CLIVUS TRANSACTUS:

CLIVUS TRANSACTUS:

The Prison State

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By Gbujama J. M.

This next segment of Clivus Transactus deals with the erratic matter of controlling human behavior through a penal system - and discussed are the routes, methods, necessities and possible implosions of a social process that conditions its expectancies. As model, no particular facility will be examined, its name, place or flaws; we will look at a system of responsibility and the proposed claim of providing for the political state, a service by which there is a prevention and deterrence of crime.

The model discussed will take into consideration demographic, social, religious, and to some degree political factors. It is not far reaching to claim in the definition of outsiders and laymen that prisons have transformed over the last 15 years into both a series of clinics and residential in-posts; beyond and instead of, as a component part of the more disciplinary philosophy of a meaningful segregation. To clarify, the discussion of prisons from the stand point of political experience alone is with prejudice to its systemic indifference. That is to say, it is a spiral motion and social current through which a helical activity absorbs all in its path. The application of law therefore in practicality, is the dealing of this scientific process - of physics, of laws, that may eventually be imposed upon mortal freedoms. Once one enters the facility, there is less reason in considering the inner space a place for awful people, while deeming the outer limits as essentially superior. The reverse is just as corrupted, even though this may be an actual consideration. Thus, in suggestion, we will look at the penal system from a standpoint of self government, one in which ambiguities and confusion stem from individual deliberations as much as they do from clustered attempts at correcting problems. This for many will be difficult to accept, given the contradicting idea of self government in relation to prisons as both a forced method of participation and that of a plural occupancy - agreed. Yet standards of character signify a process of sanity, in a situation in which mortal being is neutralized socially and brought to face with only the cerebral and physical to defend - having thus limited all other possible forms of empowerment.

All things considered, the general argument is that; prison is not your friend. This premise cautions against defining the institution as a place of camaraderie and socialization, indeed, as a system in which all are for the most part equalized; the limitations and restrictions are obvious. However, in many polities it is accepted that prisons do certainly play a socialization role towards an individualistic understanding of the law; ergo, the ironic question, can one really practice the law without ever having been to prison? Moreover such experience is broadened in use of penal codes, an outgrowth of moral codes and social restriction of immigrate religious persuasion and institutional development in cities like New York for example, as well as other polities, that heavily rely on such methods to control behavior, which in turn serve an essential function in the inadvertent socialization problem of conditioning persons to regard prison as a natural reformatory process or open state where highly sensitized penal laws or de facto behavior laws, supplement that of consensus based constitutional laws and familial responsibility. This problem in perspective is pertinent in understanding the plight of the falsely accused, who in such polities, find it difficult to make case that prison is the place where an accused person, guilty or not, friend or foe - does not belong.

One cannot proceed with the issue of routes without taking first into account the issues of demographics and social freedoms. This is in clear avoidance of preferred anthropological classifications and leaning more to the political; to be adequate, that while anthropology will explain the specific, it will not explain the motivations of the general. Therefore, speaking in limited political terms, the population and place of the theoretical polity used is socially, a tourist haven and nationally, a political pivot, of which foundations advocate perhaps some of the most popular documentations of mortal championships towards issues of freedom. Thus like most capital cities or urban polities, it calls a mass to itself, a rhetorical magnetism of purpose, such as would be a historic place of great symbolism. Nevertheless, let us consider that in this modern city, residential communities are formed based on birth rate population ratios, around which is formed, a sphere of political centralization. This information is relevant in the use of rational in posing the simple question; would not then the demographics of non-imprisonment be reflected in the imprisoned totality? When one adds this to the average yearly tourist average of 20 million, it is unlikely that such prisons would be homogenous, unless perhaps there is a pipeline methodology involved.

Again let us suppose in this polity, ninety-nine percent of the prison population is homogenous, creating a pipeline sphere of influence citywide - leading into the prisons. By pipeline sphere it is meant, that within any arrest process in one jurisdiction, persons who are considered belonging to that group are pumped into the prison system through this feed in a helical process not applicable to other groups if they were arrested within that same jurisdiction. It is as if a Frenchman visiting Baton Rouge in Louisiana is arrested and sent to Macon, Georgia (Georgia being the capital of the American South), or in a better analogy as if a Pan African visitor to Freetown, Sierra Leone, or Monrovia, Liberia, or Lagos, Nigeria is arrested and taken to the prisons of Mende-land, Vai-land or Yoruba-land - those within the same respective polities; an improperly classified proximity. Therefore, the pipeline acts as a vacuum, or whirlpool which does not discriminate in its rule of funneling all beings into the prison system, within its sphere of resemblance, to fit some type of rule of homogeneity. It speaks to the socialization process directly, whether any such freedoms do exist in the conduct of politics, religion, business and travel, questioning the distinctions, whether incarceration ends are part of socialization efforts or a corrupted extension of a general anti-socialization; through which every person must pass. The political ramifications of such pipe systems is the empowerment of the public to contain perceived threats, while in negative oversight, it is a violation of individual freedoms. In other words given such pipelines, socialized grievances may lead to prison.

