Prisons and Punishment in the United States - Literature review Example

Name: Tutor: Title: Prisons and Punishment Institution: Date: Introduction In reaction to the remarkable raise in United States imprisonment rates and more modest rises in numerous other countries, social scientists have increasingly united with criminologists in an effort to explain the increase in this criminal strategy. Identifying that rates of crime alone cant explain the increase in imprisonments in several nations , researchers have surpassed simple criminology variables and are searching for broader social, cultural, historical and political explanations that might shed more light on the latest rise of punitive practices and policy. This paper looks at variations among lower and higher imprisoning countries such as United States of America , Scandinavian countries and New Zealand , imprisonment rates in these nations and socio-cultural, economic and political factors associated with imprisonment. Imprisonment and Culture According to Garland (2006), penal institutions have significant cultural elements and consequences and cultural factors are important in causal establishments that shape penal practices and policies. The sociology of punishment and crime is lining up itself with a rational trend that has happened across the social sciences and humanities; a cultural turn that appears altogether suitable in our image saturated, mass mediated, late modern globe. Garland (2001) notes that cultural phenomena is at the center stage and latest shifts in social organization of daily life have led to a novel collective experience of crime long a novel culture of control which is embodied and expressed in the operation of non-governmental and governmental actors. The notion of culture is utilized in explaining similarities or differences in punitive practices of diverse countries through demonstrating that the activities in question are as a result of particular framework of values of cultural traditions. According to Garland (2006), punishment is greatly embedded in cultural or national specifity of an atmosphere which generates it. Therefore, Scandinavian countries and Canada have a culture of tolerance that they use to develop penal policies and practices while United States and New Zealand uses national culture to develop its nationwide penal practices. Legal terms, criminological concepts and penal institutions that are moved from a single culture to another tend to transform their connotations and characters as they are entrenched in the novel cultural setting (Brown, 2009). According to Tonry (2004), culture has greatly influences crime rates and victimization of criminals. Cultural and social developments over the last thirty years have resulted to crime policies that portray early 21st century England and American. There has been democraticrization of victimization, implying that secular transformations like increased participation of females in workforce and ready accessibility of great-value consumer products as objects of robbery has made crime persecution more invasive over time (Brown, 2009). Crime and imprisonment rates in United States, Scandinavian countries and New Zealand New Zealand has a high rate of imprisonment compared to its comparators, Australia, Wales and England. According to Pratt (2006), the country has a less recognized history of excessive punitivenes and intolerance as its responses to unlawful behavior, as gauge by imprisonment rate. In 2005, with a prison populace of 7, 547, New Zealand’s imprisonment rate arrived 184 per 100,000 of the populace, placing the country as the second greatest amid OECD nations. In addition, there exists a novel cultural toxicity underlying this enormous rate of imprisonment. Fifty percent of prison populace is native Maori, although they constitute only fifteen percent of the populace. The high rate of imprisonment in New Zealand is contributed to high crime rate. The higher imprisonment rates are a continuing demonstration of the manner in which New Zealand as a welcoming and friendly country is exclusionary and punitive. For less crime or low level criminal activities along with more serious crimes, prison has become a sanction. The increase in imprisonment rate in New Zealand over the last decade is not as a reaction to rates of crime which have been reducing but as a means of offering uniformity and cohesion (Pratt, 2006). The imprisonment rate in Canada has not changed substantially since 1960, a stability that contrasts with increased rate of imprisonment experienced by the nation’s most noticeable compactors such as Wales, England and United States. The imprisonment rate in United States is the greatest in the globe. As of 2009, the rate of imprisonment was 743 per 100,000 of nationwide populace while in Canada, it was 117 per 100,000 (Michelle, 2010). These low imprisonment rates are evident because whilst Canada is demonstrated not to be invulnerable to demands for harsher policies and practices, it has been capable of balancing or countering these inclinations with other moderating forces. Canada citizens have been capable to escape numerous of the broader risk factors or forces at the root of grater imprisonment in other nations. Specific defensive factors of a cultural, structural and historical nature have restrained the level to which the country has adopted similar punitive guidelines documented in United States ((Doob & Webster, 2006). Scandinavian countries have low imprisonment rates and human prison conditions. These nations have a huge figure of small sized prison, usually with one hundred inmates or less. In 2006 there were 86 inmates in Sweden, 38 in Finland, 47 in Norway. The biggest prison in the area, in Sweden has approximately 350 prisoners. In regard to the widespread geographical regions of these nations, this kind of prison organization permits majority of inmates to be quite close to family and home. This is in line with Scandinavian prison management ethos which views punishment a simple loss of freedom. The enforcement of sentence is organized so that sentence is solely loss of freedom. Major prison services like health care are offered from communal facilities, other than prison service. All prisons in Scandinavian are operated by the state and social distances in these prison schemes are relatively short, permitting inmates to have a direct input into the governance of the prison (Pratt, 2008a). The roots of exceptionalism in Scandinavian countries are founded in the greatly egalitarian social structures and cultural values of these nations. This egalitarianism is institutionalized and entrenched in the social fabrics via development of Scandinavian welfare state. Scandinavian exceptionalism emerges from cultures of parity that subsisted in these countries which were then entrenched in their societal fabrics via the universalism of Scandivanian welfare state. This exceptionalism contributes to the low imprisonment rates and humane prison conditions because Scandinavian countries keep prison populace low in order to generate civic support for this action (Pratt, 2008b). In the context of United States, egalitarian tradition of this nation has led to the dynamic that has resulted to a lenience of more inhumane and degrading punishments in the country than in identical nations, the hallmark of US exceptionalism (Pratt, 2008b). This is because prison and imprisonments are political issues and thus come