Constructing an Epidemiological Crisis in Nine Easy Steps
Melanie Brister // September 29, 2011
Between the years 1980 and 2002, prison populations in the United States quintupled, predominately due to the implementation of harsher drug-related laws. Today, more than 2.4 million men and women are incarcerated in the United States; 1 million of those are African Americans. Additionally, over 5 million people are presently on probation and parole. To extend this thought further, one out of every 100 adults in the United States is in prison or jail.
Ernest Drucker, author of A Plague of Prisons, argues that the United States is currently facing an incarceration epidemic, a crisis that has been constructed wholly by the United States government. An epidemic denotes that a health crisis exists, affecting mass amounts of people. There is justification behind Drucker’s notion of a socially constructed health epidemic: most incarcerated individuals should be face-to-face with a psychiatrist, not locked up in a jail cell.
Although the above does not describe Canada’s situation, we are currently in the process of developing a regulated system quite like the United States’. On Tuesday, September 22nd, the Harper government presented an omnibus crime bill to the House of Commons. The bill contains nine tough crime bills pertaining to issues related to the production and possession of drugs, youth offenders, anti-terrorism, parole, and house arrests. It is almost certain these bills will pass, as the Conservative government holds both a majority in the House of Commons and in the Senate. We should then anticipate exponential growth in prison populations in the years to come, along with the looming threat of a socially constructed epidemic.
A prevalent issue in the media over the past two weeks is the weighing cost of these nine bills, amounting to approximately 2.1-billion dollars over the next five years. Lest we forget, crime rates have been on a downward slope for the past 20 years along with drug-related crimes. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson meekly defended this argument, mentioning in the Globe and Mail that passing these nine bills will allow for the continuous protection of the law-abiding citizen.
Granted, no one can deny that the security of citizens is important; however, our nation is also entitled to help those in need. Incarcerating drug dealers, sexual offenders and the like, is only perpetuating the problem. Ernest Drucker explains that social programs should be used to help these individuals and to help veer away from the incarceration epidemic.
Lois Ahrens, founder and director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, explained in a recent interview that the media has helped to socially construct this idea of ‘the war on drugs’ and how it is thematically governed by the idea of good vs. evil. Perhaps though, the supposed ‘good’ government is not so saintly after all. Further attempts to control attitudes toward this topic appear to be at work here, and are yet another example of Walter Lippmann’s coined phrase “engineering consent”. The media’s negative portrayal of offenders guides the public opinion toward support prison sentences, even if the offenders are mentally unstable and require medical care.
Lois Ahrens explains that in the United States, the majority of those imprisoned are of African descent, are uneducated, and are amongst the poorest in the nation. Issues and complications present in individuals’ personal and family lives could further explain their willingness to partake in criminal activity. Why then are we not attempting to help the offenders by offering social programs, by attempting to understand their lives, and their possible need for medical care? In no way should we presuppose that every offender should serve a prison sentence. Attempting to understand the individual and their environment are necessary variables that should be considered.
This potential epidemic hints at famous literary examples of socially constructed worlds, such as George Orwell’s 1984 or Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. The engineering of consent appears to be the existing commonality when juxtaposing this present day issue with these fictitious examples. Luckily, we live in a world where groupthink does not exist (I believe we’re far too smart for that), especially when outlets like Symmetry provide us with the opportunity to challenge dominant discourse.
