Sexism, Race, and Incarceration in America.

February 6, 2011 at 11:49 A.M. Previously corrected "errors" were restored to this text in order to maximize the frustration effect on me as I have made the identical corrections once again.

October 28, 2010 at 9:55 A.M. "Error" inserted and corrected.

October 17, 2010 at 8:59 A.M. "Error" inserted and corrected.

September 20, 2010 at 10:02 A.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected since my previous review of this work.

April 22, 2010 at 10:17 A.M. Spacing was affected overnight, other essays have probably been vandalized. I will do my best to make corrections of all essays defaced or altered by hackers from Trenton, New Jersey. They are either physically from that area of New Jersey or affiliated with local politicians from that territory.

April 1, 2010 at 8:07 A.M. A word was removed from this text overnight. I have restored that word to the text. For the protocol explaining these induced-frustration tactics, see "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "What is it like to be tortured?"

March 29, 2010 at 5:24 P.M. An advertisement was illegally attached to this blog, falsely claiming to originate from "Ads by Google," as usual, and intended as an insult:

"Free Check for Plagiarism And Correct Grammar Errors Now! http://www.Grammerly.com/Plagiarism_checks "

Please see "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review." Why would "Daniel Mendelsohn" (pseudonym?) plagiarize my review of "Brideshead Revisited" in The New York Review of Books? Bard College? Why is this act of plagiarism unacknowledged or uncompensated by this author and publication? Obviously, I do not exist as a "person" with legal rights, despite the copyright notice at these blogs and the provisions of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for which men and women are dying in Iraq. Is this so-called "Daniel Mendelsohn" also The New Yorker's "Larissa McFarquhar"? Perhaps they just know each other. Has this person "visited" my sites? If so, at whose request have these visits been made? Was a small fee paid to this person, Mr. Mendelsohn, for some unspecified "services"? If so, if payment for harassing me or stealing my work was made to this "writer," then who made such payment and why was it kept secret? ("Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'")

March 29, 2010 at 11:35 A.M. Continuing defacements of my writings make it likely that this essay will be vandalized or altered in violation of copyright laws and the Constitution. Efforts are still made to censor, suppress, plagiarize, and otherwise obstruct my communication efforts on-line. I wonder why? ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

"Condemned Briton's Last Hope Lies With Mercy Plea to David Cameron," in The Observer, June 27, 2010, at p. 2. (Linda Carty is facing execution despite incompetent counsel, allegedly, and flawed proceedings, important issues concerning jurisdiction and U.S. treaty obligations are being ignored or have not been argued on appeal.) http://www.observer.co.uk/
Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire (New York: Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2010).
Daniel Bergner, "The Land of Lock and Key," in The New York Times, March 28, 2010, at p. 16. (Review of Texas Tough.)
John Cluchette, "On Prison Reform," in Angela Davis, If They Come in the Morning (New York: Signet, 1971), pp. 151-155.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 170-231.
George Woodcock, The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell (London: Minerva Press, 1966), pp. 58-71.
Anthony Burgess, 1985 (London: Arrow Books, 1978).
Kibret Marcos, "Mom of Slain Infant is Pregnant: Father is Man Accused in Killing," in The Record, April 22, 2010, at p. L-6. (How much of a chance in life would this child have had?)
Lionel Rubinoff, The Pornography of Power (New York: Ballantine, 1968).
Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (Cambridge: Perseus Books, 2002). (Numerous cases of women confined in mental institutions for "excessive sexual appetite" that included "regular masturbation" -- often resulting in deforming surgeries, such as clitorectomies -- were recorded at the Trenton mental hospital during much of the twentieth century. No men were deemed mentally ill for exhibiting the same "symptoms.")

Prison and incarceration have become principles, as Foucault predicted, defining much of our social lives at the dawn of the second decade of the twenty-first century. All Americans have become inmates to some degree these days. We are on camera most of the time in the central areas of our major cities; our medical records are easily accessible to government, legally and illegally; phone calls, credit card purchases, subway rides, television viewing options and much more can be monitored by government agencies. The invasion of persons' inner lives proceeds at an accelerating pace. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?" then "Behaviorism is Evil.")

America's genius for "touchless torture techniques" and "marketing/advertising" along with "suggestion/manipulation" have been brought together by social scientists aiming to perfect the technologies of control. These threats and risks to our freedoms could not have been envisioned by the Framers of the American Constitution who relied on the interpretive acumen and skills or political judgment of persons appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court to serve as guardians of Americans' freedoms. These guardians have too often chosen to serve those who would deprive us of freedom. America's judiciary has failed the people in a dismal and unforgivable way. Nowhere can these tensions and processes be more clearly seen than in American penal institutions where the nation's unresolved racial odyssey is fully displayed. ("The Tortures in Guatemala.")

