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example3.docx“Democracy and the Carceral State in America”. Gottschalk, 2014
PART ONE
Gottschalk defines the “carceral state” as the prison and jail system as well as any punishments that are imposed for state defined crimes. The author describes the desire to reach the American Dream as the glue that binds society together and says that the United States’ status as a “carceral state” inherently inhibits a large number of individuals (~7 million people, disproportionately affecting racial minorities) from reaching this dream, causing complete disenfranchisement. This disenfranchisement not only includes the individuals with criminal histories, but their children who have had their lives negatively impacted by this negative environment. The 2007 Great Recession caused budget cuts to the penal system that has created an optimism about the end of this carceral state, but Gottschalk says this optimism is largely unwarranted. The hope was that due to these budget cuts, the same number of individuals being incarcerated was no longer fiscally feasible, but there has been no clear indication that an end of the carceral state is near. The issue of a carceral state is not based on any fiscal details, but the political implications that surround it. Framing the issue of mass incarceration as a fiscal problem won’t cause any change, in fact, Gottschalk says that there’s no single factor that could dismantle the system because this isn’t a fiscal problem isn’t great enough for it to become a focus in the political system. Political issues such as the War on Drugs have gotten a greater spotlight than the mass incarceration, and this “war” has led to higher incarceration rates among commonly underfunded/underrepresented minorities. Gottschalk goes on to say that The United States will always view crime as a political issue because laws are essentially determined by what’s in the best interest of the state and of the society. To enact real change, the author looks at Finland as a case study. Finland focused their efforts on penal reform, especially on sentencing reform and successfully brought down their also very high incarceration rates. Gottschalk believes that if the goal is to end mass incarceration, then policymakers should stop focusing so heavily on the causes of crime and structural problems within the penal system and start focusing on the punishments for crimes that require jail/prison time.
PART TWO
I appreciate that Gottschalk used another country as an example when talking about how to lower incarceration rates because it shows what’s been effective for others. However, I think it would have been more effective to delve deeper into how exactly Finland enacted sentencing reform that brought down incarceration rates, especially when the author was trying to convince the reader that the focus of policymakers should be on sentencing.
PART THREE
1. Should the US focus on reworking what constitutes a crime or what the punishment for already defined crimes should be?
“What is Crime?”. Michalowski, 2016
Michalowski begins this reading with discussing his critiques of orthodox criminology. The first, he explains is that there’s a disconnect between harm and crime within the study of criminology. He later goes on to elaborate that just because an act is harmful does not mean that the same act is criminal (legalist constraint). The next critique is that because of anti-communism and the prominence of functionalism within society, there is less of a sociological analysis of laws. Third, he says there’s too great of a focus on the definitions of crime and it’s keeping the victims of these crimes from getting the necessary attention. Fourth, “anti criminology” (Cohen, 1988) emergencies lead to issues balancing the study of crime with other issues that emerge in society that may lead to crime. Last, the study of analogous social injury allows criminologists to learn that while some crimes are especially harmful, some social injustices that aren’t against the law are still more destructive. Michalowski presents two definitions of crime: 1. An act that a state has determined to be wrongful and requires punishment, and 2. An act that is not illegal but is shameful. Crime is usually determined by which acts in human behavior are considered devious. The powers of the state determine which of these acts should receive punishment and what those punishments should be. However, much of the time, these punishments are influenced by the socioeconomic status that most of the offenders of this crime hold. There is discussion about the constraints that hold back the study of criminology. The legalist constraint, as mentioned previously, corporate constraints, and professional constraints. The corporate constraint focuses on the social injuries resulting from corrupt (but not illegal) profits made by corporations, which, since not criminal, are not studied. Michalowski says that criminological analysis requires class analysis and uses white collar crime as an example of this. Violent crimes, such as rape or murder, and property crimes, such as arson or burglary, receive the bulk of the attention by criminologists, both because it’s the crimes that people most fear will happen to them and that they’re easier to spot. White collar crimes, like money laundering and embezzlement, can take years to be found and (usually) receive little to no attention. Michalowski sees the irony: white collar crimes are especially devious in that there is typically no personal connection with any of the victims of that crime and the crime was committed solely for malevolent purposes. Coincidentally, many of the individuals committing these less visible crimes are the ones controlling the system. The professional constraint discusses the hardships facing criminologists trying to hold a job: in order to stay mainstream in their studies, they have to study mainstream crimes and prisons which are disproportionately filled with lower income, underrepresented individuals. There is no criminology without crime and in order to define crime, an understanding of criminology is needed. Michalowski says the purpose of criminology is to analyze the forms of social injury that are monitored closely by the state with only some having punishments.
PART TWO
I agreed with the two definitions of crime presented in the reading. My issue came with the statement that in order to define crime, an understanding of the purpose of criminology is needed. Ethical crimes, such as lynching (as discussed in the reading), are merely misconduct in the eyes of the law but in my opinion, should still be included in the discussion of crime despite criminologists not studying it.
PART THREE
1. Should it be the role of policymakers or criminologists to delve deeper into the effects of ethical crimes?