Of socialization, this concept of prison as the great equalizer is the most controversial, pitted against group hierarchies, some formed with a deviant purpose; the so-called gang. This approach in itself is the contradiction to the concepts of catastrophe-ism, a belief in an absence of order and uniformitarian-ism, a belief in order (not limited to geological origins) which argue that rank and order is a separate claim to chaos and disorder. Therefore, the most poignant struggles are those that involve the battle between uniformity and reason. Again, an ethnological appreciation as prescribed by anthropologists, is of an ancient origin, which predates the modern state and its classifications such as Black or White, and this is not to make excuse for the use of such terms and their misunderstanding - perhaps relating to whatever troubles are attached to their use. There are many number of filtrations that make up the different groups termed as political Black or White, yet, it is relevant to distinguish that this is not suggestive of a classic racialism argument but instead a systemic argument; evidence that often uniformity is in competition with itself, both racial and official - and the direct of reason. We come therefore to the understanding that uniformity and its struggle against reason is central in understanding systemic difficulties and the triumph of craft; consequently politics in response often forwarding the family instead – not those aforementioned factors, as being the most basic, natural and important aspect in the formation of the modern state’s political system. Adjacent to the family are the social and religious outgrowths, its history of participation and dissemination into the politics of provision and sustenance to which many institutions were formed and contributed, whether in manpower or spirit, by the family system. The outgrowth of intellectualism and its arguments for reason by 19th Century philosophers have often been at loggerheads with the cause of uniformity. Uniformity is the standardization of reason and ideals, the purported order of chaos and often opponent of intellectual combustion. It is opposed to variations in detail, an advocate of consistency, supporter of undeviating rank and the cause for the identical. Of those functions which do not advocate the above - cannot be considered any type of uniformity.

As result, uniformity in its contest with reason is caught in the dimensional conflict of the symbolisms of uniformity; their history, significance and meaning. This conflict is rooted in the fact that reason as a school of thought – save the argument to be violent - is an internal process which does not rely on any corporeal interests in its functions and operation. With less on discourse and the untailored instinct, uniformity on the other hand, plays an extra-physical visual role, depending more on institutionalism. Still this dependence on institutionalism may indeed be simplistic since most practices for a long time eventually become an institution. Therefore by institutionalism, in an attempt to define, we encounter what is at the core of the issue of uniformity’s conflict with reason, that is - the issue of authority. Thus as mentioned earlier, the helical activity that absorbs all in its path; that scientific process is the conflict of personal authority with that of institutionalism in characterization.

THE CELL

In the search for character as necessary in the preservation of sanity there is often the issue of sense of worth with which to contend. Often the inner space provides the convenience of escape, or to excuse the need to define the spirit towards self government. Yet, if we are to examine in almost every formation of the modern state and its protagonists, there is to be found the simple narrative relating to the inner space - the cell. This may be reason why falsely accused individuals find it difficult to separate themselves in character, from the ongoing injustice towards the self, to its more linear timeline of protagonists, since every injustice has a history. Therefore, the experience often instigates a similar behavior of heroism or an outright declaration of futility. Nonetheless, it is the inner space that is really at subject, since its power to contain challenges all notions of acceptable parameters when the encaged individual begins to understand the politics of the empty cell; that it gains significance and definition from its occupant. This reasoning was brought to suit against police aggression by this author and company Critical Information Publications in relation to mental proofs in which it was argued that the law is within rights to electrocute and detain for medical purposes. The company argued against such grievances, citing that in some polities’ even vehicles cannot be towed by a debt collector, unless they are unattended. If respect is thus conferred upon a vehicle and its owner - how much so the human mind and its body? To state enforcement as reason, would be as to suggest that the body is not attended to or occupied. Therefore, character formation as concerns the prison state is inclusive of the experience, not exclusive. There is no point for the most part after release, to pretend that the cell never existed.

