Skip to main content

VINDICATION AGAINST PRIVATE PRISON SYSTEM

Prison systems throughout the world are meant to ensure surveillance and control, nevertheless a humane face, for example, 'corrective justice' has been rhetorically used as a poster claim by the reformers of our age. The disciplinary power appears to be subtle and effective, penetrates human mind in a way a subject becomes the victim  and predator of its own penetrative gaze. The syndrome of 'being observed'  remains forever for no brute force appears to be too brutal to transform a subject as a disciplinary master of self. 

Prisons across the world are overflown with the vulnerable people for they are the victim of their miserable living conditions. Most of the crimes are branded with a class character, for poor appear to be the most easiest target for authorities concerned who are responsible for the maintenance and sustainance of law and order. Prison reforms since Colonial times have been designed to help in the implementation of surveillance, for no other line of argument than Orwellian metaphor justifies with this  exclamatory statement: "Big Brother is Watching You" (George Orwell, 1984). Jeremy Bentham, the reformer, who had the first claim over the title, the father of English Jurisprudence, came out with proposal of prison reform; an architecture of panopticon was proposed by him to help the concerned authorities in making of  'docile' subject (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish).  

The biggest strength of any criminal legal system rests with its capacity to create the frenzy and fearsome environment for the violators. The fear of crime divides people, in a way  'Jurisprudence of fear' functions like "Derridean arche-type" (Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology), writes and rewrites the psche of criminal Jurisprudence, fashionably known in academia, as  criminolgy and penology. It is undeniable fact that the majority of prisoners are impoverished under trial prisoners in India, U.S., or Russia for that matter. Their socio-economic mileue reflects on an urgent and inevitable story to tell; a legal system is unimaginable under ethical school of thought, unless market principle decides the rule of the game. For lawyers are entitled to charge fee as much as they are willing to raise the bar. Has there been concern for the Gandhian "last human" (here I'm slightly twisting the Gandhian terminology to make it more gender sensitive term; though human as a term remains coloured with male experience) the focus would have sifted towards the stakeholders of justice. But the most of illiterate poor folks seem to be "included to be excluded" like Kafka's parable in The Trial, depicts a story 'sub-alterisation' of voiceless and spaceless (Georgio Agamben, Homo Sacer).

The privatization of prison system has been hazardous in the U.S. over the years. Any such attempt in India will yield some unforseen harmful effects for the "Wretched of the Earth" (Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth). Any such conversion of dignified human life into "bare life" (Hannah Arendt, The Totalitarian State) at the benefit of 'profit spirit' would be detrimental to the 'right of being human' jurisprudencial approach. Once the Private Prison is allowed to enter into the frame, the sole aim would be to facilitate a better surveillance mechanism with the help of panopticon like architecture, particularly the modern day technology, cyborgs, could be effectively used to control human psche with ease and efficacy. Any such move would only be able to fecilitate and justify my hypothesis that it is capability which  helps in determining the fate of any subject under any given legal system. Business ethics has some inherent limits to buy and sell. Justice must be above any sorts of insinuation and prejudice. Once faith crumbles what remains there to protect human destiny?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...
1 comment
Read more

The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Violence of Law and Ethics of Care

The worldliness of world is constituted by care (Martin Heidegger). Only in our concernfull dealing with the things around, the existence of being may be understood. In our everydayness of care and concern the world appears to our consciousness. Care is the language, a nomos of our existence, yet it is hardly perceptible in a world of law, which was rightly defined by Hans Kelsen and Max Weber as “legitimate use of violence”. The monopoly of political state over the violent nature of law makes it the most elevated institutions in relation to various social orders co-existing with the political state. Politics, once conceived as “an art of possibilities” by Harold Laski, is now becoming merely a language of allegations, counter-allegations, trickery and manipulation, in one statement, it symbolizes the archetypical character of violence whose expression is apparent in the existence of law. Violence has become our mode of existence in a sense that it speaks through us when the humanity f...
Post a Comment
Read more