Summary Of The Video 'Tent City'

In the video, Homeless: The Motel Kids in Orange County, I was shocked by the fact that many unfortunate families came from the richest counties. Initially, I assumed that poor families came from places where the county was in bad shape. Also, I was in awe with the reason why one family remained in Orange County and how the families lived every day. Personally, I liked the mother’s response when she was asked if the living environment was damaging for Rudee and the mother said it doesn’t matter where you live, if you live in the ghetto, you don’t have to act like it. Rudee’s mother believes they’ll make it because they’re survivors. I admire the mother’s mentality because it reminded me of my father’s upbringing with no electricity and how

As seen in the War on Drugs comic (comix refers to underground comics, which I don’t believe The Real Cost of Prisons Comix really counts as, so I use comic instead), the incarcerated find it difficult to find jobs, welfare, and an education after leaving the prison system. In this way, the criminal justice system functions as a form of social control. We lock up as many poor people as possible in order to prevent their futures and further income inequality in the United States in favor of the rich. Poor people are considered second-class citizens simply because they are given more direct benefit from the government, and, as we’ve read in Taibbi’s book, even that is not a guarantee. This hatred of those who are without food and shelter stems from a fear of possibly being in that position someday as well. When talking about poverty, I always think of the song “Kill the Poor” by the Dead Kennedys, which has the lyric, "Away with excess enemy, But no less value to property.” When people are inclined to destroy families in order to gain a slightly higher return on profit, disaster

Being caged can not only mentally cripple someone, but can hurt the entire community. When there is mass incarceration there is a ripple effect. For example, a father goes to jail and had to leave behind his wife and two kids. Now his son has to step up and help provide for the family, making him have to work and not focus on school like he should be. His grades drop and now they are not good enough to get a scholarship, so he forgets about trying to go to college. Leaving him uneducated and on a path of hustling to pay every bill, for the kids he now has. It is just a huge cycle minorities are stuck in because of mass incarceration. Martensen talks about how the families of those who are incarcerated become so financially unsound do to trying to talk to their loved one in jail, the calls are so expensive. Also because they try to help out the loved one in jail knowing that they barely have anything in jail and send them money so that they can try and live comfortably. So not only do the families of those incarcerated lose a source of income, they payout money to help them while in jail. The system keeps minorities poor through this cruel cycle of mass incarceration. In Native Son by Richard Wright Bigger can be seen as a parallel to the rat that he killed at the beginning of the novel. The rat was just trying to survive, like a African American in society, but the rat ended up getting its head crushed

In Diamant’s powerful novel The Red Tent the ever-silent Dinah from the 34th chapter of Gensis is finally given her own voice, and the story she tells is a much different one than expected. With the guiding hands of her four “mothers”, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah, all the wives of Jacob, we grow with Dinah from her childhood in Mesoptamia through puberty, where she is then entered into the “red tent”, and well off into her adulthood from Cannan to Egypt. Throughout her journey we learn how the red tent is constantly looked upon for encouragement, solace, and comfort. It is where women go once a month during menstration, where they have their babies, were they dwell in illness and most importantly, where

At the expense of the young, to the detriment of the poor, and on the backs of the immigrants is the means by which the private prison companies have constructed a business that trades freedoms for profit but more concerning is to what ends these freedoms are being exchanged. The advancement of the private prison system has changed the face of the prison industry as we know it. Because little attention has been given in the media to the private prison industry, they have been able to expand their influence and their revenue by means the average American would consider unscrupulous. Private prisons came about to act as the solution to a problem facing federal prisons, overcrowding, which was created due to the war on drugs, but in acting as a solution to one problem they created another one that could be more problematic than the one it intended to fix. Proponents of private, for profit, prisons claim that it is a better alternative than federal prisons because they can provide the same service for less and save taxpayers money in the process. They also contend that the service they provide would help to stimulate the economy. However, privatization of America’s prison systems will contribute to an increase in the incarceration rate and unfairly target certain demographics of the population, which could lead to psychological trauma affecting the people of those demography’s that it

