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oboreads 's review for:
Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World
by Baz Dreisinger
Well-crafted analysis of prison systems all over the world. Baz highlights importance of restorative justice and mending broken relationships that have been caused by the incarceration system. Historical and economic forces have led the US to spread the culture of controlled punitive environments that are meant to reform; only all they bring is increased rates of mental illnesses, further isolations from the social order, and ruined lives. As she says, all one can do is learn more about the system and spread the word. Bit by bit we can change society and bring down large systems that are keeping thousands undernourished on a social, physical and emotional scale.
"Crime is disrespect and irresponsibility, goes the lesson. We don't need more punishment; we need to address broken relationships... Instead of asking, as traditional criminal justice does, what laws have been broken, who broke these laws and how we can punish those who broke them.. restorative justice asks altogether different questions. Who's been hurt? What are their needs? How can we meet those needs?"
From economist Glenn Loury, "our society - the society together we have made first tolerates crime - promoting conditions in our sprawling urban ghettoes, and then goes on to act out rituals of punishment against them as some awful form of human sacrifice."
"Arts-in-prison programs are potent agents of individual change, yes. But are they also in some way a distraction from the whole social order itself, from the powerful forces at play in the criminal justice system as a whole? They're smoke screens, obstructing our view of the big picture, which is that when it comes to justice and safety and humane treatment, prisons simply don't make sense. Big-picture change is not about tinkering with or enhancing what is, but conjuring up bold imaginings of what could be. For all that I love and believe in it, art can be an obstacle to such imaginings because of the very thing it does so well: dazzle us, and then distract us, with beauty."
"The only reason these boys aren't in the community, with their families, is because we as a society are risk-averse. But we'll never have a risk-free society. There's liable to be a crime tonight - there's nothing we can do about it. Risk is built into life. A life ruled by fear is not living. Fear builds prisons."
"Crime is disrespect and irresponsibility, goes the lesson. We don't need more punishment; we need to address broken relationships... Instead of asking, as traditional criminal justice does, what laws have been broken, who broke these laws and how we can punish those who broke them.. restorative justice asks altogether different questions. Who's been hurt? What are their needs? How can we meet those needs?"
From economist Glenn Loury, "our society - the society together we have made first tolerates crime - promoting conditions in our sprawling urban ghettoes, and then goes on to act out rituals of punishment against them as some awful form of human sacrifice."
"Arts-in-prison programs are potent agents of individual change, yes. But are they also in some way a distraction from the whole social order itself, from the powerful forces at play in the criminal justice system as a whole? They're smoke screens, obstructing our view of the big picture, which is that when it comes to justice and safety and humane treatment, prisons simply don't make sense. Big-picture change is not about tinkering with or enhancing what is, but conjuring up bold imaginings of what could be. For all that I love and believe in it, art can be an obstacle to such imaginings because of the very thing it does so well: dazzle us, and then distract us, with beauty."
"The only reason these boys aren't in the community, with their families, is because we as a society are risk-averse. But we'll never have a risk-free society. There's liable to be a crime tonight - there's nothing we can do about it. Risk is built into life. A life ruled by fear is not living. Fear builds prisons."