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Prioritarianism in Practice
by Matthew D. Adler Ole F. NorheimPrioritarianism is an ethical theory that gives extra weight to the well-being of the worse off. In contrast, dominant policy-evaluation methodologies, such as benefit-cost analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and utilitarianism, ignore or downplay issues of fair distribution. Based on a research group founded by the editors, this important book is the first to show how prioritarianism can be used to assess governmental policies and evaluate societal conditions. This book uses prioritarianism as a methodology to evaluate governmental policy across a variety of policy domains: taxation, health policy, risk regulation, education, climate policy, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also the first to demonstrate how prioritarianism improves on GDP as an indicator of a society's progress over time. Edited by two senior figures in the field with contributions from some of the world's leading economists, this volume bridges the gap from the theory of prioritarianism to its practical application.
Priorities For Geoint Research At The National Geospatial-intelligence Agency
by National Research Council of the National AcademiesThe National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) provides geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) to support national security, both as a national intelligence and a combat support agency. In the post-9/11 world, the need for faster and more accurate geospatial intelligence is increasing. GEOINT uses imagery and geospatial data and information to provide knowledge for planning, decisions, and action. For example, data from satellites, pilotless aircraft and ground sensors are integrated with maps and other intelligence data to provide location information on a potential target. This report defines 12 hard problems in geospatial science that NGA must resolve in order to evolve their capabilities to meet future needs. Many of the hard research problems are related to integration of data collected from an ever-growing variety of sensors and non-spatial data sources, and analysis of spatial data collected during a sequence of time (spatio-temporal data). The report also suggests promising approaches in geospatial science and related disciplines for meeting these challenges. The results of this study are intended to help NGA prioritize geospatial science research directions.
Prioritization Theory and Defensive Foreign Policy
by Hanna Samir KassabThis book studies systemic vulnerabilities and their impact on states and individual survival. The author theorizes that the structure of the international system is a product of the distribution of capabilities and vulnerabilities across states. States function or behave in terms of these systemic threats. The author examines a number of specific case-studies focusing on military, economic, environmental, political and cyber vulnerabilities, and how different states are impacted by them. Arguing that current attempts to securitize these vulnerabilities through defensive foreign policies are largely failing, the books makes the case for prioritizing economic development and human security.
Prioritizing Sustainability Education: A Comprehensive Approach
by Joan Armon Stephen Scoffham Chara ArmonPrioritizing Sustainability Education presents theory-to-practice essays and case studies by educators from six countries who elucidate dynamic approaches to sustainability education. Too often, students graduate with exploitative, consumer-driven orientations toward ecosystems and are unprepared to confront the urgent challenges presented by environmental degradation. Educators are prioritizing sustainability-oriented courses and programs that cultivate students’ knowledge, skills, and values and contextualize them within relational connections to local and global ecosystems. Little has yet been written, however, about the comprehensive sustainability education that educators are currently designing and implementing, often across or at the edges of disciplinary boundaries. The approaches described in this book expand beyond conventional emphases on developing students’ attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors by thinking and talking about ecosystems to additionally engaging students with ecosystems in sensory, affective, psychological, and cognitive dimensions, as well as imaginative, spiritual, or existential dimensions that guide environmental care and regeneration. This book supports educators and graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in the humanities, social sciences, environmental studies, environmental sciences, and professional programs in considering how to reorient their fields toward relational sustainability perspectives and practices.
Prioritizing the Environment in Urban Sustainability Planning: Policies and Practices of Canadian Cities (Sustainable Development Goals Series)
by Natasha Tang Kai Larry SwatukThis book examines the extent to which the environment is addressed in the sustainability plans of Canadian cities. It assesses if and to what extent select leading environmental priorities are addressed in the sustainability plans of sixteen Canadian cities, followed by analysis of efforts towards each priority. It scores and ranks cities against each environmental priority and highlights what makes some cities lead and others lag in environmental sustainability.The book unravels the complexity, similarities, and differences in environmental sustainability planning across major cities in Canada. The project reflects what’s working, who’s leading, and which environmental priorities support the sustainable city model. Climate change has exacerbated the impacts of flood, droughts, wildfire and storms, urban centers must account for sustainability to mitigate and adapt to a changing and uncertain landscape. It begins with robust and integrative sustainability plans that prioritize the environment. This book will make a timely contribution to the on-going debate regarding the ways and means to become a sustainable city. It reflects the on-going sustainable development discourse and deliberations to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. It cut across many SDGs in particular SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities. What makes this study unique is its special attention to environmental priorities within urban sustainability planning. This subject is topical and would appeal to both scholars and practitioners at local, regional, national, and global scales.