These dust bowl refugees thought that California could be their salvation and a lot of them weren’t disappointed because the state distributed “millions of dollars worth of relief supplies to dust bowl refugees,” (“Kern Will Probe” 6) throughout the 1930’s. However, even with these federal relief programs a numerous amount of these refugees still weren’t wealthy by any means and were at a very low point in their lives looking for any opportunity to stay alive. This alarming reality lead many of these refugees to commit crimes for money or just to end up in prison where they would be fed and sheltered. In San Quentin California alone “the states of Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas contributed 882 prisoners,” (“Dust Bowl Folks” 2) to their state prison in 3 years. Those refugees accounted for 18 percent of San Quentin State Prison’s total inmate population. In short, this not only put California in a social slump but also an economic crisis. Thus causing many Californians to be aggravated with the reality that thousands of these people were coming to live in their home state. Not only were these refugees coming to their state and committing crime, the state of California and the tax payers were now the ones responsible for feeding and sheltering these criminals. Most importantly, this responsibility wasn’t cheap, “the average cost per year of a prisoner in San Quentin is $215, making a total of $190,512,” (“Dust Bowl Folks” 2) according to the Healdsburg Tribune in 1939. Sadly, even those who didn’t resort to crime and came to California with the best of intentions often only caused problems for Californians. Employment groups and local businesses often had to halt employee hiring. They wanted to try to make sure that Californian citizens were the ones getting the jobs over the refugees. However, with the magnitude of people trying to get jobs and the fact that these

When someone’s parent is put into prison, a new issue is added to the many that are already on that person’s plate. This is illustrated well when Goffman says, “we’re asking kids who live in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, who have the least amount of family resources, who attend the country’s worst schools… were asking these kids to walk the thinnest possible line to basically never do anything wrong”(How we’re). The kids who are dealing with many issues are slowly being crushed by all the issues they go through with one being added each moment. They only do the things that they do to survive and the judicial system is not helping because it seems to target these kids. J. Mark Eddy, a licensed Psychologist, and Jean Mollenkamp Kjellstrand, from Columba University, states that “The incarceration of a parent is not often the start of the problems for a child and family, but rather a continuation… characterized by poverty, social disadvantage, unstable home life, substance abuse difficulties, mental health problems, abuse, trauma, and community violence” (552). This is just saying when kids are put through all these difficulties, they are more likely to fill that hurt with drugs, hurting someone or themselves, crimes, and even suicide. All these things can cause emotional trauma because it was already hard enough to live happy then now their parent went to jail and just made it even tougher. It just seems as if weights are slowly being added to them until they can’t resist to do something illegal. Neglecting the kids that have parents that are in prison will only cause them to replace their parents when the time comes. According to Richard J. Coley, the director of the Educational Testing Service Center for Research on Human Capital and Education, and Paul E. Barton, an education writer and consultant, children who have a parent who is

Candice Bergen, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, has stated the government’s “tough-on-crime” legislation has taken more gang members off the streets and put them behind bars. “We have good programs that are in place, but it’s a continual challenge,” she told host Evan Solomon. “There is some relief that at least these individuals are not on the street. If they’re going to be involved in illegal activity, it’s better that they’re in prison and we can deal with them in a very controlled setting.” Bergen disregarded links between double-bunking and overcrowded conditions with violence and other issues behind bars.

Upon reading the title to the reading “Camping for Their Lives” by Scott Bransford, A lot of images come to mind as they do for many people. Whether it be family outings, military experience or just plain adventure. Scott Bransford takes a good long look at camping in a different way. The author’s topic is about tent cities and their homeless populations. He argues the struggles that they have with little or no help from the government and highlights a location in Central Valley California. The author structures the article well starting off with an example of a married couple that does not have enough money to sign a lease or take out a mortgage. He then goes into the day to day life and difficulties that are accustomed with living as a homeless person. He mentions statistics and the government’s temporary remedies to deal with the homeless population and the complications when imposing restrictions. The author goes into depth about the lack of jobs within the areas but does not go deep into the addictions, the crime networks that operate out of the areas nor the filth associated with enabling these tent cities to pop up.

