The Ethics of Total Confinement: A Critique of Madness, Citizenship, and Social Justice
Bruce A. Arrigo, Heather Y. Bersot, and Brian G. Sellers
Abstract
This book demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management dangerously co-habit justice at the self/society divide. This cohabitation is the power to harm (i.e., to reduce being and to repress becoming), for the kept and their keepers, for their managers and their watchers. This harm as “madness” occurs through interactive symbolic, linguistic, materially and cultural intensities. Overcoming these intensities or “conditions of control” for one and all necessitates the cultivation of transformative and dynamic habits of character. Embodying such citizenship makes the evolving praxis ... More
This book demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management dangerously co-habit justice at the self/society divide. This cohabitation is the power to harm (i.e., to reduce being and to repress becoming), for the kept and their keepers, for their managers and their watchers. This harm as “madness” occurs through interactive symbolic, linguistic, materially and cultural intensities. Overcoming these intensities or “conditions of control” for one and all necessitates the cultivation of transformative and dynamic habits of character. Embodying such citizenship makes the evolving praxis of social justice (as fair-minded and dignified, therapeutic and healing, restorative and communal) that much more possible. The theoretical, empirical, and policy dimensions of this thesis are examined by way of judicial decision-making that sustains captivity and risk management in three controversial total confinement contexts. These contexts include developmentally immature juveniles waived to the adult system and found competent to stand trial; psychiatrically disordered inmates placed in long-term disciplinary segregation where said isolation is not deemed cruel and unusual punishment; and formerly incarcerated sexually violent predators subjected to multiple forms of civil detention, re-entry surveillance, and communal inspection. The judicially endorsed harm that follows in each instance extends to victims, offenders, and the communities that bind both groups. The book concludes with a series of provocative, yet sensible, recommendations in theory development; methodology and future research; immediate and emergent praxis interventions; pedagogy and (continual) training; and institutional practice, programming, and policy. These reforms are relevant for the legal, psychiatric, clinical forensic, scholarly academic, bioethical, and human service/social welfare communities. Collectively, these change initiatives suggest several vibrant directions by which to activate captivity’s release, to re-evaluate the risk management thesis, and to experience character’s promise in our lives, in the lives of others, in mental health law, and in all expressions of dynamic human/social cohabitation.
Keywords:
total confinement,
ethics,
madness,
citizenship,
social justice,
praxis,
judicial decision-making,
theory,
methodology,
change,
mental health law
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195372212 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2011 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372212.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Bruce A. Arrigo, author
Department of Criminal Justice, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Author Webpage
Heather Y. Bersot, author
Brian G. Sellers, author
University of South Florida
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