Sociology 2256A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: United Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Watch, Solitary Confinement

• School: Western University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: Sociology 2256A/B
• Professor: Laura Huey

Document Summary

Prisons prevent us from recognizing the social structures that lead to crime. It prevents us from recognizing the role racism and capitalism play within crime control. Most reforms: how to produce better prison system as opposed to how to eliminate social issues that lead to crime. Prison as industry serves two types of services. Level of imprisonment not largely dictated by levels of crime. Imprisonment impacted more by cultural and market characteristics, including history and geography, ie finland. After all, (cid:272)ri(cid:373)e rates are do(cid:449)(cid:374) (cid:449)hile i(cid:374)(cid:272)ar(cid:272)eratio(cid:374) rates gro(cid:449)(cid:863). Mass imprisonment and profits: generates profit, reproduces the conditions that lead to prison, deindustrialization of the economy. Big bucks: canadian corrections account for at least billion in annual expenditures, convicts and various critics often refer to this as the punishment industry. The war on drugs has been described as an unmitigated failure: emergence of a massive illicit market with an estimated annual value of billion(us)