Yet, if we were to ask the question what is a modern cell in its functionary capacity; what role it plays in the scope of incarceration we will have come to some very interesting conclusions on domestic cultural sanitation. To a certain degree the answer to these questions are varied and speculative. Perhaps it is a validation in one instance in proving that there is little or no reason for unhygienic surroundings in modern life, given that with very little effort there is the containment of unsanitary conditions due to its size, as well as proving that the modern lavatory is perhaps all that is needed in maintaining a clean environment since the architectural design of the cell is nothing if not a common restroom with a bathtub having been removed, replaced with two beds. It poses the argument of architectural waste, whether or not much more is needed in the basic existence of the mortal, even though it may not win such a case, nonetheless, it may provide in futuristic terms of technology, a manageable space of living with laptops, flat screens, Internet, collapsing beds etc.; while on the negative, satisfy its role as a dehumanizing lock.

In more redeemable terms, the cell is a lecture circuit of unstated contiguous schools, albeit some, of a violent order; a trading post of ideas and certain postulations - and in some cases, relevant learning in the stationary function of the archetypal room. It is a place where knowledge is spent, transferred towards a possible change in character, thus serving its role as a moral sanitizer. However, the enforced and compulsory nature of the cell in the prison state, with chains, bars, and cage like hospitality, contradicts certain notions of character building in the ability to distinguish, particularly the disposition of the learner - whether casual or formal. It is difficult to ascertain for instance, the pursuit of an idle knowledge with that of responsible knowledge due to a more focused occupancy and concentrated struggle towards maintaining sanity, as opposed to a nurtured redundancy, that which is tempered in the practice of discarding time. Moreover, a strong part of this problem in the development of character is the idea of shared cells, a part perhaps rested on the issue of packaging more so than any other communal convenience. Perhaps, if we were to pose if ever men offered such comfort to each other or a group were it necessary, it would be difficult to explain how it is that even the most shoddy funerals are of single cell occupancy.

A further inspection of the prisoner and his prison may reveal that certain individuals are perpetually housed in the prisons of their psyche. Certainly, without engagement in discourse regarding the transcendental capacities of the mind, it seems most practical to state, that certain minds then, remain content in their place. It is a way of life, like the learning of a language; a fluency of business interests with which the prisoner is thus incorporated and involved into becoming subject to, it seems, the greater research and experimentation of governmental projects. That is, training in which the individual is brought to terms with the language and expectations of the experience. It is typical of the view that government is an extension of the prison state, instead of the reverse, serving the idea that all political authority emanates from the prison experience, with more rights conferred upon like a partial bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is behind all favors and negotiating privileges of status and respect, since in incremental terms the argument is the deeming of this bureaucracy as a biased host or as phased - the prison as friend. Yet, in spite of that there may be need to explain the deeds of service, the value of caging itself, the idea of justice and most important the struggle for power. Summarily, it would be a mockingly progressive thought process (especially considering prison to be without gradient but rather forced socialization) and non-natural society, that considers the prison state to be anything other than evidence of its own failure.

THE MENTAL FACTOR

Obscured research into the matter of prisons from an African perspective in a similar polity to the one discussed above reveals prisoners in chains under claims of mental illness, therefore making it, in the two polities observed, difficult to differentiate the motivations of the former polity with the latter. Let us call the urban polity just discussed polity X and the one to be discussed polity Z. While polity Z makes no apologies for its corrective posture, it retains an overt method of binding its subjects while in the conduct of mental observation, yet it is not referred to as a prison, neither are its subjects there regarding issues or charges of crimes per se. There is no definitive criminality involved in polity Z. While in polity X, prisoners are chained for purposes of movement and transfer, but are allowed free passage once within the confines - even in that of the medical clinics of the prison, yet are there solely to address claimed issues of criminality.

Both polities are Black in limited racial terms. In both cases, polity X for instance, queries tribal emigrational ambiguities and its historical relationship with Trans-Atlantic travel, while polity Z queries the Black European emigrational crucible towards Africa and the tribal response. The questions posed by these decisions are varied in scope, such as:

Are prisoners in polity Z for instance being chained by ethnic rivals and dissenters?

Is there a collective or spiritual mutuality that accompanies urbanization, assembly and congregationalism?

Are arrests made in both polities to neutralize Black interpretations of the African experience in English, both the lingua and the political system?

