StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The discourse community of a jail is made up of several groups: the inmates, those who work within the facility as correctional officers and those, such as myself, who visit the inmates. …
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER93.7% of users find it useful
A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them"

A Dis Community - jail inmates and those who visit them The dis community of a jail is made up of several groups: the inmates, those who work within the facility as correctional officers and those, such as myself, who visit the inmates. A jail is one of the most interesting spaces to study discourse as it brings together diverse individuals who have little in common other than being convicted of a crime or knowing someone who has been convicted. As John Wideman (1995) put it in his seminal book, a person visiting a prison "is forced to become an inmate . . .

subject to the same sorts of humiliation and depersonalization . . . made to feel powerless, intimidated by the power of the state" (p.52). Yet this process of making visitors feel like prisoners paradoxically brings about a sense of community between visitor and inmate that might not otherwise exist. I visited my mother's boyfriend in prison for three years. He had been wrongly convicted and was in a state jail that seemed to attempt to make it very difficult for people to visit the prisoners in comfort.

First of all, the criminal background of the person visiting needed to be checked before you could be put on the prisoner's visitor list. In an ironic reversal from the normal of role of prisons, to enter on e as a visitor one could not have a criminal record. Yet at the same time, once you had been passed as non-criminal (or at least never having been convicted of a criminal offense) you were then searched quite extensively before being allowed in. The visitors were forced to wait for more than an hour in a quite depressing and dirty waiting-room.

The "discourse" that they took part in was one of silence at this point. Most people carefully ignored each other, as though ashamed of the fact that they were waiting to visit someone in prison. Again, the prison authorities had made the visitors take on the shame of their family members. Yet as we moved into the actual visiting area - a larger room with a series of tables, prisoners on one side, visitors on the other, there was a sense of community because of a shared experience. The inmates themselves had an intense form of community that is seldom seen in the outside world.

Prisoners would be in close day-to-day contact with one another for more hours than the closest family in free society. My mother's boyfriend shared a cell with another man and for more than twelve hours a day they were cooped up together in a space you couldn't fit a king-size mattress in. Prisoners know a level of 'intimacy' with one another, in the form of a lack of privacy for the most basic human functions and sleeping virtually in the same space, that few on the outside world understand.

As Jason Everett, a Texas inmate suggests in his blog (myspaceevererett, 2007), inmates do not even have the chance to cry alone: Inside was a card my babies had scribbled on for me and new pictures . . . that was the first time I cried . . . I couldn't help it . .. I cried right in front of everyone in my dorm.This closeness often leads to violence however. Part of the discourse that occurs among prisoners is one of raw and frightening power in which, as my mother's boyfriend said in an interview, "the biggest and toughest rule" (interview, 2007).

The men in prison are gathered together often because of their inability to communicate in a non-violent way on the outside, and are forced to communicate in incredibly close proximity with others on the inside. There are strict rules of behavior among inmates and a social hierarchy every bit as complex as that on the outside (Metress, 2001). Often, as Ross and Richards (2002) have suggested throughout their book, prisoners need to act as if they are capable of perhaps deadly violence in order to simply survive.

This tension is palpable within the prison why a person is visiting it. The prisoners seem to regard the prison as an enemy and one another as enemies. In turn, the correctional officers seem to dislike their jobs, regarding the prison, inmates and, to a certain extent at least, the visitors such as myself as enemies. These feelings of interlocking tensions, conflicts and outright hatred make a prison a rather terrifying, but very memorable discourse community. _________________________________________ Works CitedInterview with Inmate (anonymous for privacy reasons).

