Inside The Prison System

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Education is a fundamental human right. There is no way around the reality of this statement—it is what allows us, as humans, to grow, to mature, and to survive in the complex society of our own making. Without it, we risk stagnation and ruin, both of ourselves and of the world that we live in. Education is a fundamental human right. But, too often, members of American society are given labels that designate them as subhuman, as apart from the human experience. It happens, every day, in every state, at any given moment. And many Americans turn a blind eye to the issue at hand.
Inside the Prison System
In order to understand the full and complete scope of the impact that education has on the incarcerated, it is critical to understand the inner …show more content…
It is a label that removes the humanity from a system that seeks to better the human condition and causes immense psychological damage to those who it is applied to. The Stanford Prison experiment explored one aspect of this idea, how labels and disparate levels of power over another human being could radically shift behavior, and it is a situation that is apparent even in the modern prison system (Zimbardo, 1971). The massive difference in the balance of power between correctional officers and prisoners is an inherent part of the American prison system at large and it is one that only serves as a detriment to all of those who operate within the walls of a prison. By creating this distinction, it has resulted in an environment of incredibly high tension for all parties, one where all must be kept in a constant state of awareness—a state that I experienced even as a …show more content…
Not only are the identities of those who are incarcerated tied to a number, their individuality is quashed by the system through use of only their last names. They are bound to follow orders at all times or face serious reprimand in the form of write-ups and tickets, both of which can have an impact on their time while incarcerated. In figure 1, a sample schedule of the average prison routine for those in the North Carolina Department of Corrections demonstrates how strictly regimented the lives of the incarcerated
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