{"id":1983,"date":"2013-04-16T15:29:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T20:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/?p=1983"},"modified":"2014-07-21T09:41:27","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T14:41:27","slug":"ripple-effects-of-incarceration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/2013\/04\/16\/ripple-effects-of-incarceration\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripple Effects of Incarceration"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Below is a guest post by Marie E. Berry<\/a>, a Sociology PhD student at UCLA. \u00a0Marie studies the political engagement of women after mass violence. \u00a0In the post below, she suggests an activity to accompany Megan Comfort’s recent special feature.<\/p>\n

Who is affected when an individual goes to prison? Megan Comfort\u2019s recent special feature, \u201cRepercussions of Incarceration on Close Relationships,\u201d<\/a> is a powerful reminder of the wide-reaching impact of the U.S.\u2019s high incarceration rates on our society. This article would be an important addition to any class that tackles issues related the criminal justice system, class, race, or inequality in general. It could also be used in the context of an international human rights law class, especially as it references the ways different countries are tackling the issue of incarcerated mothers.<\/p>\n

Incarceration rates have increased at an astonishing pace over the past few decades. As Comfort notes, the number of people behind bars in the U.S. has jumped from approximately 380,000 in the mid-1970s to 2.2 million on any given day today. We don\u2019t yet have a way of assessing the full social effects of this, although we can begin to imagine some impacts given that just over one-half of all prisoners report that they are a parent to a child under 18 (Glaze and Muraschak 2010).<\/p>\n

The following exercise would be useful for two primary purposes: first, to help students comprehend the vast number of people who are affected when an individual goes to prison, and second, to begin a discussion what this means in the context of the class, racial, and regional inequalities that exist within the criminal justice system. This activity could be done individually and is written as such; however, it could also be done as a class with several volunteers completing the exercise on the white board.<\/p>\n

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  1. Imagine that each member of the class will be spending the following 3 years in prison.<\/li>\n
  2. Take out a blank sheet of paper, and start by placing your name at the center of the paper.<\/li>\n
  3. Draw one ring of \u201cripples.\u201d Within this ring, list the names of the people in your life that will be the most directly impacted by your absence. Think here about immediate family members, best friends, etc.<\/li>\n
  4. Think now about how your absence will affect each individual in this ripple, using what you learned in Comfort\u2019s article. \u00a0Specifically, think about the following questions:\n
      \n
    • Who would come visit you?<\/li>\n
    • What responsibilities do you currently have that will have to be adopted by someone else? (Financial responsibilities? Support obligations?)<\/li>\n
    • Which relationships will be strained by your absence?<\/li>\n
    • Using what you learned in Comfort\u2019s article, who in your life might go through a \u201csecondary prisonization\u201d?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Next, draw a second ring. \u00a0On this ripple, list the names of other people who will be directly affected by your absence. Think here about your employer, your classmates, your group of friends, etc.\n
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      • How will your absence affect each individual in this ripple?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
      • Outside of these ripples, try to list the names of everybody else you interact with on a regular basis. What impact will your absence have on these individuals?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

        While this activity doesn\u2019t fully assess the network of individuals whose lives are affected by the incarceration of a single individual, it will help students grasp the scope of our penal system\u2019s impact on our society. \u00a0It might also be helpful to note that this isn\u2019t a \u201cput yourself in someone else\u2019s shoes\u201d exercise, which might lead students to make assumptions about the reasons for their hypothetical \u201cimprisonment.\u201d Instead, it is a chance to begin to assess the interconnectedness of our society and thus the number of lives that are affected each time someone goes to prison.<\/p>\n

        It would then be good to follow this activity with some general discussion questions. \u00a0These could be discussed in small groups or as a class.<\/p>\n

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        1. This activity began to give us an idea of the vast number of people who would be affected if you were to go to prison. Now, let\u2019s consider these ripple effects in the context of what we know about the profiles of the US prison population. What are some of the family, community, and society level effects of incarceration rates, given that the people most likely to end up behind bars are extremely poor, African American, and live in areas of comparable disadvantage?<\/li>\n
        2. What does Lo\u00efc Wacquant mean when he\u00a0refers to the phenomenon of \u201chyperincarceration\u201d? In which ways does the US criminal justice system target policing and punishment policies \u201cfirst by class, second by race, and third by place\u201d?<\/li>\n
        3. Comfort describes how female visitors to the prison are often asked to change clothes, which they must find in a bin of discarded attire in the visitor\u2019s center. How does this restriction on the individuality and autonomy of the visitors parallel similar restrictions on the incarcerated population?\u00a0What impacts might this have on an individual\/family\/community\/etc.? How does this process reflect what Foucault described as a process of dismantling of the self?<\/li>\n
        4. How might incarceration continue to have ripple effects once an individual is released?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Below is a guest post by Marie E. Berry, a Sociology PhD student at UCLA. \u00a0Marie studies the political engagement of women after mass violence. \u00a0In the post below, she suggests an activity to accompany Megan Comfort’s recent special feature. Who is affected when an individual goes to prison? Megan Comfort\u2019s recent special feature, \u201cRepercussions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":334,"featured_media":1991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12898,144],"class_list":["post-1983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-incarceration","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/files\/2013\/04\/Ripples-by-raspberreh-via-flickr.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1983"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2226,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions\/2226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}