Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T05:05:51.904Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Andrew Skotnicki
Affiliation:
Manhattan College, New York
Get access

Summary

We began our study by asking a question and stating a premise. The question was why so many people classed as intellectually handicapped spend their days, not in therapeutic settings, or in group homes, or under the care of a counselor or therapist, but in jail and prison cells. We then proceeded to state the premise that those so “handicapped,” at the least, make those of us in “polite society” uncomfortable, and more commonly, threaten and terrify us. It should now be no secret that our penal facilities are literally overwhelmed by people whose cognitive machinery computes the meaning of their and our lives through a lens crafted by psychological and spiritual perceptions far different than that of the “normal” man or woman.

This leaves us with a paradoxical challenge: either we continue to indulge our alarm and, frankly, disgust at this population and continue to support and underwrite its forced removal from civic participation, or we realize that it is our cognitive and ethical structures that require reformation. We must, hearkening back to the moral treatment phenomenon, change our thought patterns to see no ontological, moral, or (for the most part) organic difference between us and them. Furthermore, we must then “think” them out of confinement and imagine them living side by side with us before their enforced exile and debasement can come to an end. The latter presents a daunting challenge on two fronts: for those who have been expelled from the social world and for those who in one way or another underwrite their expulsion . For the free community, it requires socioeconomic, psychological, therapeutic, and spiritual amendment. As to the first, as Brenner argues, “it is … through the controlling instrument of the economy that the vast majority of social and individual objectives are achieved.” The economic colossus, especially in the regnant neoliberal philosophy, with its Social Darwinist roots, has laid a crushing burden on the world's poor: the hapless and desperate who both figuratively and literally cling to unstable and deadly rafts in a sea of indifference and, often, hostility as they hope against hope that a better life lies for them somewhere.

Type
Chapter
Information
Injustice and Prophecy in the Age of Mass Incarceration
The Politics of Sanity
, pp. 133 - 140
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Conclusion
  • Andrew Skotnicki, Manhattan College, New York
  • Book: Injustice and Prophecy in the Age of Mass Incarceration
  • Online publication: 12 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529222241.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Conclusion
  • Andrew Skotnicki, Manhattan College, New York
  • Book: Injustice and Prophecy in the Age of Mass Incarceration
  • Online publication: 12 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529222241.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Andrew Skotnicki, Manhattan College, New York
  • Book: Injustice and Prophecy in the Age of Mass Incarceration
  • Online publication: 12 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529222241.007
Available formats
×