Nicholas K. Bading
Professor Aaron Kerley
English Composition 102
11 August 2011
Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Political activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis argues that the United States has a long history of abolitionist movements (i.e. against slavery, Jim Crow, segregation) and that prison abolition is the next logical step. Davis equates the current state of the penal system with modern slavery. She examines the racist and sexist policies at work within the American prison system and advocates alternative means of punishment such as restorative justice.
do Valle, Alice, Huang Vanessa, and Mari Spira. "The prison industrial complex: A deliberation." International Feminist Journal of Politics 8.1 (2006): 130-144. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Aug. 2011.
This round-table discussion takes a feminist approach to discussing the prison-industrial complex. The authors examine sexism in the prison system and its effects on society as a whole. They trace the origins of the prison-industrial complex and who benefits from the practice in the long-term.
Mahmood, Marcus. "Collateral Consequences of the Prison-Industrial Complex." Social Justice 31.1/2 (2004): 31-34. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Aug. 2011.
Mahmood examines the collateral consequences of the prison-industrial complex. He argues that while much research has been conducted about the history of the prison system, very little has been aimed toward evaluating the future results of the prison-industrial complex.
Mulch, Matthew. "Crime and Punishment in Private Prisons." Guild Practitioner 66.2 (2009): 70-94. Legal Collection. EBSCO. Web. 10 Aug. 2011.
Mulch’s paper examines the rising link between the prison system and private industry. He argues that moral standing of the United States is compromised when there is not a clear divide between punishment and profit.
Schlosser, Eric. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Eric Schlosser, the journalist and author responsible for Fast Food Nation, examines the American black market economy in three separate essays on marijuana, illegal immigration, and pornography. In his essay on marijuana, he explores how drug offenders are frequently given sentences that are as long or longer than those given to violent offenders.
Smith, Earl, and Angela J. Hattery. "African American Men and the Prison Industrial Complex." Western Journal of Black Studies 34.4 (2010): 387-398. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Aug. 2011.
Smith and Hattery discuss the effect of the prison-industrial complex on African-American men from a societal level, rather than an individual level. Specifically mentioned are the effects on the black community when thousands of African-American men are mass-incarcerated and when they return to their communities from prison.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Annotated Bibliographies
Cornell University has a good guide for creating annotated bibliographies. It offers a little more explanation than the Purdue page.
http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill28.htm
http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill28.htm
Literature Review
The prison system of the United States is the largest in the world. No other country has a higher percentage of its citizens incarcerated than the United States. The rapid expansion of the prison population began in the early 1980’s and coincided with President Reagan’s “war on drugs”. Since then, many prisons have become privatized, built and run by private corporations. In addition, most prisons contract prisoner labor to large manufacturing companies for profit, while paying them far less than minimum wage. This relationship between the penal system and private industry is known as the prison-industrial complex.
Most of the literature on the prison-industrial is written by authors who wish to reform the justice system. Angela Y. Davis, who is credited with coining the phrase “prison-industrial complex”, argues for the abolition of incarceration as the primary form of punitive justice in her 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete?. Matthew Mulch argues that the benefits of prison privatization are fleeting at best and advocates alternative forms of punishment, such as restorative justice in his 2009 paper, Crime and Punishment in Private Prisons. Smith and Hattery point out the racialized aspect of the prison-industrial complex in their 2010 essay, African American Men and the Prison Industrial Complex.
Other literature on the prison-industrial complex highlights the root causes of the prison problem in the United States. Erik Schlosser addresses the ways in which non-violent crimes are frequently punished as harshly as violent ones in his 2003 book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Schlosser is one of the scholars who, in addition to Angela Davis was instrumental in identifying the prison-industrial complex as one of the major problems in American society today. In The Prison Industrial Complex: A Deliberation, the authors argue that we must examine global capitalism and the economic and military dominance of U.S. politics to fully understand the root cause of the prison-industrial complex (do Valle, Hung, and Spira).
Most of the literature on the prison-industrial is written by authors who wish to reform the justice system. Angela Y. Davis, who is credited with coining the phrase “prison-industrial complex”, argues for the abolition of incarceration as the primary form of punitive justice in her 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete?. Matthew Mulch argues that the benefits of prison privatization are fleeting at best and advocates alternative forms of punishment, such as restorative justice in his 2009 paper, Crime and Punishment in Private Prisons. Smith and Hattery point out the racialized aspect of the prison-industrial complex in their 2010 essay, African American Men and the Prison Industrial Complex.