Are such encounters an attempt to pluralize (through the chaining of African identities within cultures) for pre-conversion elements within a cultural system?

These questions are in speculation and not in accusation, only to point out the glaringly obvious disposition and inducement to misconstrue all of the above. Reaching an impasse in the way things are perceived is most common of the mental factor in the sense of place, since that is where aggression asserts its argument as the prevailing reality. It is safe to infer that aggression in the prison state is an argument in an attempt to place action before words, the actor or doer, trying to surpass the knower, or draw attention to some claimed urgency. Observation of such states have revealed that some impasses are much like the uniformitarian’s battle with reason in the prison state, since there is an effort to perceive the outer limits, more so than to respond to any perceived immediate claim of danger.

Additionally, is the broad based assertion that often the idea of mental observations in prisons has an implicit corrupting impact on whatever result is produced, since there is much legitimate complaint about the experience of such circumstances; regardless of the assertion of a distorted mental state.

THE SEX MATTER

The issue of sexuality in the prison state, that is, the battle or relationship between and within the sexes, is one of ever growing attention in the way that self-government is actualized. Increasingly, patterns of human sexuality in its discovery forms are introduced within generations at different levels and within different aspects of policy mechanics. Though the sexual revolution of the 1960’s for instance, and the wild debauchery of the 1970’s disco era, were matched in chaos with like environmental commotion such as the Vietnam War and the Iran hostage crisis, it was for the most part extraneously reflective. This was also true of 1950’s conservatism practiced by a government often pursuing foreign dictators through covert operations, which was matched by similar restrictions and case dockets that were response to the “soda pop” rebellion of music that spread across the United States.

However, current phenomena of the prison-state are of a more thoughtless moral fiber, in an explosion of gender interests that match instead, with more populist responses of antagonism, hypocrisy and imprisonment – such as those in the way of citizenship rights. This belligerence is a link of the imposition of state authority with that of ancillary copies, extending a puritan designed idealism on corrupt socialized and capitalists interests. This is compounded as mentioned, by inadvertent attempts to utilize state authority to control behavior through the use of penal codes. Thus for instance, the investigative dragnet of the FBI has been replaced with that of paramilitary interests of a “homeland” watchdog; for preventive terrorist causes no doubt, yet, suggestive of there being in our presence at all times a potential chaos. However iniquitous this cautious pretext may be, it is reproduced in daily television outbursts of talk show cynicism, the proliferation of protective homosexual interests and the pursuit of alleged cyber offenders. The general result is that of a suspicion in the serious transactions of government and business in general, seen instead, as a constant form of sexual potage.

Though the comparatives of militarization in the middle east is also technically of national foreign interest, along with that of analogies of sexual interests, yet its attempt was not inherently reflective; and in itself, was arguably contrived by contradicting much of the control mechanisms that preceded it, such as the internal republican right revolution, democratic conservatism such as the Million Man March, and upper hand attempts of George Bush Sr. to form a New World Order. Along these lines, current assertions in sexual gender politics frequently appear to conflict with growing interests of technology for instance, and its conceptions of personal autonomy – with that of a metaphorical outburst of war in the Middle East.

Fastidious observation may prove contrary; that the only and ever present pretext to such involvement was as in the case of internal order, the imposition of an offensive strike on the World Trade center by foreign agents, again, those with a politically clerical and correctively religious claim. Observation may also prove, that complaints of sexual gender behaviorism often hub on the outgrowth of the internet, its generational proximities and that of a hidden governmental anxiety; the idea that there is in some manner occurring, an unusual breakdown in socialization. In spite of that, past containment of gender behavior through litigation of the Catholic Church for example, suggest no such absence of regimen over the last ten years on gender based issues, with even Sam Njoma of African leadership lambasting homosexual proliferation in African countries, as a major problem warranting attention. The importance of these factors to the prison-state is that this cautionary environment has produced a perpetual pretext of aggression and intimidation, in the course of an era to which, the images of sex and gender are most available.

Consequently, such behavior results in the overturn of protective interests as would be in the consideration of frequent attempts to curtail human sexuality, usually deemed as a counteractive form of sexual harassment. This concern is also comparable to, the silent seal of the armed forces for example; not exclusive in such a state with homosexuality and the delicacy of femininity, usually immediately defined by reason of harassment, but eventually, may also lead to the salvage of defamed cases of male heterosexuality. It may also lead to the concern of prison despoilment, negative assumptions of aggression and notions of personal freedoms – on which most forms of civility depend.