"Perkinson offers a searching history of American incarceration, tracing the failure of our prisons to the approach that Texas and other Southern states have long taken toward their criminals and denouncing the fact that, with about 1.6 million people in our penitentiaries and an additional 800,000 in our jails, the United States locks up its citizens at a higher rate than any other country in the world." ("Havana Nights and C.I.A. Tapes.")

Prison becomes one laboratory for the infliction of ingenious torments on men and women serving as guiny pigs often for sadistic psychologists and sociologists as well as criminologists delighting in a captive audience from which to select "interesting" victims. Inserting "errors," repeatedly, in written work may be one such ingenious torture. This process of inserting "errors" may be accompanied by masturbation on the part of the person inserting the "errors." I look forward to meeting that person -- soon. By far, the most evil and power-hungry torturers that I have encountered in America have been "officials" working in the prison system. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis, and the Meanings of Prison.")

It is no secret that the level of representation available to poor defendants in the criminal justice system is negligible. When the accused person is a woman of African ancestry, immigrant, poor and holds any controversial views, the odds against her in a state like Texas are overwhelming. Ms. Carty is facing death after legal proceedings that should be deemed inadequate in traffic court. (Please see "The Life and Death of David Gale" and "Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey.")

As a British citizen, Ms. Carty was protected by a federal treaty obligation that required the authorities to contact her native country, the UK government, affording them the opportunity to intervene and be heard in the matter. The UK -- like all European Union countries prohibits the death penalty -- and may have welcomed the opportunity to submit a brief on this issue or seek extradition of this defendant to the UK. Treaty obligations are made part of U.S. federal law by statute and take priority over domestic or state law, as I recall, based on conflict of laws principles. To my knowledge, this issue concerning jurisdiction or the validity of all proceedings in this matter after that initial failure, has not been raised at all.

It is important for people to realize that prisons are places of political education -- often in more ways than one -- and significance. They are among the most revealing settings in which to witness the reality of brutality and viciousness in the form of state violence or control of offenders, whose own violence is often a pale reflection of the world in which they are placed. The language of prison is violence. You cannot live in such a world without becoming violent. Part of the language of women's prisons -- indeed, it is also a form of violence -- is sex. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

In some prisons the violence and cruelty is physical; in other settings, the violence and cruelty may be symbolic and psychological (which can be worse), while the token of control may be sexual -- for women, especially -- as distinct from physical pain. Sex is implicated in torture, to some extent, everywhere in carceral settings. Even physical pain and certainly psychological agony for victims can provide a sexual frisson for torturers. This hideous and repellent reality is nowhere more evident than in U.S. women's prisons. You may wish to insert an "error" in this essay at this juncture in order to maximize frustration and, maybe, to tire me out or provide you (torturers) with a sexual thrill. Good luck. ("American Courts Must Not Condone Torture.")

French scholars have devoted attention to this phenomenon for two centuries. From the Marquis de Sade to Antonin Artaud, the seductiveness of cruelty and the spectacle of control as erotic theater in totalitarian environments has been a subject of fascination. ("Quills," then Anthony Burgess, 1985 and Earthly Powers, also Elias Canetti, Auto-da-fe.) Accordingly, rescidivism will never be controlled in America. The goal of the system is to make inmates career criminals and rescidivists. No other objective of the system makes sense.

Curiously, the fascinations of oppression and control, sex as liberation, and the desperate search for freedom or breathing room is a feature of all of the roles played by Kate Winslet -- including Ms. Winslet's interpretation of Shakespeare's "Ophelia." I cannot imagine why Ms. Winslet sees herself, among other things, as a kind of prisoner. (One more "error" inserted and corrected since last time.)

Deviance is not only impossible to eliminate from human society, but highly desirable to the U.S. prison system and our televisual spectacles: Society needs criminals and so-called "deviants" as "a nutcracker needs nuts. Only over an enemy can power be satisfactorily exercised. The future is a boot perpetually crushing the face of a victim. [George Orwell] All other pleasures will in time be subordinated to the pleasure of power -- food, art, nature and, above all, sex."

1985 (London: Arrow Books, 1978), at p. 17. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

The pleasures of sex and power are identical. Shall we "go to the dark side" in our "War on Terror"? Anthropologists and zoologists have noted for years the close connection in the animal kingdom between sex and power. This connection is illustrated and is on display in American prisons. Are women required to wear blue underwear in U.S. or Arizona prisons as men must wear pink underwear? Probably. I was surprised to discover this very claim in an article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine without attribution either to my article here or to the literature establishing this claim in scholarship. I will be responding to that article in a future essay. Caitlin Flanagan & Natasha Vargas-Cooper, "Sex and Porn in the Age of the Internet," in The Atlantic Monthly, January/February, 2011, at p. 87-105. (I suspect that either or both of these names are bogus and that one or both of these so-called "journalists" have visited my sites, possibly participating in inserting "errors" in these texts.)