to civic attention. The government greatly views imprisonment as the best way of punishing criminals. According to Wacquant (2001), there is more imprisonment of blacks in United States because the country is using its criminal justice scheme as a tool for managing dishonored and disposed groups other than a tool for countering crime and punishing criminals. The United States prison is viewed as a peculiar institution that shoulders the activity of confining and dishonoring African Americans, beside slavery and ghetto. The latest rise in black imprisonment is due to crisis of ghetto as a tool for class regulation and correlative requirement for an alternative tool for repression of low class African Americans. In addition, it plays a crucial role in re-establishing of race, the redescription of citizenry through the creation of a recialized civic culture of denigration of offenders and creation of a post Keynesian state which reinstates social welfare management of poverty through its punitive punishment (Wacquant, 2001). The contributors to the huge rates of imprisonment in the US is connected to the cultural analysis of significance of political manipulation in selection of the risks that must be robustly regulated; the links amid neo-liberal policies and aggressive control and punishment policies as well as the race waged via presumed crime regulation policies (Hudson, 2002). Role of political and economic factors in development of penal policies and practices The political economy greatly determines imprisonment rates in different countries. Neo-liberal countries like New Zealand and United States have greater rates of imprisonment than social democracies such as Finland and Sweden because neo-liberal states are most punitive. Neo-liberalism is criminogenic, implying that the political economy causes greater crime rates, implying that there exist more law breakers to imprison. The inequality and individualism of neo-liberalistic United States and New Zealand reduces social cohesion, marginalizing and excluding several individuals, creating alienation and anomie that leads to increased crime. On the contrary, Scandinavian countries are more inclusive with cohesive communities which act as effective schemes of social control (Cavadino & Dignan, 2006). The connections of diverse forms of political economy with varying imprisonment rates is closely associated with cultural attitudes towards marginalized and deviant nationals, who are embodied within political economy. United States and New Zealand exclude individuals who do not succeed in economic marketplace as well as those who do not follow the law through imprisonment and through execution. Both forms of exclusion are connected with a greatly individualistic social ethos which makes these nations to implement the neo-liberal economy which consequently promotes the societal belief that people are exclusively responsible for taking care of themselves and crime is viewed as solely the obligation of the criminal (Cavadino, & Dignan, 2006). On the contrary, in social democratic nations like Sweden have a varying attitude towards deviant and failing citizen and they practice more social and economic policies that provide their nationals a greater level of safety against vicissitudes of the market forces, joining citizens to the nation through nationwide interest groups and making sure that citizens are provided with welfare benefits. Cavadino and Dignan (2006) argue that the communitarian ethos that generate these policies have a less individualistic outlook on the criminal, who is considered not as a segregated guilty individual who needs to be excluded and rejected from the law abiding individuals, but as a societal being who must still be embraced in the community but who needs resocialization and rehabilitation, which is an obligation of the whole community. According to Cavadino and Dignan (2006), the economic supremacy of American capitalism collaborates with the American cultural domination to make sure that United States has a considerable stability of payment excesses in penal practices and ideas. Center left politicians in New Zealand and Sweden have to a certain degree imitated tough United States’ tough measures on crime Tonry (2004) argues that there exists a brawny stream of moralist in the United States popular culture that displays itself within approaches of punitiveness towards criminals. Prisoners are treated as outlaws and treated inhumanely. They traditionally put on stigmatizing prisoner garb, are not permitted to vote while in prison and in some cases they are closely guarded and monitored by prison warders. Offenders are treated in stigmatizing, unsympathetic and debasing manners that in prehistoric period characterized the poor. The US has been at a phase in its series of intolerance towards crime that has made individuals particularly vulnerable to calls for punitive and repressive policies. The constitutional arrangement of America offer minute insulation from impact of these calls and there has been adoption of such policies. American moralism, displaying itself in punishment toward criminals, has generated receptiveness to calls for raising cruelty of penalties (Lacey, 2010). Conclusion Crime and imprisonment rates vary across different countries. Countries like United States and New Zealand have high rates of crime and imprisonment of offenders while Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway have low rates of crimes and imprisonment. These differences are attributed to the differences in socio-cultural, political and economic dimensions which shape the development of penal policies and practices used by these nations. References Brown, D, 2009, ‘Contemporary Comment. Searching for a Social Democratic Narrative in Criminal Justice’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice 20 (3), 453-456. Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J, 2006, ‘ Penal policy and political economy, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 6, 4 435-456. Garland , D, 2006, Concepts of culture in the sociology of punishment’, Theoretical Criminology, 10,4 419-447. Doob, A, & Webster, C, 2006, Countering Punitiveness: Understanding Stability in Canada's Imprisonment Rate Law and Society Review, 40, 325-368 Lacey, N, 2010, ‘American imprisonment in comparative perspective’, Daedalus, 139, 102-114 Hudson, B, 2002, Punishment and control , In Morgan, R, Reines, R, The oxford handbook of criminology, Routledge, .London Pratt, J (2008a) Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an Era of Penal Excess. Part1: the nature and roots of Scandinavian Exceptionalism British Journal of Criminology, 48, 119-137. Pratt, J (2008b) Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an Era of Penal Excess. Part2: Does Scandinavian Exceptionalism Have a Future?’ British Journal of Criminology 48, 275-292. Pratt, J, 2006, ‘The Dark Side of Paradise .Explaining New Zealand’s History of High Imprisonment’ , British Journal of Criminology, 46, 541–560 Tonry, M, 2004, ‘Why Aren’t German Penal Policies Harsher and Imprisonment rates Higher?’ German Law Journal, 5(10), 1187-1206. Wacquant, L, 2001, ‘Deadly Symbiosis: Where Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,’ Punishment and Society, 3, 95-134. Garland, D, 2001, The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Michelle, A, 2010, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The New Press, New York. Read More