The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism
by Jack Knight James JohnsonWhy democracy is the best way of deciding how decisions should be madePragmatism and its consequences are central issues in American politics today, yet scholars rarely examine in detail the relationship between pragmatism and politics. In The Priority of Democracy, Jack Knight and James Johnson systematically explore the subject and make a strong case for adopting a pragmatist approach to democratic politics—and for giving priority to democracy in the process of selecting and reforming political institutions.What is the primary value of democracy? When should we make decisions democratically and when should we rely on markets? And when should we accept the decisions of unelected officials, such as judges or bureaucrats? Knight and Johnson explore how a commitment to pragmatism should affect our answers to such important questions. They conclude that democracy is a good way of determining how these kinds of decisions should be made—even if what the democratic process determines is that not all decisions should be made democratically. So, for example, the democratically elected U.S. Congress may legitimately remove monetary policy from democratic decision-making by putting it under the control of the Federal Reserve.Knight and Johnson argue that pragmatism offers an original and compelling justification of democracy in terms of the unique contributions democratic institutions can make to processes of institutional choice. This focus highlights the important role that democracy plays, not in achieving consensus or commonality, but rather in addressing conflicts. Indeed, Knight and Johnson suggest that democratic politics is perhaps best seen less as a way of reaching consensus or agreement than as a way of structuring the terms of persistent disagreement.
Priority of Needs?: An Informed Theory of Need-based Justice
by Bernhard Kittel Stefan TraubThis book develops an empirically informed normative theory of need-based justice, summarizing core findings of the DFG research group FOR2104 “Need-based Justice and Distributive Procedures”. In eleven chapters scholars from the fields of economics, political science, philosophy, psychology, and sociology cover the identification and rationale of needs, the recognition and legitimacy of needs, the dynamics and stability of procedures of distributions according to needs, and the consequences and sustainability of need-based distributions. These four areas are studied from the perspective of two mechanisms of need objectification, the social objectification by the discursive generation of mutual understanding (transparency) and the factual objectification by the transfer of decisions to uninvolved experts (expertise). The volume addresses academics in the fields of justice research, ethics, political theory, social choice and welfare, framing, individual and group decision making, inequality and redistribution, as well as advanced students in the contributing disciplines.
prisão exposta: prisão exposta
by Michael ObrienRévéler la dure vérité sur le système pénitentiaire britannique Tous les profits reviennent à la Fondation Dylan O'Brien... Michael O'Brien a passé onze ans en prison pour un crime qu'il n'a pas commis - le meurtre du marchand de journaux de Cardiff. Depuis que sa condamnation a été annulée en décembre 1999, Michael a travaillé sans relâche pour veiller à ce que les personnes reconnues coupables à tort de crimes soient libérées. Dans ce livre, il donne une analyse détaillée du système carcéral en racontant son temps passé en prison. Il raconte également les expériences vécues d'autres prisonniers. Il interroge des agents pénitentiaires et des agents de probation sur les bonnes pratiques. Il partage les pensées de politiciens, d'universitaires et de parties intéressées sur la nouvelle voie à suivre pour améliorer le système pénal. Michael conclue qu'il existe de nombreuses lacunes dans le système pénitentiaire et que la réforme des prisons devrait être l'objectif primordial de l'agenda politique actuel. Prix annuel 2013 Annual International People's Choice Award
Prisionero del sistema: Testimonios de un sobreviviente a la tortura y la injusticia carcelaria
by Rafael Méndez ValenzuelaLa historia de un joven que estuvo encarcelado injustamente desde sus 20 años hasta sus 33 y de cómo venció al sistema para quedar libre. En enero de 2008 Rafael Méndez Valenzuela fue detenido en el Estado de México. Agentes federales y militares lo obligaron a firmar una declaración en la que reconocía que formaba parte del grupo criminal La Familia. Tras 10 años en prisión, y al existir una denuncia por tortura, un tribunal federal ordenó la reposición del proceso para mantenerlo preso en lo que se investigaban los hechos, aun cuando el afectado ya había cumplido su sentencia en la cárcel. Ante la suma de injusticias, su madre, la periodista Judith Valenzuela, se acercó a distintas instancias judiciales y asociaciones de derechos humanos sin mayor éxito. Fue hasta que acudió a la