Gender-blurring through force is a means of diminishing the worth of persons taught to regard themselves as "failures" to their respective genders. Women fail to be good persons by being promiscuous; men fail to be good persons by not being promiscuous. This is nonsense in both cases. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")

Sexual exploitation can be a matter of tribute among large apes or for women in American prisons who are "used" and discarded by male prison guards or other officials -- officials who are the true "apes" -- or even by fellow inmates enacting a script written for them by sexism. The obvious place to begin writing about this issue is with Desmond Morris and the voluminous anthropology of the so-called "Naked Apes" -- i.e., us.

The classic source concerning human aggression is Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966) then Frederick Wertham's psychoanalytic perspective, A Sign for Cain: An Explanation of Human Violence (New York: McMillan, 1966). In terms of the psychology and jurisprudence of punishment, I suggest a contrast between two philosophers whose works and ideas are discussed in my writings: Ted Honderich, "On Justifying Protective Punishment," in The British Journal of Criminology, Issue 22 (1982), pp. 268-275 and John Finnis, "Old and New in Hart's Philosophy of Punishment," in The Oxford Review, Issue 8 (1968), pp. 73-80. ("America's Love of Violence.")

Women who are incarcerated are today's recipients of "scarlet letters" burned not into their flesh, but into their psyches. Women's prisons are the ultimate dialectical conclusion of sexism in America. A glance at the work of Donna Haraway and others should make this abundantly clear. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is an obvious reference for the literary-minded. Incidentally, the definition of a "woman's prison" in America is very flexible and may include places like Scarsdale, Connecticut. ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")

"Between 1965 and 2000, the number of prisoners in the country rose by 600 percent; in Texas, the growth was twice that. The state ranks near the top for the percentage of its people kept behind bars. And for well over a century, Texas has held to a perspective on penology -- an outlook devoid even of the goal, let alone the reality, of rehabilitation -- that now dominates the nation. The state, in Perkinson's eyes, has provided a 'template for a more fearful and vengeful society,' for a country that no longer aims, with its inmates, 'to repair and redeem but to warehouse, avenge and permanently differentiate convicted criminals from law-abiding citizens.' ..."

The goal of the prison system in Texas and in many other states is simply to throw away men's -- and even more, women's -- lives, or all chances for redemption and achievement.

The distinction between law-abiding citizen and criminal is highly tenuous. In the right circumstances, anyone is capable of violating a law or two. Furthermore, in some extreme cases, violating the law may be the only ethical option. Hence, our history of inspired civil disobedience.

I have encountered -- on every visit to an American prison -- dozens of violations of laws and administrative regulations in the treatment of inmates that are flagrant breaches of the state's statutes, including criminal laws, and that (if prosecuted) could place administrators and guards behind bars with the inmates. Respect for legality, as an excuse for prison cruelty, is hypocritical and false. America's enforcement of laws is highly selective, if not hypocritical. (Again: "Quills" and "The Life and Death of David Gale.")

" ... 'Texas is addicted to execution. It's a political gimmick in this state, to look tough and get reelected, and to play on the public's fear of crime,' [Carty] said bitterly. One legal source said that remaining channels being pursued now were just 'time-wasting exercises' to stave off Carty's execution." The Observer, June 27, 2010, at p. 2.

"Errors" have been inserted several times in this quote. We may expect repetition of this gesture in the future. No doubt the person inserting these "errors" experiences a sexual thrill from this activity. Such cruelty helps to prove my point not only about America's fondness for sadism, but also concerning the imbecility of persons selected for this hideous task of public evil and censorship. I wonder how my old friend Jose Ginarte, Esq. is doing in New Jersey? How are the accident cases, Jose? Mary Anne Kriko, Esq.? Estela De La Cruz? Nydia Hernandez? ("No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")

Please raise the treaty issue in a federal habeas corpus petition since this is a federal question. Race is simply irremovable from this depressing prison scenario. ("America's Holocaust" and "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

Prison has created a setting where de facto racially-based or gender-based slavery is sanctioned. However, something has occurred which no one anticipated and that is not discussed, to my knowledge, either by Professor Perkinson or his reviewer in the Times -- whose carping qualifications of an overwhelmingly established case for racial and other injustices -- becomes a minor annoyance. Some comentators do not want to see what is staring them in the face about America. This is a deliberately chosen blindness. I suspect that there were insertions in the text written by this reviewer:

"What if the US public and the amateur photographers at Abu Ghraib share a kind of moral blindness -- let us call it 'The Abu Ghraib effect' -- that allows them to ignore, or even justify, however partially or provisionally, the facts of degradation and brutality manifest in the pictures? And finally -- and more hopefully -- what if the 'Abu Ghraib effect' can in some small measure be undermined, or at least made alien by means of its exposure, analysis and public discussion?"

