Duties to Prisoners

Return to Ethics

Follow this pattern to post research results and links to this page:

• (Brief description of resource. Link if any. Your real name.)

Try to group your posts under topics, maybe using subheadings or putting posts near other related topics.

Duties to Prisoners

Main Topic Questions

• We may need to discuss the topic scope in class. Here are some possibilities.

• Focus on the death penalty.
• Ask what, if any, duties we have to prisoners? Are we obligated to provide resources beyond basic legal rights, food, safety, and shelter?
• Address the social justice issue of mass incarceration.

Research Needs

*Ask what, if any, duties we have to prisoners? Are we obligated to provide resources beyond basic legal rights, food, safety, and shelter?

• Reasons for crimes
• Funding for rehabilitation projects
• Benefits of society in the long run based on the treatment of prisoners
• Studies on rehabilitation projects and statistics on re-entry after rehabilitation

Research

• Life after prison - Prisoners need to be set up for success in society if they are to be released back into the real world. They need to be treated with respect, given opportunities to work or educate themselves, given some sort of therapy,and be set up with a social worker to plan for the next steps in life. [1] (Kelsey K. Smith)

• Stanford prison experiment - Something that seems shocking at first, like putting paper bags over a prisoner's face or seeing people in cages, turned into something normal over time. Role playing turns into real life situations. [2] (Kelsey K. Smith)

• TedTalk from Zimbardo on evil - Everyone is capable of becoming evil. It has to do with the situation, and this usually includes some sort of power control. This can tie into what people think of prisoners, as separate from us "good people". When really, they are just like us but who have succumbed to the evil. Treatment in prisons should be set to a certain level and controlled by those who aren't accustomed to seeing it on a daily basis. [3] (Kelsey K. Smith)

• Prisoner re-entry and programs used to help reduce this - The high volumes of prisoners in the United States is due to re-entry of prisoners with three years of release. Thousands of prisoners are released everyday and two-third of them will re-enter prison. [4] and [5] (Kelsey K. Smith)

• Mass Incarceration in the US- This gives some basic but useful information on how many people are incarcerated in the US, gives some insight into what may or may not be ethical. It sheds light on life after prison and poses questions about how we can fix our prison system. [6] (Emilee Phillips)