From the Panopticon to Disney World - Essay Example

The world reflects on American values and the features reflect a positive view of capitalist America. The world is equipped to handle large crowds and prevent potential trouble that may arise from constant instruction, physical barriers, and surveillance. Control strategies are entrenched in environmental features like fountains and structural relations like the employee's helpful nature, objects are aesthetics as well as functional. The result is the world can control its visitors while maximizing profits. The control is seen through physical coercion and threats to being deprived of the pleasures of the facility. Its power of control shows one is willing to tolerate harsh conditions if one thinks it is in their best interest. Discipline is when people are seduced into conforming to the pleasures offered to them and is a form of control (Garth 355-361).

The goal of a maximum security prison is to lock away the bad. There are those offenders that are mentally ill and the author seeks to address whether they should be made accountable for their activities while in a prison environment. There are various challenges faced by prisoners and prison staff, this is seen in the daily assertions of authority and resistance between the two. The prison staff will struggle to do their work without losing their souls and some of the prisoners will express their frustration by injuring themselves or human waste. There is always a disagreement between officers and psychiatrists on the mental health of prisoners. The closure of public psychiatric hospitals led to prisoners with mental health problems being taken to supermax units and this poses a problem. Isolation in these units sometimes makes the prisoners depressed and indifferent. The tight control imposed on the prisoners is then expressed through aggressive behavior towards authority (Garth 361-373). Read More