conferencia mañanera presidencial, donde expuso el caso, que logró que López Obrador instara a la Secretaría deGobernación y a la Suprema Corte de Justicia a revisar el caso para que Rafael por fin fuera liberado. Con una prosa contundente que quita el aliento, Prisionero del sistema es el relato de la lucha de Rafael y su madre en contra de un sistema jurídico podrido, anacrónico. A lo largo de sus páginas descubrimos cómo la impartición de justicia en México somete a personas arbitrariamente y facilita la ilegalidad y la degradación humana de todos los que la integran: agentes policiacos, militares, ministerios públicos, jueces, gobernantes y sobre todo presos inocentes que pocas veces logran salir del infierno para rehacer su vida. Palabras de la crítica «Rafael nos lleva de la mano, a veces con susurros, a veces con gritos de desesperanza, por los vericuetos del aparato judicial mexicano, al que expone y desnuda hasta la vergüenza. Es la voz de cientos, tal vez miles, de presos que no han tenido la oportunidad de contar sus casos de injusticia.» -Jesús Lemus l
The Prism of Human Rights: Seeking Justice amid Gender Violence in Rural Ecuador
by Karin FriedericGender violence has been at the forefront of women’s human rights struggles for decades, shaping political movements and NGO and government programs related to women’s empowerment, community development, and public health. Drawing on over twenty years of research and activism in rural Ecuador, Karin Friederic provides a remarkably intimate view of what these rights-based programs actually achieve over the long term. The Prism of Human Rights brings us into the lives of women, men, and children who find themselves entangled in intimate partner violence, structural violence, political economic change, and a global cultural project in which “rights” are associated with modernity, development, and democratic states. She details the multiple forms of violence that rural women experience; shows the diverse ways they make sense of, endure, and combat this violence; and helps us understand how people are grappling with new ideas of gender, rights, and even of violence itself. Ultimately, Friederic demonstrates that rights-based interventions provide important openings for women seeking a life free of violence, but they also unwittingly expose “liberated” women to more extreme dynamics of structural violence. Thus, these interventions often reduce women’s room to maneuver and encourage communities to hide violence in order to appear “modern” and “developed.” This analysis of human rights in practice is essential for anyone seeking to promote justice in a culturally responsible manner, and for anyone who hopes to understand how the globalization of rights, legal institutions, and moral visions is transforming distant locales and often perpetuating violence in the process.
The Prism of Just War: Asian and Western Perspectives on the Legitimate Use of Military Force (Justice, International Law and Global Security)
by Howard M. HenselThrough a careful examination of religious and philosophical literature, the contributors to the volume analyze, compare and assess diverse Western, Islamic, Hindu and East Asian perspectives concerning the appropriate criteria that should govern the decision to resort to the use of armed force and, once that decision is made, what constraints should govern the actual conduct of military operations. In doing so, the volume promotes a better understanding of the various ways in which diverse peoples and societies within the global community approach the question of what constitutes the legitimate use of military force as an instrument of policy in the resolution of conflicts.
The Prism of Race: The Politics and Ideology of Affirmative Action in Brazil
by David LehmannBrazil has developed a distinctive response to the injustices inflicted by the country’s race relations regime. Despite the mixed racial background of most Brazilians, the state recognizes people’s racial classification according to a simple official scheme in which those self-assigned as black, together with “brown” and “indigenous” (preto-pardo-indigena), can qualify for specially allocated resources, most controversially quota places at public universities. Although this quota system has been somewhat successful, many other issues that disproportionately affect the country’s black population remain unresolved, and systemic policies to reduce structural inequality remain off the agenda. In The Prism of Race, David Lehmann explores, theoretically and practically, issues of race, the state, social movements, and civil society, and then goes beyond these themes to ask whether Brazilian politics will forever circumvent the severe problems facing the society by co-optation and by tinkering with unjust structures. Lehmann disrupts the paradigm of current scholarly thought on Brazil, placing affirmative action disputes in their political and class context, bringing back the concept of state corporatism, and questioning the strength and independence of Brazilian civil society.
