Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher

Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher
Author: Phillip Torsrud
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2008
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0595485189

If you want to know why our nation's leaders have failed to solve America's crime problem, these essays expose a number of areas where either not enough thought is being given, or the thinking is just wrong. While crime dominates America's media and political scene, there is very little intelligent insight on the topic coming from those who would know most about it, criminals. These essays change that. The essays begin by addressing crime as part of a larger social fabric that cannot be fixed by the simple passing of a few more laws. After focusing on the big picture, the essays become more specific, examining different ways to make a more efficient and effective legal system. In part two, these essays expand to address a number of other social issues like the war in Iraq, labor issues, health care and the environment. The reader is forced to continuously re-examine their beliefs. Torsrud strips down problems to their core, creating arguments that are insightful, hard to challenge, and at times even humorous.

The Panopticon Writings

The Panopticon Writings
Author: Jeremy Bentham
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1789600138

The Panopticon project for a model prison obsessed the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham for almost 20 years. In the end, the project came to nothing; the Panopticon was never built. But it is precisely this that makes the Panopticon project the best exemplification of Bentham's own theory of fictions, according to which non-existent fictitious entities can have all too real effects. There is probably no building that has stirred more philosophical controversy than Bentham's Panopticon. The Panopticon is not merely, as Foucault thought, "a cruel, ingenious cage", in which subjects collaborate in their own subjection, but much more-constructing the Panopticon produces not only a prison, but also a god within it. The Panopticon is a machine which on assembly is already inhabited by a ghost. It is through the Panopticon and the closely related theory of fictions that Bentham has made his greatest impact on modern thought; above all, on the theory of power. The Panopticon writings are frequently cited, rarely read. This edition contains the complete "Panopticon Letters", together with selections from "Panopticon Postscript I" and "Fragment on Ontology", Bentham's fullest account of fictions. A comprehensive introduction by Miran Bozovic explores the place of Panopticon in contemporary theoretical debate.

Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish
Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2012-04-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0307819299

A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre. In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
Author: Cesare Beccaria
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2006
Genre: Criminal justice, Administration of
ISBN: 1584776382

Reprint of the fourth edition, which contains an additional text attributed to Voltaire. Originally published anonymously in 1764, Dei Delitti e Delle Pene was the first systematic study of the principles of crime and punishment. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, its advocacy of crime prevention and the abolition of torture and capital punishment marked a significant advance in criminological thought, which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It had a profound influence on the development of criminal law in Europe and the United States.

Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher

Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher
Author: Phillip Torsrud
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2008-01-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780595606092

If you want to know why our nation's leaders have failed to solve America's crime problem, these essays expose a number of areas where either not enough thought is being given, or the thinking is just wrong. While crime dominates America's media and political scene, there is very little intelligent insight on the topic coming from those who would know most about it, criminals. These essays change that. The essays begin by addressing crime as part of a larger social fabric that cannot be fixed by the simple passing of a few more laws. After focusing on the big picture, the essays become more specific, examining different ways to make a more efficient and effective legal system. In part two, these essays expand to address a number of other social issues like the war in Iraq, labor issues, health care and the environment. The reader is forced to continuously re-examine their beliefs. Torsrud strips down problems to their core, creating arguments that are insightful, hard to challenge, and at times even humorous.

The Biopolitics of Punishment

The Biopolitics of Punishment
Author: Rick Elmore
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2022-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0810144891

This volume marks a new chapter in the long-standing debate between Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault regarding argumentative methods and their political implications. The essays chart the undertheorized dialogue between the two philosophers on questions of life, death, punishment, and power—an untapped point of departure from which we might continue to read the convergence and divergence of their work. What possibilities for political resistance might this dialogue uncover? And how might they relate to contemporary political crises? With the resurgence of fascism and authoritarianism across the globe, the rise of white supremacist and xenophobic violence, and the continued brutality of state-sanctioned and extrajudicial killings by police, border patrols, and ordinary citizens, there is a pressing need to critically analyze our political present. These essays bring to bear the critical force of Derrida’s and Foucault’s biopolitical thought to practices of mass incarceration, the death penalty, life without parole, immigration and detention, racism and police violence, transphobia, human and animal relations, and the legacies of colonization. At the heart of their biopolitics, the volume shows, lies the desire to deconstruct and resist in the name of a future that is more just and less policed. It is this impulse that makes reading their work together, at this moment, both crucial and worthwhile.

Power/Knowledge

Power/Knowledge
Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 286
Release: 1980-11-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 039473954X

Michel Foucault has become famous for a series of books that have permanently altered our understanding of many institutions of Western society. He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the broad social vision and political aims that unified them. Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent -- and terrifying -- portrait of society that he was patiently compiling. For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives" Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time -- and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds.

America Unraveled

America Unraveled
Author: Phillip Torsrud
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2012-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 147594960X

Most Americans are concerned about their politicians' inability to identify, much less solve their nation's problems. America Unraveled explores a number of America's most pressing social issues, the economy, justice system, culture, and many historical events occurring between 2008 and 2012. Incompetence is attacked in a bipartisan manner with the author's loyalty going to truth, common sense, and logic. Why should any American have allegiance to Democrats or Republicans when they seem so preoccupied with serving the private interests of their big money supporters. If you are looking for real constructive criticism, this book is for you. Phillip Torsrud has also written Preemptive Strike which is a novel on human trafficking, and Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher which explores the structural failings of America's Justice system. While many of the topics addressed in America Unraveled are complicated, the simple and direct style of writing makes the reading not only easy, but enjoyable.