Other literature on the prison-industrial complex highlights the root causes of the prison problem in the United States. Erik Schlosser addresses the ways in which non-violent crimes are frequently punished as harshly as violent ones in his 2003 book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Schlosser is one of the scholars who, in addition to Angela Davis was instrumental in identifying the prison-industrial complex as one of the major problems in American society today. In The Prison Industrial Complex: A Deliberation, the authors argue that we must examine global capitalism and the economic and military dominance of U.S. politics to fully understand the root cause of the prison-industrial complex (do Valle, Hung, and Spira).
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
New Research Proposal
Okay, so just a few days into researching music piracy and I'm already sick of it. Wrote a new research proposal, here it is:
Beginning in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the incarcerated population of the United States spiraled out of control. According to the 2008 U.S. Census, there are now over two million people imprisoned in America’s penal system. A disproportionate majority of these prisoners are black and hispanic. Nearly 1% of all adult Americans are currently in prison, and the United States now has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. This spike in the prison population is not the result of a higher rate of crime, but of a higher rate of punishment. Nearly half of all inmate are imprisoned for non-violent or victimless crimes. Imprisonment is now profitable, thanks to what is known as the prison-industrial complex.
The prison industrial complex is made up of actors that benefit from the expansion of the prison system. Construction companies, companies that contract prison labor, lawyers, and surveillance technology firms all profit greatly from the penal system, and employ lobbyists to ensure that they will continue to benefit. By supporting public policy that keeps this country’s prisons full, these companies ensure that they will have a market for their product and a massive cheap labor force to build them. These groups are not interested in punishing crime and rehabilitating prisoners, but in turning a profit.
On average, prisoners are only paid around 40 cents an hour for their labor. Therefore it is far more profitable for corporations to contract prison labor than to hire employees from outside the prison system. Major companies that use incarcerated labor for manufacturing include Boeing, Microsoft, Dell, Texas Instruments and Motorola. In addition, many large retail stores use prisoners to stock their shelves at night, such as Toys R’ Us, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer. As long as these companies continue to profit from the inordinate amount of Americans being incarcerated, the prison industrial complex will continue to thrive.
There are nearly five times as many Americans behind bars as there were 30 years ago, and the incarceration rate continues to climb. Because most prisons do not focus their goals towards the rehabilitation of prisoners, nearly half become repeat offenders and end up incarcerated again. This huge rate of incarceration can wreak havoc on low-income communities and damages families. Our prison system and related policies must be reformed, otherwise the United States runs the risk of becoming a police state.
For further research I plan to use resources from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Critical Resistance (an anti-prison industrial complex group), and works by Eric Schlosser and Angela Davis. I intend to argue that the prison industrial complex is perhaps the most scathing social problem facing the United States today, and that lengthy reforms are needed to establish a just and effective prison system. I will address various viewpoints on the issue, such as prison abolitionism as well as “tough on crime” arguments that are in favor of the current penal system. I hope to prove that prison reform is now essential to our society.
Beginning in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the incarcerated population of the United States spiraled out of control. According to the 2008 U.S. Census, there are now over two million people imprisoned in America’s penal system. A disproportionate majority of these prisoners are black and hispanic. Nearly 1% of all adult Americans are currently in prison, and the United States now has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. This spike in the prison population is not the result of a higher rate of crime, but of a higher rate of punishment. Nearly half of all inmate are imprisoned for non-violent or victimless crimes. Imprisonment is now profitable, thanks to what is known as the prison-industrial complex.
The prison industrial complex is made up of actors that benefit from the expansion of the prison system. Construction companies, companies that contract prison labor, lawyers, and surveillance technology firms all profit greatly from the penal system, and employ lobbyists to ensure that they will continue to benefit. By supporting public policy that keeps this country’s prisons full, these companies ensure that they will have a market for their product and a massive cheap labor force to build them. These groups are not interested in punishing crime and rehabilitating prisoners, but in turning a profit.
