Incarceration & Work Midterm

Foucault

- Punishment is about discipline and regulating society

-Power

-Panopticon: structure of prison where guards can always see prisoners. Always watched, cameras.

-LIMITATIONS: Focuses on one aspect and not others

Durkheim:

- Punishment is a moral process, a wrong was committed so we have to make it right.

- Reflects societys social norms and values.

- He was a functionlist.

-LIMITATION: hard to say everyone has the same moral values.

Marxist

- Punishment is used to keep class structure in place: class domination

-Punishment is hard and expensive for poor

LIMITATIONS: economics plays a role but its not a direct reason.

Elias

- Punishment must adapt to modern society. Cant be outdated.

- We used to tolerate hanging in town square but not anymore.

Relationship between poverty and incarceration

- cycle

- people with a criminal record make less income then people with no record. graph in class.

poor people cant:

- find good work with a record

- get good lawyer

-pay fines

-pay bail

- afford mental health treatment

3 types of fines

punitive, restitution (compensate victim), criminal legal system fees (book in, investigation)

Colonial History

England sent 50k of their criminals to the US, they were sentenced to hard labor. bad conditions.

Colonists did not like this but England loved it. Colonists didnt want these bad criminals to stay in their country have babies make a family. England loved it bc they left their country and were getting punished...

Core ideas of sociology of work

- work defines how people think of you. lawyer v janitor

- first thing they ask what u do for work

- work is their entire personality

- work relationships very important in peoples social life, ur friends maybe marriage

- work has their own culture of social norms, hazing

- there are informal rules

- managers v workers, big heriarchy.

3 perspectives of prison labor

punitive: you must be punished for what you did. forced labor. solitary confinement.

rehabilitative: gives prisoner a chance to rehabilitate. working, able to develop new skill reflect on life, earn wages to save money

transformative/restorative: laboring for a community that was harmed.

Khalil Gibran Muhammed's argument about the criminalization of Blackness.

- We dont need more studies, we need more policies. we already know theres a problem and issue of mistreatment of blacks by police or mass incarceration. dont make a study or task force about how much or why. elect officials to make a policy to change

Slavery to Convict Lease

Slavery destroyed the economy of the south bc they were laborers for free.

Loophole in 13th amendment: abolished slavery except for use of punishment.

- States leased prisoners to private companies. no worries about labor disputes

Black Codes: blacks signed a labor contract with a white employer. listen to them. Explicitly racial. this was bridge between slavery and convict leasing.

Documentary

- blacks were getting land and whites saw that as competition

- black labor was awesome for companies bc they make sm profit. - would legit just arrest people for bs stuff so they can work. arrests increase in cotton season

- convicts were worked to death bc they can j get a new one

- Gray area of law: no statute of punishment for slavery.

early labor history of US prisons after the american revolution

quartering in town square

Why was convict lease system so profitable?

gov/priv companies were able to pay these criminal workers so little. cheap labor

- no employment benefits, union, insurance. saves money on work benefits.

the drug war