Undertaken by author, February, 2007. Metress, Phillips. Prison Etiquette: The Convict's Compendium of Useful Information. Southern Illionois UP, Chicago: 2001. Ross, Jeffrey. Richards, Stephen. Behind Bars: Surviving Prison. Alpha, New York: 2002. Wideman, John. Brother and Keepers. Vintage Books, New York: 1995. www.myspace.com/jason_everett

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them Essay”, n.d.)
A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them Essay. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1515676-a-discourse-community-jail-inmates-and-those-who-visit-themdiscourse
(A Discourse Community Jail Inmates and Those Who Visit Them Essay)
A Discourse Community Jail Inmates and Those Who Visit Them Essay. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1515676-a-discourse-community-jail-inmates-and-those-who-visit-themdiscourse.
“A Discourse Community Jail Inmates and Those Who Visit Them Essay”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1515676-a-discourse-community-jail-inmates-and-those-who-visit-themdiscourse.
  • Cited: 3 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them

Tim Burton and art

A visit of an astounding career that Tim… The accuracy with which the art career that Tim Burton has had can be dissected to fit in a form of a puzzle, which cultures take to progress from simpler to Tim Burton's controversial pieces in a myriad of forms of art add flair to the debatable position that the art culture continually gets attached to.... It therefor implies that something can be picked from an artist's work to depict the form of influential waves prevailing in form of culture that the people in the artist's community had....
10 Pages (2500 words) Research Paper

Understanding and Interpreting the Concept of Dark Tourism

Understanding and interpreting the concept of dark tourism remains limited despite the increasing academic attention directed towards the field, especially from a consumption viewpoint.... In other words, the current literature focuses mainly on supply of dark tourism; however,… This paper seeks to provide an evaluation of the dark tourism, and the associated consequences for consumers, policy makers, and managers based on a conceptual ‘genocide' The paper further proposes a dark tourism consumption model within a thanatological framework as the foundation for further empirical and theoretical interpretation and analysis of dark tourism (DeSpelder and Strickland, 2002:97)....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Drug Treatment in Criminal Justice System

Drug possession is meant to curb those who possess the drug for onward transmission to the users or those who are holding the same before they use.... Drugs fall into different categories with some being useful in the maintenance of good health by individuals, but some causing more… The drugs that cause more harm, and those that are taken without any particular illness or prescription are as psychoactive drugs, and they are ingested so as to alter the functioning of the brain....
14 Pages (3500 words) Essay

The Impact That Cross-Cultural Communication Has on Business

97) observed that the management team from a foreign parent company must seek to understand that the local workforce especially those from the host country, may require different organization structure and Human resource practices.... Such diversity demands therefore an international human resource management approach which will take into consideration of the differences that exist in the workforce… 25)....
17 Pages (4250 words) Essay

Diversity in My Workplace

Though my workplace is becoming increasingly diverse in race and culture, there are no policies or programs in place to address issues of bias toward those who are different.... They should make every effort to welcome, accept, consider, and include experiences of those who are different.... This is unfortunate, as the ones who suffer most are the youth that is served.... Rather than debating the usefulness or value of each project idea, adults should be setting the stage for cooperative engagement, to show youth how to interact in an increasingly diverse community....
15 Pages (3750 words) Coursework

Surveillance's Influence on the Society

The essay "Surveillance's Influence on the Society" seeks to highlight the benefits and risks of surveillance in the UK society, with emphasis on technology and society.... hellip; Another important feature is the concept of surveillance is the vital role of technology in advancing surveillance techniques....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Should Individuals be Allowed to Sell their Organs on the Open Market in the US

The following research paper "Should Individuals be Allowed to Sell their Organs on the Open Market in the US" investigates the fact that kidney has been noted to be the body part that accounts for the greatest portion of organ sales around the world.... nbsp;… With the aging of the entire population, Rothman and Rothman (2003) observe that the number of patients with deadly kidney disease has increased....
9 Pages (2250 words) Research Paper

Drug Mass Incarceration in United States

Most of the prisoners serve sentence due to various crimes but those from drug abuse has been on rampant since time immemorial.... Incarceration rates compare to those found in isolated dictatorships and civil war-prone nations.... "Drug Mass Incarceration in the United States" paper aims at developing a conceptual framework that is important while addressing the appropriate measures to end the war on drug addiction....
14 Pages (3500 words) Coursework
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us