The Prism Of Race
by Nico SlateA scholar of race and a leader in the Afro-Asian solidarity movement, Cedric Dover embodied the 20th-century cosmopolitan redefinition of racial identity. Tracing Dover's evolution through his relationships with W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson, this book tracks racial identity in the twentieth century.
Prisms of Prejudice: Mediating the Middle East from the United States
by Karin Gwinn WilkinsMedia do not reflect: media refract. In the United States, established and enduring prisms of prejudice about the projected "Middle East" are mediated through popular culture, broadcast news, government mission statements and official maps. This mediation serves to assert political boundaries and construct the United States as heroic against a villainous or victimized Middle East. These problematic maps and narratives are persistent over time and prevalent across genre, with clear consequences evidenced by the rise in discriminatory sentiments in the US population and experiences of harm in US Arab and Muslim communities. Exploring a wide range of media, Karin Gwinn Wilkins illuminates the shape and scope of these narratives and explores ways to counter these prisms of prejudice through informed and engaged strategic intervention in critical communication literacy.
Prisms of the People: Power & Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America (Chicago Studies In American Politics Ser.)
by Hahrie Han Elizabeth McKenna Michelle OyakawaGrassroots organizing and collective action have always been fundamental to American democracy but have been burgeoning since the 2016 election, as people struggle to make their voices heard in this moment of societal upheaval. Unfortunately much of that action has not had the kind of impact participants might want, especially among movements representing the poor and marginalized who often have the most at stake when it comes to rights and equality. Yet, some instances of collective action have succeeded. What’s the difference between a movement that wins victories for its constituents, and one that fails? What are the factors that make collective action powerful?Prisms of the People addresses those questions and more. Using data from six movement organizations—including a coalition that organized a 104-day protest in Phoenix in 2010 and another that helped restore voting rights to the formerly incarcerated in Virginia—Hahrie Han, Elizabeth McKenna, and Michelle Oyakawa show that the power of successful movements most often is rooted in their ability to act as “prisms of the people,” turning participation into political power just as prisms transform white light into rainbows. Understanding the organizational design choices that shape the people, their leaders, and their strategies can help us understand how grassroots groups achieve their goals. Linking strong scholarship to a deep understanding of the needs and outlook of activists, Prisms of the People is the perfect book for our moment—for understanding what’s happening and propelling it forward.
Prison and Social Death
by Joshua M. PriceThe United States imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation in the world. To be sentenced to prison is to face systematic violence, humiliation, and, perhaps worst of all, separation from family and community. It is, to borrow Orlando Patterson's term for the utter isolation of slavery, to suffer "social death." In Prison and Social Death, Joshua Price exposes the unexamined cost that prisoners pay while incarcerated and after release, drawing upon hundreds of often harrowing interviews conducted with people in prison, parolees, and their families. Price argues that the prison separates prisoners from desperately needed communities of support from parents, spouses, and children. Moreover, this isolation of people in prison renders them highly vulnerable to other forms of violence, including sexual violence. Price stresses that the violence they face goes beyond physical abuse by prison guards and it involves institutionalized forms of mistreatment, ranging from abysmally poor health care to routine practices that are arguably abusive, such as pat-downs, cavity searches, and the shackling of pregnant women. And social death does not end with prison. The condition is permanent, following people after they are released from prison. Finding housing, employment, receiving social welfare benefits, and regaining voting rights are all hindered by various legal and other hurdles. The mechanisms of social death, Price shows, are also informal and cultural. Ex-prisoners face numerous forms of distrust and are permanently stigmatized by other citizens around them. A compelling blend of solidarity, civil rights activism, and social research, Prison and Social Death offers a unique look at the American prison and the excessive and unnecessary damage it inflicts on prisoners and parolees.
