Class #4: Do Prisoners Have Rights?
Discussion Questions for Class on Sept 7

Milofsky & Schneider, Ethics, Risk, and Emotional Components of Field Research," and E. Rotman “Do Criminal Offenders Have a Constitutional Right to Rehabilitation?”

These writing assignments are meant to help you think about the readings and to prepare you for class discussions. For that reason, when you write a response it is important that you give your opinions and that you relate your thoughts to the reading. Remember that these are exam questions and that they are graded as such. You ought to write them as though you are writing questions on a midterm or a final exam.

Respond to one of the following questions by writing a response on the class Discussion Board on Blackboard at least one hour before class on the date the question is listed. Put your name in the text of the question and give the question number as listed below. Without these I can't tell who wrote the question or what you are responding to. You then have until Midnight on the following Sunday of that week to revise your response if you wish to do so and to submit it for grading. To submit your responses, send them via email to milofsky@bucknell.edu.

Your final version of this question is due by midnight, Sunday, September 13.

4-1. Imagine that you are in the North Central Secure Treatment Unit in a large room with the inmates. A fight breaks out right next to you and one kid seems to be really hurting another one. No staff member is close by. What do you do and why?

This is a tough problem confronted by one of our student interns last year. Respond in terms of the Milofsky/Schneider chapter and your understandings about IRB rules with respect to human subjects.

4-2.       Should the focus of a detention facility like the North Central Secure Treatment Unit be punishment, safe containment, and cultivating an attitude of remorse among inmates, or should the focus be on positive education and growth?

The North Central Secure Treatment Unit where Dan Clark is principal is a youth prison. As a youth prison, charges against inmates will be vacated when they reach 18 or the age of maturity. Dan takes a hopeful approach and takes the position that every student should be treated and taught as though they will go to college or otherwise be legal, successful contributors to society. Many of the inmates at the NCSTU have committed capital crimes and there is a high likelihood that they will be enmeshed in criminal lives when they leave. Should the facility put more of an emphasis on convincing the young people to recognize the immorality of their past lives in an effort to punish and correct past behavior? Is it OK to teach the kids as though they are equivalent to other high school students but just located in a restrictive environment?

4-3.        Should social services be provided as a matter of rights or rather as a matter of the political values that prevail at any point in time?

The discussion of whether prisoners have a right to rehabilitation is related to a broader question of whether we make social services available to citizens because they have a right to receive them. Perhaps prisoners' rights to rehabilitation are equivalent to rights of citizens in general to have access to health care.

4-4.       How do you relate to and justify the punishments received by the women you met in the video What I Want My Words to Do to You?

Your answer should be an exploration of why we punish people for crimes, what we as society seek to accomplish, how we should think about situations where the punishment does not seem to fit the crime, and whether criminals can change sufficiently for us to want some adjustment in their punishment. Relate your response to the readings for this time and last time.