Beware of the reformers, she says, for they have a vested interest (like Sol Chaneles in his Open Prison, KR, p. Not only are all of the above culpable but there are those - ""architects, researchers, professionals in half a dozen lines of endeavor"" - who feed off the prison establishment. (A fourth one, punishment, has virtually been dropped from the lexicon of the modern prison man, although this is the only objective that prison actually achieves.)"" But mainly what disconcerts is Mitford's total understanding of what is wrong. What is it, then, that gives Mitford's analysis of this terrible situation its gritty pungency - its power to outrage? Contrasting the Oswalds (Lee Harvey and Russell of Attica) helps - the former allegedly killed one, the latter ordered 43 deaths the accusatory tone contributes - ""To their keepers, they are a sort of subspecies of the human race (admittedly, Mitford's pen is sharp) and the bald truth hurts - penologists say that prisons exist for three reasons: ""protection of the public by locking up the lawbreaker, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Yes, we have heard that censorship of inmates' reading matter and religious preferences is rampant yes, we know that criminal-type-spotting by behavioral predictionists is around the correctional corner yes, we realize that prisoners are monkeyed with by shrinks - Clockwork Orange fashion yes, cons are exploited as guinea pigs for medical research yes, they are used as slave labor for the state yes, they are robbed by the commissaries of their small earnings yes, we have been told that parole, far from being a boon, is a further chain to insure the convict's inability to rehabilitate yes, jail is hell yes, yes, yes. There is absolutely nothing here which has not been said elsewhere (a scattered elsewhere), as she herself tacitly acknowledges by extensive quotation from penal authorities and critics of all stripes. Jessica Mitford's American Way of Death riled up the funeral industry and now she's going to have the prison people on her back - in fact already does, due to excerpts from this book which have appeared in The Atlantic and McCalls.
0 kommentar(er)