THE PRISON STATE AS SLAVERY

Pertinent to the discourse of the prison state is the imperceptible issue of slavery, its nature and characteristics or rather the symptomatic inclinations towards its existence in the modern state. Outside traditional discourse for instance; its agricultural nature, repatriation, and issues of reconstructive nationalism, there remains an inquisition into the systemic implicitness and natural tendencies that make it appear often unavoidable. As mentioned, in issues of the June 2006 Inter-Disciplinarian, in the article What Slave, this is no demand for submission to any such theories, but instead, a critique of the level of sophistication used in the application of market systems or governmental interests, as an aspect of careful concern since the market place was, all things considered, part of such a system. Therefore, the monetary and industrialist interests involved in the growth of the prison state are often in question when harnessed crudely as a form of de-facto slavery or involuntary servitude. To consider, is the relevance of the 13th amendment for example, which forbids slavery or involuntary servitude unless one has been convicted of a crime within jurisdictions.

Not to debate any such distinctions, even so, this is often considered far from being plausible in modernistic terms; these factors on balance, remaining most significant to cultural lineages as factually applied in the nation-state system and the implicit omissions and explicit commissions of ethnologies in the nation-state system. The current governmental negligence is, that holding persons in prison without trial is in violation of the their 13th amendment; as well as there are such breaches in mandatory decisions made, that result in whatsoever form of servitude. It is important to note that by slavery, it is not meant that racial slavery or servitude is necessarily implied, but what is mentioned is a resulting systemic bondage of equal illegality and irregularity.

Consequently, the other trouble is that legal bodies unsuitably apply standards of guild, withholding sentencing as a form of probationary rule, such practice often being of an unconstitutional pretext that inversely acts instead - as a conduit of servitude. What for that reason is discovered in reading conflicts of authority involving auxiliary units such as the police versus the civilian populace, is the challenge against personal and most relevant public autonomy. Thus, these incidents in the prison-state compound a disorientation of the imageries of slavery, such as a judge’s gavel misconstrued from an auction block hammer, prison chains alike those from the dungeons of the past, as well as the peculiar existence of police stations with wall rings that chain prisoner hands in crucifix like repression. This is, if anything, indicative of crudeness, not even applied to, in the control of mental patients or the capture of animals. Thus whether one deems the packing of immigrants, bus loading of prisoners, strapping of mental patients, mandating of school busing, or provision of transportation and housing for the aged, all inclusive, as legal edicts - it is the involuntary nature of such systems, the beneficial rewards, and incidents of coercion that determine their place as legitimate constitutional mechanisms in regards to evidence needed to satisfy argument of the existence of slavery in the prison state.

On the other hand, before any reasonable discussion of slavery in the prison state can be concluded, distinction must be made in separating the issue of slavery from that of the slave trader, whose functionality it seems would be the most important in any discussion on slavery in the modern state. That is to say, in finding the industry as it functions today, one would have to examine the characteristics of the trader more-so than refer to an extensive tally of incidents. The most important characteristic thereof would be that such persons would produce nothing in the prison state, yet find themselves in positions of power. They would by craft, be in control over the lives of others, have a public justification in restricting lives, as well as make a profitable case in the business of human affairs as a purely monetary, non-philosophical outgrowth - against the call of the natural increments of family.

Ergo reason then, for the African admonition that: Monkeys should not work, just so that Baboons can eat.

FINALE

A concluding introspective look at the prison state will reveal that persons behave differently towards themselves than they do towards others. This may be because of many factors beyond their control in dealing with their own lives. Often imprisonment introduces a person to their own conscience, or if not, at least, their own consciousness, permitting therefore the issue of personal allowance towards certain issues and a decisive retribution towards others. This is typical of the classic state in which novels, essays, speeches and other written work have often been the product of the political prison experience. It is needless to extend the argument, that there is no reason for the broad use of penal laws in enforcing the law. Though such laws are also technically classified as also being statutory, they are advised to be used cautiously; to be construed strictly, since statutory laws may proscribe punishment, not just the offence. As well, due to the fact that scholars argue a broader based application of general statutory authority, to be confined not just in the legislature, but in other state or communal bodies, there must therefore be fundamental constitutional restrictions set in place of their implementation. This is of course, since punishment has already been proscribed in the creation of such laws – before guilt or judgment.

Gbujama J.M.