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I sat down today to write a blog about co topics that have been swiming around in my head pertaining to my research on solitary confinement/ prison reform etc. Then I came across this video. After watching this I feel physically sick. Is this really what our ‘culture’ has come down to? I don’t know the theoretical implications for what I just came across but I know that this Sh*t is disgusting! I understand that our culture is pretty sadistic and we love watching other people suffer but really? Have we stooped so low Fox can’t even come up with another reality TV show? There is really nothing they won’t touch.
This is a perfect example of the psycological effects of solitary. They suposedly given little food and little sleep. But these people KNEW they were getting out. And possibly with 50,000 to return to their families to. What does this say for how the United States treats its prisoners? The people incarcerated in California’s SHU prison system are arrested INDEFINATLEY! Most of the time their ‘good time’ that they have accumulated for good behavior and constructive activities is taken away. They are put in at the end of their sentence and they have no idea how long they will be kept in for with noone to recieve answers from. What about Due process or Habeus Corpus? How in the world could anyone muster up any kind of hope without any date of release?! Think about that! And without a window!
I’m sorry this blog isn’t very academic, but this video, Fox, our Judicial system and society actually sickens me. We are sooo money hungry. I actually feel really nausaus right now.
Here is a link to an article written on the Mother Jones website, a news site which often writes against solitary.
Stanford University psychologist Phil Zimbardo might classify Pham’s attitude as a rationalization. The professor emeritus is best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, wherein students were divided into two groups—guards and prisoners—and placed in a mock prison setup. Within days, the students were subsumed by their roles. The guards turned cruel and the prisoners suffered emotional breakdowns rather than walk away, as they were free to do. “They became prisoners,” Zimbardo recalls.
He hasn’t watched Solitary—the reality genre is distasteful in his view—but he was repelled by what I told him about it. “My sense is it’s a debasement of human nature, and it doesn’t matter if the process is a competition, a game show, or a war,” he says. Nor does Zimbardo buy Hiatt’s claim that Solitary has therapeutic value. “Is it therapeutic for me to shit on you?” counters the psychologist. “Well, yeah, because then you realize you’re not as prideful as you thought you were.”
“If I locked my dog in my car, people would notice and be all over it.” This is reality!!!