The Prison before the Panopticon: Incarceration in Ancient and Modern Political Philosophy
by Jacob AbolafiaA pioneering history of incarceration in Western political thought.The prison as we know it is a relatively new institution, established on a large scale in Europe and the United States only during the Enlightenment. Ideas and arguments about penal incarceration, however, long predate its widespread acceptance as a practice. The Prison before the Panopticon argues that debates over imprisonment are as old as Western political philosophy itself. This groundbreaking study examines the role of the prison in the history of political thought, detailing the philosophy of incarceration as it developed from Demosthenes, Plato, and Philo to Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, and Jeremy Bentham.Jacob Abolafia emphasizes two major themes that reappear in philosophical writing about the prison. The first is the paradox of popular authorization. This is the problem of how to justify imprisonment in light of political and theoretical commitments to freedom and equality. The second theme is the promise of rehabilitation. Plato and his followers insist that imprisonment should reform the prisoner and have tried to explain in detail how incarceration could have that effect.While drawing on current historical scholarship to carefully situate each thinker in the culture and penal practices of his own time and place, Abolafia also reveals the surprisingly deep and persistent influence of classical antiquity on modern theories of crime and punishment. The Prison before the Panopticon is a valuable resource not only about the legitimacy of the prison in an age of mass incarceration but also about the philosophical justifications for penal alternatives like restorative justice.
The Prison-Industrial Complex & the Global Economy (PM Pamphlet)
by Linda Evans Eve GoldbergThe prison business in the US is not based on locking up, punishing, or rehabilitating dangerous hoodlums. Follow the money and find how the prison-industrial complex fits into the New World Order of free trade and imprisoned people, the war on drugs, and capital flight.
The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela
by Nelson Mandela Sahm Venter Zamaswazi Dlamini-Mandela<P><P>An unforgettable portrait of one of the most inspiring historical figures of the twentieth century, published on the centenary of his birth. <P><P>Arrested in 1962 as South Africa’s apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, forty-four-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next twenty-seven years in jail. <P><P>During his 10,052 days of incarceration, the future leader of South Africa wrote a multitude of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, to his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. <P><P>Now, 255 of these letters, many of which have never been published, provide exceptional insight into how Mandela maintained his inner spirits while living in almost complete isolation, and how he engaged with an outside world that became increasingly outraged by his plight. <P><P>Organized chronologically and divided by the four venues in which he was held as a sentenced prisoner, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela begins in Pretoria Local Prison, where Mandela was held following his 1962 trial. In 1964, Mandela was taken to Robben Island Prison, where a stark existence was lightened only by visits and letters from family. After eighteen years, Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, a large complex outside of Cape Town with beds and better food, but where he and four of his comrades were confined to a rooftop cell, apart from the rest of the prison population. Finally, Mandela was taken to Victor Verster Prison in 1988, where he was held until his release on February 11, 1990. With accompanying facsimiles of some of his actual letters, this landmark volume reveals how Mandela, a lawyer by training, advocated for prisoners’ human rights. It reveals him to be a loving father, who wrote to his daughter, “I sometimes wish science could invent miracles and make my daughter get her missing birthday cards and have the pleasure of knowing that her Pa loves her,” aware that photos and letters he sent had simply disappeared. <P><P>More painful still are the letters written in 1969, when Mandela—forbidden from attending the funerals of his mother and his son Thembi—was reduced to consoling family members through correspondence. Yet, what emerges most powerfully is Mandela’s unfaltering optimism: “Honour belongs to those who never forsake the truth even when things seem dark & grim, who try over and & over again, who are never discouraged by insults, humiliation & even defeat.” <P><P>Whether providing unwavering support to his also-imprisoned wife or outlining a human-rights philosophy that resonates today, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela reveals the heroism of a man who refused to compromise his moral values in the face of extraordinary punishment. <P><P>Ultimately, these letters position Mandela as one of the most inspiring figures of the twentieth century.
Prison Life: Pain, Resistance, and Purpose
by null Ian O'DonnellHow prisons around the world shape the social lives of their inhabitantsPrison Life offers a fresh appreciation of how people in prison organize their lives, drawing on case studies from Africa, Europe and the US. The book describes how order is maintained, how power is exercised, how days are spent, and how meaning is found in a variety of environments that all have the same function – incarceration – but discharge it very differently. It is based on an unusually diverse range of sources including photographs, drawings, court cases, official reports, memoirs, and site visits.Ian O’Donnell contrasts the soul-destroying isolation of the federal supermax in Florence, Colorado with the crowded conviviality of an Ethiopian prison where men and women cook their own meals, seek opportunities to generate an income, elect a leadership team, and live according to a code of conduct that they devised and enforce. He explores life on wings controlled by the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland’s H Blocks, where men who saw the actions that led to their incarceration as politically-motivated moved as one, in perpetual defiance of the authorities. He shows how prisoners in Texas took to the courts to overthrow a regime that allowed their routine subjugation by violent men known as building tenders, who had been selected by staff to supervise and discipline their peers.In each case study O’Donnell presents the life story of a man who was molded by, and in return molded, the institution that held him. This ensures that his reflections on law and policy as well as on theory and practice never lose sight of the human angle. Imprisonment is about pain after all, and pain is personal.