Stephen F. Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), p. 9. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

This unexpected circumstance in the life of our prisons is the transformation of race into a "free floating signifier." (Jacques Derrida) White inmates whose racism is another mechanism of control instilled and encouraged in them by the authorities to divide inmates -- poor or blue collar whites have become the new "negroes" afforded a taste of the experience of slavery and dehumanization. The torture of such men and women is just as hateful and evil as the torture of any other human beings. Compare Christopher Johnson, Derrida (London: Phoenix, 1998), pp. 46-58 with Fredric Jameson, "On Interpretation," in The Political Unconscious: Narrative as Socially Symbolic Act (New York: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 36-58 and, again, Stephen F. Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect, pp. 101-107.

Power is a hungry beast which will devour more and more victims by transforming members of any racial or ethnic group into denizens of the demonized category or gender. This process of transformation and countertransformation of identity icons, first, in prisons -- later, in America's electronic and televisual public square -- is a hermeneutic effort and challenge. America in the "Age of Images" is a war of interpretations. Juan Galis-Menendez, Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Freedom (North Carolina: Lulu, 2004), http://Lulu.com/JuanG (I am grateful for readers in India and, ironically, I am told, also in Pakistan and China, maybe soon in Cuba. Sadly, my writings are suppressed and vandalized in America, defaced, altered, even "tortured" as I have been tortured.)

You'll see these ideas plagiarized soon. Get them while they're hot. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

"The abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo may not be as easily attributed to the legacy of slavery and Southern penology as Perkinson abruptly and sweepingly asserts in his final pages. [Yes, they can be.] And along with his condemnation of Texas and America, Perkinson would have done a service by thoroughly examining, rather than nearly ignoring, recent evidence that both the state and the country are holding incarceration rates in check [really?] partly by embracing, however gingerly, the spirit of rehabilitation. A new report from the Pew Center on the States, about the country's correctional systems, highlights Texas' nascent commitment to drug treatment behind bars. [Laughter?] Perkinson might have offered a glimpse of such programs and a sense of whether they will last."

Such programs are best described as a joke. Prison is one of the best places to find illegal drugs.

Depressingly, Michel Foucault and other theorists have anticipated these developments in the grand tradition of philosophical prophets warning of doom. Not surprisingly, much of this material in Continental thought is also opaque to a nation of non-readers. Is this abandonment of literacy and intelligence only another mechanism of control? I am sure of it.

Freedom for anyone -- especially any woman in America -- must begin with intellectual sophistication and autonomy, which is an expensive and rare achievement in our society that is usually denied to those most in need of freedom. ("John Rawls and Justice.")

There is no way to avoid the forbidden subject of race -- or CLASS analysis -- in discussing the reasons for the exclusion from higher education of so many Americans, many of them poor whites. Somebody has to go to Iraq. I doubt that many billionaires' sons or daughters will be making that trip, especially since thousands of America's young people (many of them rural or poor whites) will not be coming back in one piece, or at all. Those young people and their families are among the new "n______." Congratulations. ("The Experiments in Guatemala.")

Tuition at top-tier schools in America is at about $50,000 (or more) per year. Many Americans -- despite tuition assistance and a willingness to make heroic sacrifices, like not eating for a few days every month -- simply cannot pay for the education to which their children are entitled. This is a grotesque injustice for them and also for the nation that may benefit from the contributions that those young people might make with the necessary training.

"The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation" -- like Internet monitoring, hypnosis allowing for access to the subconscious of victims, access to electronic records, etc. -- "an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induced effects of power, and in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible. Slowly, in the course of the classical age, we see the construction of those observatories of human multiplicity for which the history of the sciences has so little good to say. Side by side with the major technology of the telescope, the lens and the light beam, which were an integral part of the new physics and cosmology, there were the minor techniques of multiple and intersecting observations, of eyes that must see without being seen; using techniques of subjection and methods of exploitation, an obscure arc of light and the visible was secretly preparing a new knowledge of man."

Michel Foucault, "The Means of Correct Training," in Discipline and Punish, pp. 170-171 (emphasis added).

Illegal spyware focuses on these blogs, every day, and it is certainly "possible" that my phones are tapped. "Errors" will be inserted in my copyright-protected writings, also every day, by New Jersey hackers.