On average, prisoners are only paid around 40 cents an hour for their labor. Therefore it is far more profitable for corporations to contract prison labor than to hire employees from outside the prison system. Major companies that use incarcerated labor for manufacturing include Boeing, Microsoft, Dell, Texas Instruments and Motorola. In addition, many large retail stores use prisoners to stock their shelves at night, such as Toys R’ Us, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer. As long as these companies continue to profit from the inordinate amount of Americans being incarcerated, the prison industrial complex will continue to thrive.
There are nearly five times as many Americans behind bars as there were 30 years ago, and the incarceration rate continues to climb. Because most prisons do not focus their goals towards the rehabilitation of prisoners, nearly half become repeat offenders and end up incarcerated again. This huge rate of incarceration can wreak havoc on low-income communities and damages families. Our prison system and related policies must be reformed, otherwise the United States runs the risk of becoming a police state.
For further research I plan to use resources from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Critical Resistance (an anti-prison industrial complex group), and works by Eric Schlosser and Angela Davis. I intend to argue that the prison industrial complex is perhaps the most scathing social problem facing the United States today, and that lengthy reforms are needed to establish a just and effective prison system. I will address various viewpoints on the issue, such as prison abolitionism as well as “tough on crime” arguments that are in favor of the current penal system. I hope to prove that prison reform is now essential to our society.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Research Proposal
In today’s digital age, music piracy is a controversial issue. Millions of people the world over are obtaining their music illegally over online file-sharing networks like The Pirate Bay and Demonoid. When the file-sharing service Napster was founded in 1999, the RIAA and the largest record labels in the world (EMI, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, BMG Music, and Warner Music Group) went on a witch hunt against music pirates, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against Napster and its users. Digital piracy is the most prevalent form of music piracy in history, but it is not the first.
In the 1990’s, the advent of the writable compact disc and the CD burner made copying music easier than ever. In the 1980’s, music industry officials were certain that home-taping with cassettes would spell the end of their business. Even further back, composers were certain that they would never turn a profit as long as orchestras were playing their music without first paying them royalties. And yet the music industry still stands. At this point in history, I believe it is time for major changes to take place in the way we acquire our music.
I intend to research the history and viewpoints on the controversial issue of music piracy. Their is a worldwide movement called the Pirate Parties International with officially recognized branches in Canada, France, the United Kingdom and many more whose aim is to reform copyright laws in favor of the consumer. I will argue that the music industry itself is the problem, not the music pirates. If music piracy does in fact destroy the music industry, then perhaps music will be changed for the better. If their is no longer a music industry, then the only people who would make music would be the ones who do it for their own fulfillment rather than for a profit.
In the 1990’s, the advent of the writable compact disc and the CD burner made copying music easier than ever. In the 1980’s, music industry officials were certain that home-taping with cassettes would spell the end of their business. Even further back, composers were certain that they would never turn a profit as long as orchestras were playing their music without first paying them royalties. And yet the music industry still stands. At this point in history, I believe it is time for major changes to take place in the way we acquire our music.
I intend to research the history and viewpoints on the controversial issue of music piracy. Their is a worldwide movement called the Pirate Parties International with officially recognized branches in Canada, France, the United Kingdom and many more whose aim is to reform copyright laws in favor of the consumer. I will argue that the music industry itself is the problem, not the music pirates. If music piracy does in fact destroy the music industry, then perhaps music will be changed for the better. If their is no longer a music industry, then the only people who would make music would be the ones who do it for their own fulfillment rather than for a profit.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Potential Areas of Research
1. An argument in favor of music piracy: According to industry professionals, music piracy threatens the future of the music industry. I would argue why this is a viable outcome and why this will be a positive change for music.
2. Research the rising disparity between the richest and poorest people in America. Argue for programs that better distribute wealth.
3. Research the history of net-neutrality issues. Argue against restrictions on internet access by major service providers.
4. Examine Disney movies. Are the messages that they promote detrimental to children?
5. Argue that the U.S. and Russia (the two largest nuclear powers) can be doing more to move towards nuclear disarmament.
2. Research the rising disparity between the richest and poorest people in America. Argue for programs that better distribute wealth.
3. Research the history of net-neutrality issues. Argue against restrictions on internet access by major service providers.
4. Examine Disney movies. Are the messages that they promote detrimental to children?
5. Argue that the U.S. and Russia (the two largest nuclear powers) can be doing more to move towards nuclear disarmament.
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