Places and forms of power : what are the different forms of punishment in the USA ?

       INTRO :   I’ve picked up the notion « places and forms of power ». To illustrate this notion I’ll choose the topic of Crime and Punishment. So, what are the different forms of punishment in the USA ?

On first time we’ll focus on the Gun violence in the AMERICAN society and history then I’ll continue with the Death penalty which is a divise subject before mentioning the massive incarceration in US before dealing with the public shaming.

1. To start, in class we saw a poster from an awareness campaign in the USA, the poster show the US is the country with the highest death toll of people die by the gun violence around the world. A lot of people own a gun at home in the US because the law are less strictly than in the other countries in the world and people can be armed to the teeth without a risk of the justice. Moreover in US it’s very easy to buy a weapon,  you just have to go in an armoury. The topic of crime and punishment is in link with the notion places and forms of power because own a weapon is a form of power, with that you can easily submit someone to you.

1. Now we’ll continue with death penalty. This capital punishment has always been a divise subject but in the US mostly states still use this punishment. In class we listened to Michael Burtner, a judge of the court of common pleas. He explained that death penalty isn’t applied to all cases but to the murderer guilty of murders with aggravating circumstances like torture someone or kill a police officer. People in US got different view of this sentence, some American think the Death penalty needs to be abolished because it’s unfair in some cases and to make sure that no innocent person is sentenced to death. On the contrary some people are in favour of the capital punishment because they think there is a place to this sentence cause it’s an appropriate way to punish in some cases.

1. Let’s talk about the problem of the massive incarceration in US prisons. In USA the jails are overflowing, there are to many inmates, they are packed like sardines. Indeed they are locked up in a cell but there is not enough rooms and not enough bunk beds for them and they’ve got a serious lack of space and privacy. The problem can be the high incarceration rate of people in US because strict sentences are applied for those who are guilty.  It’s the « 3 strikes law » same for minor crimes. But there is a seconde problem : the living condition, jails are very unhealthy and dangerous because there are a lot of criminals, too many inmates and too few gardians. Jail is a place it refers to the notion place, we got some solution to try to stop the overflowing in the US prison like stricter gun laws to reduce gun violence and crime, shorter sentences for minor crimes or to build other jails.

1. For the last the public shaming, public shaming in US are not always used, we learnt a document which talked about a man of 62 guilty of harassing his neighbours and their disabled children, childrens lost the ball while playing outside and the man kick out the ball far away of the child so that they couldn’t access because of their limited mobility. the guilty man had to stay outside for 5 hours wearing a sign that said « I pick on disabled children », « I am a bully I’m intolerant of those who are different from myself » it’s a sentence to shame, I disaggree with a law professor from washington university who think shame punishment brings shame on the courts, rather I think shame punishment should make people think twice before doing this kind of thing.

As a conclusion, there are different forms of punishment in USA like the shame punishment on the streets, the jail for years for the guilty of crime or the death penalty for the murderers with aggravating circumstances.

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