Week 14- Jail and justice

These past two days, we have been discussing jail and the injustices prisoners must deal with due to their "deviant" actions that brought them to jail. We watched Morgan Spurlock's show, 30 Days in Jail, which was a short documentary that filmed Spurlock in jail for a full thirty days with other criminals, mainly those penalized with drug convictions This show showed many different perspectives of jail, such as the normal cells with a large common area in the middle, a solitary confinement cell, and a nicer jail that led outside and offered programs to get over drug addictions. One thing understood from all these perspectives, however, was that you are trapped. You go into jail, are completely stripped of your rights and are trapped in a large room for days upon days. It is an awful thought to think that so many people in jail made one mistake that ultimately messed up their whole life unless they find some way to repair the damage they've done. However, as seen with George and Travis, two of Spurlock's cell mates, they had the intentions of leaving jail and repairing their life, finding a job and fixing things, but were then sent back to prison only a short while after they were initially released. The Virginia jail's west side, which had a program for drug and alcohol addicts could be beneficial if the inmates stayed in the program beginning to end or if all prisoners, especially in the US even had the opportunity to go to programs like that and it is a shame that many 'criminals' do not have the opportunity to receive the help they need.

This perspective of jail taught me great insight about society and the criminal//jail industry in general. One main thing I got from this is another emphasis on nurture and how those around you deeply affect you and how your life turns out. For example, if my parents were drug or alcohol addicts, I would most likely have a better chance of being involved in those things as well, because I would be constantly surrounded by it. George, for example, said that when he got out of jail, he was going to stop hanging with the wrong people, (ultimately those who would pressure him into falling back into the vicious cycle of jail-release-jail again), but I bet that he did not escape those negative influences, and therefore was sent back to jail. This was a very sociological topic discussed and it really opened my eyes to the ideas of justice and how deeply others affect you.