered penitentiary–but alternative model
  • confinement at night, work together during day (in silence)
  • effort to break sense of self
  • 10 hour workdays and chain gangs
  • state funded, but prisoners isolated so only recourse was God
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5
Q

Reductivist

A
  • utilitarian justification
  • good outcomes of punishment:
    1) Deterrence
    2) Reform & Rehabilitation
    3) Incapacitation (can’t commit crimes while locked up)
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6
Q

Retributivist

A
  • not concerned with future beneficial consequences

- goes back to code of Hammurabi–“eye for an eye”

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7
Q

“Just desserts”

A
  • in 1950s and 60s, penal system was part of robust welfare state (social engineering)
  • we don’t want to over-punish people–proportionality is very important
  • CONCERN: people who are marginalized actually get INCREASED punishment–not just at all
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8
Q

Current system:

A

Tension-filled synthesis

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9
Q

Durkheim

A

Social solidarity (structural functionalist)

  • “passion is the soul of punishment”
  • moral indignation is ritualized expression of social values
  • punishment is an affirmation of shared beliefs through dutiful outrage which constructs a public wrath
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10
Q

Nietzsche

A
  • “in punishment there is so much that is FESTIVE”
  • punishment gratifies cruel tendencies
  • “to witness suffering does one good; to inflict it, even more so”
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11
Q

Mead

A
  • emotional solidarity of aggression (caused by collective hostility toward offender–ex outside White House when SEAL team 6 killed Bin Laden)
  • often it is middle-class moral indignation which gets codified
  • courtroom degradation ceremony–ritualized destruction–define accused as enemy of all that is good
  • disconnect between declaration (media, public, news) and delivery (behind closed doors)
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12
Q

Marx

A

(political economy)

  • how is the status quo supported by punishment? (ex we don’t police white-collar crimes)
  • all about maintenance and reinforcement
    • punishment maps onto economic needs of an era (ex prison labor for industry, monetary fines in monetary economies)
    • “less eligibility”–prison makes one less eligible to make money for oneself, which is we do time (money/hr)
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13
Q

“less eligibility”

A

prison makes one less eligible to make money for oneself, which is we do time (money/hr)

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14
Q

Foucault

A
The "Great Incarcerations":
 - Thieves into prisons
 - Lunatics into asylums
 - Conscripts into barracks
 - Workers into factories
 - Children into school
We have a lack of imagination
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15
Q

Class and Incarceration

A
  • Class provides resources to overcome convictions–ex OJ Simpson could get an excellent lawyer, cash bail, and fly in a DNA expert
  • our criminal justice system (and prisons in particular) are positioned to respond to the crimes of lower-income people
  • also education–75% of state prison inmates did NOT graduate high school, and incarcerated people had 40% less income prior to incarceration
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16
Q

Race and Incarceration

A
  • little difference in violent crime across races
  • disadvantaged neighborhoods (female-headed households, low male economic opportunity, poor schools) experience higher crime rate REGARDLESS of race, but see substantial differences in arrest rates
    • National Youth Survey: 3:2 offending rates (African-American vs white), but 4:1 arrest rate–access to lawyers, overpricing, etc
  • though African-American youth do tend to do violent behavior longer (normally peaks at 17 and half that by 24)
  • longer time spent in poverty, higher consequences, because people are getting married, going to college, and getting jobs
  • no difference along race once stepping into adult roles, so labor opportunity is CRUCIAL
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17
Q

Poverty and Crime

A

4 Related Issues:

1) Pre-trial detainees–local jails hold far more people who can’t pay bail than have been convicted
2) Homelessness–significant increase in laws which criminalize behaviors relating to homelessness
- also if you’re homeless you’re 11x more likely to be incarcerated, and if you’ve been incarcerated you’re 10x more likely to be homeless
3) inability to pay fines–even though court-related fees have been ruled unconstitutional, the practice continues, because local govs receive a lot of revenue from fines
4) Income inequality–better predictor of crime rates than poverty–the greater the inequality, the more the crime

18
Q

“Addition by subtraction”

A
  • if we subtract problematic people, we make the community better–except that high incarceration destabilizes communities because it erodes “informal social controls”
  • social disorganization theory–high mobility is fertile for crime
  • Tallahassee study–neighborhoods with the highest levels of incarceration one year saw increased crime the next year
  • “double whammy”–lots of people removed, then return with few resources and little opportunity
  • incarceration DOES NOT cause crime–it causes circumstances which undermine the building blocks of public safety
19
Q

Building blocks of public safety

A

1) Human capital–some innate (ex privilege), some required (ex college education)
2) Social capital–your capacity to accomplish things (quality and potency of your interpersonal attachments)
3) Social networks–webs of connection through which social action occurs–potency of social capital depends on social networks (how much you have to spend depends on who you know)
4) Collective Efficacy–ability of an aggregate to achieve desired qualities of human life

Worst situation: low human & social capital, segregated together

20
Q

Parochial Controls

A

schools, church, workplace, community events, volunteer groups, neighborhood associations are parochial controls
- intermediary–between private social control (family) and public social control (state)
3 ways they add to public safety:
1) occupy free time (less time for antisocial behavior)
2) parental substitute
3) behavior influence (norms and expectations)

families who have had someone incarcerated tend to withdraw from parochial controls due to stigma

21
Q

Civil Death

A

Denial of rights via incarceration throughout history–“outlawry” in Germanic tribes, “infamy” in Athens
- civil death–lost right to inherit/bequeath property, enter into contracts, vote

also Instruments of Social Exclusion
- denied participation in welfare state

22
Q

Convict leasing system

A
  • only took convicts during busy times, didn’t pay medical expenses, and didn’t have to provide for whole families–just the labor
  • mortality rate in Mississippi was 9-16%
23
Q

