Key Idea 1: See key article
Law and order systems reflect racial (and social) disparities. Prejudice leads t injustice and discrimination. These disparities exacerbate the likelihood of a miscarriage of justice for cultural and ethnic minorities. See the statistics concerning African Americans and the Indigenous Australians.
Write a paragraph relating to 12 Angry Men/ To Kill a Mockingbird and/or other texts focusing on prejudice/discrimination.
Key Idea 2: The system and abuse of power
Where this abuse of power, we must have a system that enables this. Abuse may occur in powerful organisations or institutions where there is:
- A strong concentration of power;
- flexibility with regards to rules;
- possibility for discretion among guards;
- care for vulnerable people;
- high-stress environment;
- power imbalance; lack of transparency and accountability/responsibility
- Animal Farm: Pigs: if absolute power corrupts absolutely; how do the pigs manage to gain and manipulate their absolute power. (literacy skills; access to information)
- Autocratic regimes tend to target institutions/businesses/ people who provide information. Magazines/journalists – Turkey/ China/ Book sellers
Key Idea 3:
Guards at the Don Dale Youth Detention Camp brutalise and terrorise the youths. They misuse/exploit their power in sadistic ways. The question is, what makes guards or officers in uniform harm or brutalise the vulnerable children in their charge?
How and why are guards transformed in their uniform? Refer to Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. His conclusion is that people blindly follow orders. Some guards have a tendency to be aggressive and brutal. Cf SS officers in Night.
- Comparison with psychopaths/sociopaths: Macbeth; Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi
- Such men are vulnerable to corruption; they often lack a strong values system; they show poor judgement; a lack of confidence; poor self esteem; and descend into tyranny (facilitated by the system)
- Refer to examples of the misuse of power: eg. Jack in the Lord of the Flies (slipping away of civilising restraints), the pigs in Animal Farm, the policemen in Tall Men, the army in Freedom of the City;
Often, given the chance, people in a position of power descend into barbarity and tyranny. As George Orwell states, absolute power corrupts absolutely. (Consider the problem: do the guards act brutally because they are instructed to do so, or because it is their natural instincts? Is it taught violence?) (also consider the descent into savagery of the Jewish prisoners/victims in Night.)
Challenge: Do the guards abuse their power because they are instructed to do so, and they are following orders, or do they become violent because of a natural tendency, because of a climate of permissible violence?
Key Idea 4:
Some guards do act humanely despite the invitation to and the instructions to indulge in permissible violence. Sometimes people in a position of authority show moral leadership. Sometimes employees or workers show moral authority.
Compare to other individuals who take a principled and humane stance, in defiance of common trends and the tendency to conform, eg. Snowden, the Hong Kong Bookseller, Hannah Arendt; the compulsion to do the right thing. There is a moral space for accountability and responsibility.
Key Idea 5:
How do the guards and people in a position of power justify and rationalise the use of power. Some say it is to protect the victims from harm, to protect against suicide. (However, the problem here is that these victims should be treated in a mental health environment not a prison.)
Cf the pigs who justify the exploitation of power through reverse psychology; they are the only ones who have the brains, and the capability to best look after you… we have your interests at heart… because we don’t want to but we find it necessary to do it for;
- People often exaggerate or distort the threat or discredit the victims as “terrorists”
- cf the Judge and the policemen in Freedom of the City;
- Guards – they are tying these kids to the chair – restrain.. best method of protection – so they do not self harm…
- Jack – meat/ survival/ enjoyment – protection/ fear and adulation.. turns into a religious /mystical aspect…
- Pigs – need brain power – to control and make decisions
- Turkey – shutting down journalists… – security / national security – best protection from terrorists …
Where an extreme power imbalance is evident in institutions, or where there is a strong concentration of power, group members often yield to the (corrupt) culture of the organisation. This culture may lead to the exposure of the darkest traits of our humanity. For example, in social organisations such as the Don Dale Detention centre, many guards exploited or abused their power and enforce their dominance over the vulnerable. They adopted an aggressive and excessively punitive stance that trampled on the rights of inmates. This has been brought to light recently through the confronting videos of prison guards brutalising the younger offenders both verbally and physically. As former Melbourne prison chaplain Peter Norden has commented, ‘some officers are sociopaths who abuse power.’ Many guards lack confidence, they have low self esteem issues and a very weak values system. They are easily persuaded to follow orders and a toxic environment gives licence to their worst excesses.
There are parallels with the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by social researcher Philip Zimbardo in 1970. He concluded that aggressive tendencies of the guards was part of a natural consequence of an unethical climate of permissible violence which hastened the descent into tyranny. Such behaviour attests to the latent darkness lurking within us all, not unlike Jack in William Golding’s class, the Lord of the Flies.
Some guards defied their orders and held tight to their intuitive sense of justice. They provide an inspirational beacon among the darkness.
- See: Writing Comparative Paragraphs based on power/order/etc. as above
- See: Writing a Comparative (general) paragraph
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