Law in Contemporary Society

View   r22  >  r21  ...
RealityVsUnreality 22 - 07 Jan 2010 - Main.IanSullivan
Line: 1 to 1
Changed:
<
<
META TOPICPARENT name="WebPreferences"
>
>
META TOPICPARENT name="OldDiscussionMaterials"
 When Prof. Moglen was discussing the wide chasm separating between what we know about the penal system and what really transpires behind prison doors, it occurred to me that this divergence between reality and unreality certainly isn't unqiue to the criminal "justice" system, and that the failure to bridge that gap often leads to a distorted understanding of human behavior in other contexts as well. In the case of the penal system, we witness some alarming absurdities: the father who thinks jail time will "shape up" his son, the politician who pads his resume with convictions, the prosecutor whose political ties pervert her duties as a public servant, and a community which thinks itself safer despite rising rates of incarceration and crime. These symptoms are no doubt worrisome, but I believe the same social forces operate in other cases as well.

One example that jumps to mind is homelessness. As a student at UC Berkeley, much of my morning treks to campus consisted of walking past people living on the streets (or, as many of us would call them, "beggars, hobos, tramps, bums," etc). The views of my peers can be captured by any of the following:


Revision 22r22 - 07 Jan 2010 - 22:49:53 - IanSullivan
Revision 21r21 - 25 Feb 2009 - 18:17:21 - TheodorBruening
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
Syndicate this site RSSATOM