Civil Rights Mvmt and Mass Incarceration

A

after all the advances of the Civil Rights movement–actually saw INCREASE in mass incarceration

24
Q

Rural prison sites

A
  • was supposed to be “you produce them, you house them”–in face of determined opposition (ex Las Madres in LA) and pull factors from communities that had lost extractive industry jobs, went to rural communities instead–“recession-proof industry”
25
Q

CA as a case study

A
  • 500% increase in prison population 1982-2000
  • 80% represented by state-appointed lawyer
  • “Golden Gulag”
  • since 1984–3 major new prisons at edge of small, rural, economically struggling towns
  • in 1982–incarceration was 2% of state budget, peaked in 2007 at 8%
  • 1976 Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act–rejected “rehabilitation” in favor of “punishment”
  • turned several misdemeanors into felonies
  • Street Terrorism Enforcement and Protection Act of 1986 (STEP Act)–alleged list of gang members adding time to sentences
26
Q

Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act

A

1986

  • arbitrary list of gang members which can add years to a conviction
  • state-level “3 strikes and you’re out” with no age/time/jurisdiction limit
  • “wobble”–prosecutors can turn misdemeanors into strikes
  • extra prosecutorial power to District Attorneys (who have to campaign on tough on crime)
  • massive switch from violent to drug crime
27
Q

Broken Windows Theory

A

FIND THIS–also we do remember–the study this was based on involved community policing–Rudy Giuliani and William Bratton in New York City
- co-creator: James Q. Wilson

28
Q

New Eugenics

A
  • only some residents of US are targeted–poor over rich, men over women, racial minority over white
  • issues with imago dei
  • remember history of eugenics:
    • Buck v Bell (1927)
    • miscegenation laws and forced sterilization
29
Q

Prophylactic Effects

A
  • pulled out of economic and reproductive market–3/5 of people in prison are African-American/Latinx
  • and no safety net for their kids
30
Q

Hyper vs Mass incarceration

A

3 Primary mechanisms:

1) wide-scale drug arrests
2) concentration of criminal justice enforcement by neighborhood/location
3) removal and incarceration of parents (over half of people in state facilities have children under 18)

31
Q

Rural incarceration and political representation

A
  • incarcerated people are counted in the census, despite the fact that in 48 of 50 states, you can’t vote while incarcerated
  • echoes of 3/5 Compromise–political representation and federal dollars
  • undermines One Person, One Vote
  • communities that win tend to be white, communities that lose tend to be racial minorities
32
Q

Prisons as sites of “dirty work”

A

“Dirty Work” is assigned to certain “agents” and disavowed by rest of society (who is complicit–but the less we know, the better)

  • Unconscious mandate–Everett Hughes and Germans who considered themselves “good people”, but didn’t want Jews around either
  • Hughes addressed his remarks to Americans in 1963
  • people working in prisons (even psychiatrists) are seen as second-tier
  • prisons have also become housing for people with mental illness
33
Q

COs as the other prisoners

A
  • guards do society’s dirty work–Hughes says that the public doesn’t want guards to be too nice
  • starting salaries are incredibly low
  • Rick Scott (FL) campaigned on promise to cut correctional budgets by 40%
  • ZERO guards grow up wanting to work in a prison
  • COs became “essential workers” in the pandemic, but didn’t think about them when they got infected
34
Q

Civilized Punishment

A
  • distasteful and disturbing events are removed from sight
  • Discipline & Punishment (Foucault)–prison is attempt to render bodies of prisoners docile and obedient–but other people believe we’re trying to hide people’s bodies
  • so a “civilized” prison is a hidden prison–part of the design feature, not just economic
  • Hughes–plausible deniability (“good people” don’t have to know)
35
Q

Native American Boarding Schools

A
  • 1891–Meryl Gates (Bureau of Indian Affairs)–army of schoolteachers and conquer barbarism one by one–gospel of love and gospel of work
  • miracle motif–(Divided by Faith–Christian Smith) conversion beats racism, person by person
  • Richard Henry Pratt–Carlisle Indian Industrial School–not racist, just environment–“it’s not racist, it’s about culture”
    • stamp out tribal identity
    • Pratt–expert propagandist–before/after photos
  • Francis Loupp–commissioner of Indian Affairs–“rich and indulgent government”
36
Q

Patriot Act

A
  • permits indefinite detention of people who are not US citizens without recourse
  • days after 9/11–352 people in custody–1200 by October, and then stopped reporting running tallies
37
Q

Immigration and Incarceration

A
  • rounding people up and incarcerating them has only been a thing since early 1980s
  • functionally prisoners, but worse off because not citizens–no right to court-appointed counsel, translator, or due process
  • punitive since 9/11–detention is one-size-fits-all, going after tiny technical violations, suspect holding time is 48 hours
38
Q

Iron Law of prison populations

A
  • have to address both flow and length of stay

- length of stay has doubled since 1972–more things count as felonies (23% of charges, now 75%)

39
Q

Efforts to Reduce prison populations

A

A) Repeal mandatory sentences (it doesn’t do deterrence, equality, or reduce discretion)
B) Reduce length of stay (earlier parole, dump truth in sentencing)
C) Other possible agenda items: reduce recidivism and reinvest criminal justice money into public goods

40
Q

Models of Disruption

A
  • Education as reparative justice–ex North Park Theological Seminary
  • Restorative justice community courts
    • because once a young adult is incarcerated->recidivism
  • Homeboy industries–actually works for former gang members because it offers other practical services