They have little rights and are rejected to basics rights such as a speedy trial and to court-appointed legal counsel (Reyes). They also separate families in the process of detention, taking an already traumatic situation worse. There has also been allegations of sexual assault and physical abuse to those detained, though the government says they found no evidence of this. The government also is required to have at least 34,000 people detained in these camps, which to me seems inhumane to have a required amount imprisoned (Reyes). Meanwhile the fact that they treat people horrible and with basically no rights, this imprisonment cost the governments a ton. Detaining a person a night cost $161, while we could alternatively and more humanely give someone a ankle bracelet (without detaining them) costing the government $17 a day (Reyes). These camps are another example of not giving someone rights due to being another

A few detainees require specialized curriculum that isn't accessible in a few penitentiaries or correctional facilites. Since the individual carried out the wrongdoing they don't merit exclusive lodging. Congestion conditions can prompt expanding brutality. Due to a lot of detainees and a substantially littler measure of gatekeepers they have a feeling that they are losing control of the jail. In packed penitentiaries the possibility or strikes, suicides and mental issue.

Over the past forty years the increased of mass incarceration within the Federal Bureau of Prisons has increased more than 700 percent since the 1970’s, between the different type of ethnicity. Billions of dollars have spent to house offenders and to maintain their everyday life from rehabilitation programs, academic education, vocational training, substance abuse programs and medical care. The cost of incarceration climbs according to the level of security based on violent and non-violent crimes. Fewer staff is required in minimum and medium-security prisons that house low-level offenders. Incarceration is likely to serves as one indicator of other co-occurring risks and vulnerabilities that makes families particularly fragile. Mass incarceration is likely to increase if awareness is not implicated to reduce the rate of imprisonment and broken families to take back their communities and reclaim their hope for the future.

The buildings within the camps were not built to last and were not a luxury. These camps were built within weeks to contain as much people as possible. "For one thing, 80 to 90 percent of structures are gone or in a state of ruin," says Andrew Curry who had written an article about the problems within the current camp. The other buildings are either sinking or being worn down by weather. This can relate back to the previous problem.

The effects of mass incarceration on ethnic minorities are the increased lack of economic opportunity, the discouragement of welfare for people of color, the worsening of racial biases, increased childhood discrimination and the toxicity of internalized stereotypes, and prominent racial disparities that are found in the criminal justice system. Mass incarceration came as a result of the establishment of the private prison industry. The U.S. has a school-to-prison pipeline where kids’ actions can be observed from a young age to help project the amount of needed prison beds.

An example of what happens when prisons become overcrowded took place in Trenton, New Jersey in 1952. The small prison was made up of "sexual psychopaths, passive homosexuals, aggressive 'wolves' with long records of fights and stabbings, escape artists, agitators and incorrigibles of all ages" (Blackwell). While Trenton’s overcrowding was minimal compared to today’s standards, there was 1,312 inmates in a facility designed to hold 1,190. The cells were old and rundown, barely lit, and infested with rats that were fed better than the inmates (Blackwell). The prison began hiring tougher, more rugged correction officers to combat the rowdy inmates. The inhumane treatment of the inmates contributed to an unstable and volatile emotional state among the inmates. Around midnight on March 29, 1952, the inmates began to tear apart their cots, using the metal legs to pry open their cell doors. The inmates “chased their guards out of the wing, barricaded the entrance and wrecked everything they could lay their hands on. They smashed cell toilets, shredded beds, broke windows and set fires” (Blackwell). The guards broke the will of the inmates after 46 hours by using tear gas and water hoses. Two weeks later, a group