The cultural prison: discourse, prisoners, and punishment

Abstract

incarcerated in America's cultural imagination. The Cultural Prison brings a new dimension to study of prisoners and punishment by focusing on how punishment of American offenders is represented and shaped in mass media through public arguments. study is based on an analysis of 642 articles collected by author from American popular journals and magazines, as well as newspaper accounts, films, and public speeches, spanning years 1950 to 1992. By piecing together and studying these popular narratives, he divides history of prisoners and punishment into four eras, each marked by a shift in value system. He argues that discourse, or rhetoric, surrounding prisoners and punishment on public level works as a historical force that shapes contemporary culture.The author is concerned that public seems to have an inability or unwillingness to question or resist cultural definitions of normalcy and legal behavior. He explains that ideally moral behavior should be a matter of public debate rather than of unquestioned perpetuation, and he urges increased understanding of institutional and cultural discipline and our questioning ways in which constitution of punishment and prisoners influences us culturally.Thecultural prison refers to way in which this study acts as an investigation of the discipline of discipline; it is an examination of way in which discipline is shaped and formed in public discourse. volume concludes with a fascinating account of move to electronic means of surveillance; coupled with representations of prisoner along lines of race and gender, it explains what these new techniques mean to contemporary culture.