Mangy Parrot

Like Angela Davis, I believe that the prison system needs to be abolished. The prison system which is a significant part of punishment is incompetent and deeply flawed in the United States. Prison system reform needs immediate attention while abolition permanently will require time. Nietzsche’s theory of punishment explains how punishment come about in society and Davis’s critique of the prison system helps back my argument that the prison system needs to be abolished.

In, “The Caging of America”, by Adam Gopnik explains the problems in the in the American criminal justice system focusing more on the prison system. Some of the struggles that Gopnik states in his article are mass incarceration, crime rate, and judges giving long inappropriate sentencings to those with minor crimes. He demonstrates that inmates are getting treated poorly than helping them learn from their actions. Using facts and statistics, Gopnik makes his audience realize that there is an urgent need of change in the American prison system. The main idea of Gopnik’s article is that the prison system needs to improve its sentencing laws because prisons are getting over crowed. Gopnik’s argument is valid because there is a problem in the sentencing laws that has caused a malfunction in the prison system as a whole.

Corruption of justice in the prison system is relevant in Stephen Kings, novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The Cause of this corruption was the greed of the administrators, and the lasting effects it had on the prisoners mentally, physically, and emotionally.

The title of this book is called “Parrot in the Oven” and is an extended metaphor that means there is a parrot who is complaining about being “too hot” in the shade when he is actually in the oven. Meaning, Manny used to be ignorant, but he no longer is because of the events he went through. Victor Martinez, the author of “Parrot in the Oven” is a Bildungsroman because the character Manny grows up throughout the story by learning through racism, social hierarchy, seeing gang activity, and watching Eddie go down the wrong path. Manny will begin to realize that he wants to change his life around.

Some parts of the book highlight the social issue with incarceration while the other part there are political discussions of possible solutions to try and fix such a corrupted society.

When we think about prisons, jails, and courthouses, our minds are meant to draw a connection to cold, hard, justice and fair punishments for guilty and deserving parties. Yet, in our judicial and prison systems around the world, this idea is nowhere close to reality. From inhumane punishments, to mass incarceration, and “trapping” people in the system based on race or financial status, justice is far from being served.

In prisons today, rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation, and retribution are all elements that provide a justice to society. Prisons effectively do their part in seeing that one if not more of these elements are met and successfully done. If it were not for these elements, than what would a prison be good for? It is highly debated upon whether or not these elements are done properly. It is a fact that these are and a fact that throughout the remainder of time these will be a successful part of prison life.

In society, things are not as they seem at times. The criminal justice system was created to help deter crime and to punish those who break the law. Laws are put in place to be fair to all citizens. Your economic situation, gender, race should not become a factor for you to be given “due process”. Years have come and gone and the crime rates increases and decreases with the years. There have been many senseless killings and everyone has their point of view as to the causes. The focal point of this report will be the findings from the readings of, “The rich get richer and the poor get prison by Jeffery Reimer and Paul Livingston”. I will discuss the causes of the rise and fall of the many different types of crimes ; why the rise and fall of crime rates; what contribution has the criminal justice and or police system has contributed whether positive or negative; and lastly discuss which economic group ends up in prison and why.

Jimmy Santiago Baca is a winner of the International Prize for his work in, A Place to Stand. The making of a poet. He writes, “I had no money. There is no way I’m going to make bail” (Baca, 187). In some cases, prisoners are only locked up because they had to get appointed a defense attorney who convinced them to plead to the charges so they would not have to go to trial and risk getting an extended amount of time. District attorneys are elected by the citizens and those people want someone who is tough on crime. If the district attorney is not tough on crime, the people will not reelect him. This can lead to many innocent lives being wasted; For instance, some criminals will sit in a cell for decades for the smallest offense. However, if a prisoner attempts to plead not guilty and the case goes to a trial by jury and they do find him or her guilty, they will be sentenced to an even longer term. It is obvious that our justice system is unfair and against human morals and ethics. They are somehow “innocent until proven guilty” yet they cannot afford to prove themselves innocent. Not only is poverty a reason for the rising increase in the population of inmates, many lack the education needed to understand the law or what they are being accused of.

From the start the novel is laden with the pressures that the main characters are exposed to due to their social inequality, unlikeness in their heredity, dissimilarity in their most distinctive character traits, differences in their aspirations and inequality in their endowments, let alone the increasingly fierce opposition that the characters are facing from modern post-war bourgeois society.

Since so much of jail life happens far from the public’s view, changes in implications and policy of long assumed truisms are infrequently observed by those that are not openly affected by penal system.

In Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, Mr. Vincent, a slave-owning Creole, is an example of the racialized otherness in the novel. Because he is Creole, it is assumed that he has “moral flaws,” and even the narrator says he is “totally deficient” of reasoning (218). Unintentionally reflecting the bias of her time in Belinda, Maria Edgeworth portrays Mr. Vincent to be a morally deficient character simply because he is Creole, which results in his ruin.

Historia de una Escalera and Nada depict the realities of life under Franco very realistically. Though the characters themselves are fictional, their situations are very real. Both works highlight the harsh realities of poverty and classism. Andrea’s friendship with Ena and her experience at Pons’ party showcase the difference in quality of life between the rich and the poor in Spain. The rich characters have no idea what the life of the lower class is like. Pons and Ena both completely fail to understand what Andrea goes through daily. Ena even goes so far as to say she wishes she were poor like Andrea. Andrea describe her family’s apartment as a nightmarish hellscape, she spends most of her time on the verge of starvation, and hardly a day goes by without a violent incident taking place in her home. Because of this, Andrea attempts to completely separate herself from her family and her class; she spends most of her time at Ena’s and Guíxols’. She is happiest when she is with these people who often fail to understand her.

The criminal justice system views any crime as a crime committed against the state and places much emphasis on retribution and paying back to the community, through time, fines or community work. Historically punishment has been a very public affair, which was once a key aspect of the punishment process, through the use of the stocks, dunking chair, pillory, and hangman’s noose, although in today’s society punishment has become a lot more private (Newburn, 2007). However it has been argued that although the debt against the state has been paid, the victim of the crime has been left with no legal input to seek adequate retribution from the offender, leaving the victim perhaps feeling unsatisfied with the criminal justice process.

Pedro Paramo is a novel that cannot be fully understood without consideration of its rich cultural background. It is this Mexican background, which informs so much of the novel, providing the main conflict. The narrator of the tale remarks “some villages have the smell of misfortune” while describing the locale of Pedro Parámo, the small Mexican town of Comala where the story plays out on many levels (83). On the surface level, this story is merely about a tyranical man who ruins his hometown of Comala. But in reality he does much more than that, his presence detroys the town completely, driving everyone out and converting the town to a type of purgatory. This deeper harm that he causes, by damning the rest of his townsmen is the evil