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
by Alexander Berkman Barry Pateman Jessica Moran"A book of rare power and beauty, majestic in its structure, filled with the truth of imagination and the truth of actuality, emphatic in its declarations and noble in its reach."-Bayard Boyesen, Mother Earth. "No other book discusses so frankly the criminal ways of the closed prison society."- Kenneth RexrothIn 1892, Alexander Berkman tried to assassinate Henry Clay Frick for the latter's role in violently suppressing the Homestead Steel Strike. Berkman's attempt was unsuccessful. Berkman spent the next fourteen years in Pennsylvania's Western Penitentiary. Upon release, he wrote what was to become a classic of prison literature, and a profound testament to human courage in the face of oppression.This new edition of his account of those years is introduced and fully annotated by Barry Pateman and Jessica Moran, both former associate editors of the Emma Goldman Papers at the University of California Berkeley. Their efforts make this the definitive version of Berkman's tale of his transformation within prison, his growing sympathy for those he'd considered social parasites, and the intimate relationships he developed with them. Also includes never-before-published facsimile reprints and transcriptions of the diary Berkman kept while he wrote this book, conveying the difficulties he had reliving his experiences.Alexander Berkman (1870-1936) was a leading writer and militant in the anarchist movement and author of the classic primer What is Anarchism?Barry Pateman was associate editor of Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, and editor of Chomsky on Anarchism. He is a historian and member of the Kate Sharpley Library collective.Jessica Moran, was an assistant editor of Emma Goldman: A Documentary History. She is a member of the Kate Sharpley Library collective and is an archivist currently living and working in New Zealand.
Prison Narratives from Boethius to Zana
by Philip Edward PhillipsPrison Narratives from Boethius to Zana critically examines selected works of writers, from the sixth century to the twenty-first century, who were imprisoned for their beliefs. Chapters explore figures' lives, provide close analyses of their works, and offer contextualization of their prison writings.
Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor
by Paul Wright Tara HerivelFirst Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The Prison Notebooks
by Lorenzo Fusaro Jason XidiasAntonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is a remarkable work, not only because it was written in jail as the Italian Marxist thinker fell victim to political oppression in his home country, but also because it shows his impressive analytical ability. First published in 1948, 11 years after Gramsci’s death, Prison Notebooks ably demonstrates that the writer has an innate ability to understand the relationship between different parts of an argument. This is how Gramsci manages to analyze such wide-ranging topics – capitalism, economics and culture – to explain historical developments. He introduces the idea of “hegemony,” the means by which ruling classes in a society gain, keep hold of and manage their power, and, by carefully looking at how society operates, he reveals the manner in which the powerful deploy a combination of force and manipulation to convince most people that the existing social arrangement is logical and in their best interests – even when it isn’t. Gramsci shows exactly how the ruling class maintains power by influencing both political institutions like the courts and the police, and civil institutions, such as churches, family and schools. His powerful analysis led him to the conclusion that change can only take place in two ways, either through revolution or through a slow but constant struggle to transform the belief system of the ruling classes.
The Prison of Democracy: Race, Leavenworth, and the Culture of Law
by Sara M. BensonAt publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Built in the 1890s at the center of the nation, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was designed specifically to be a replica of the US Capitol Building. But why? The Prison of Democracy explains the political significance of a prison built to mimic one of America’s monuments to democracy. Locating Leavenworth in memory, history, and law, the prison geographically sits at the borders of Indian Territory (1825–1854) and Bleeding Kansas (1854–1864), both sites of contestation over slavery and freedom. Author Sara M. Benson argues that Leavenworth reshaped the design of punishment in America by gradually normalizing state-inflicted violence against citizens. Leavenworth’s peculiar architecture illustrates the real roots of mass incarceration—as an explicitly race- and nation-building system that has been ingrained in the very fabric of US history rather than as part of a recent post-war racial history. The book sheds light on the truth of the painful relationship between the carceral state and democracy in the US—a relationship that thrives to this day.