CRI491H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Angela Davis, Structural Inequality, Mercantilism
Document Summary
David garland intro/first chapter of punishment and modern society. Judicial punishment is not the transparent & rather self evidence institution of crime control that it is commonly taken to be. Punishment"s role in modern society is not at all obvious/well known we take punishment for granted. Punishment today is a deeply problematic & barely understood aspect of social life, the rationale for which is by no means clear. Why are prisons so dysfunctional failing in every sense of the word. Even if we take the objectives/aims as they are said to be still a failure. The institutions of punishment conveniently provide us w/ ready-made answers for questions which crime in society would otherwise evoke. Thinking inside the system, using the tools the system provides you constructs the ideas/answers you look for. Thinking that prisons are inevitable, necessary for society to function. We need to know what punishment is in order to think what it can & should be.
