JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 24, Number 3, 2004 Page: 529
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Mark Bracher
crime and that the harsher the punishment the greater the deterrence, we
have increased the shame and humiliation of offenders by incarcerating
them more frequently, giving them longer sentences, and subjecting them
to more dehumanizing and humiliating prison conditions. An index of the
counterproductive nature of this strategy is found in the fact that "our
imprisonment rates are five to ten times higher than those of any other
developed nation, and our death rates from murder are also five to ten
times higher" (24). The reason for this correlation is clear: punishment
causes violence, and it does so by increasing shame and humiliation
(116). The result of our emphasis on punishment is a vicious circle, which
Gilligan describes as follows:
On a day-to-day basis in the prison I saw the effects of punishment. The
more severely the prisoners were punished by the prison officers the more
violent they would become, and the more violent they became, the more
severely they would be punished, in an endless, mutually self-defeating
vicious circle that routinely culminated in the inmate's becoming so
enraged that he stopped caring whether he lived or died, as long as he could
get revenge on those he saw as tormenting him. (116)
The Cause of Counterproductive Violence-Prevention Strategies
Why are we pursuing counterproductive strategies and disdaining strat-
egies whose effectiveness in reducing violence has been demonstrated?
"We have relied on thej ails and prisons as our first defense against crime;
yet we still maintain the developed world's worst level of violence,"
Currie laments (37). Why? Why do we "spend incomparably more money
on police, prisons, punishments and criminal courts than we do on
providing the kinds of community services that have been demonstrated
to achieve equal reductions in criminal violence for one-fifth of the
price?" (Gilligan, Preventing 23). Why have we "systematically depleted
other public institutions in order to pay for our incarceration binge-a
self-defeating course that helps to insure that violent crime will remain
high despite ever more drastic efforts to contain it?" (Currie 37). Why,
when it comes to issues like education and poverty, do we decrease
funding on the principle that "throwing money at a problem" won't fix it,
but then throw more and more money into building and operating prisons,
which not only don't fix violence but actually make it worse?
Various plausible explanations have been offered for this self-
contradictory, self-defeating social policy. Currie identifies four factors:
(1) the failure of political leaders to engage the problem of violence in an529
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 24, Number 3, 2004, periodical, 2004; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28645/m1/21/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .