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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Prisons, Ships, Religious Communities
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asher
Shipmate
# 97
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Posted
Prisons, ships, religious communities…..and perhaps other settings you might name.
All have people living in close proximity, and perhaps the people in each have some kind of shared purpose.
I have heard it said that all can be pressure cookers, and at best function at a low simmer.
I’m interested in thinking about, reading about ideas / research etc into structures and approaches that can contribute to managing such (potentially) pressured settings.
Cheers
Asher
(Google has not been my friend in this.)
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If you pick it, it won't get better
Posts: 224 | From: Norwich | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
Asher, it would be helpful to know the reason for your interest here.
If it is either purely speculative (or at the other extreme, due to an immediate, practical situation you face), I'm sure you can give more details, have at least some ideas of your own that you can share to start the ball rolling, and are open to them being discussed.
(Since I work in one such establishment, I'd have plenty to say when not in hostly capacity!)
If, however, your interest is in relation to some work you are supposed to be producing yourself, you cannot legitimately expect other posters to do your thinking for you. 'Homework' threads are not acceptable.
Hopefully you can clarify this: thank you in advance.
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
How to manage? Don't know. How to understand? I'd have thought Goffman would be the classic starting point.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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asher
Shipmate
# 97
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
hosting/
Asher, it would be helpful to know the reason for your interest here.
If it is either purely speculative (or at the other extreme, due to an immediate, practical situation you face), I'm sure you can give more details, have at least some ideas of your own that you can share to start the ball rolling, and are open to them being discussed.
(Since I work in one such establishment, I'd have plenty to say when not in hostly capacity!)
If, however, your interest is in relation to some work you are supposed to be producing yourself, you cannot legitimately expect other posters to do your thinking for you. 'Homework' threads are not acceptable.
Hopefully you can clarify this: thank you in advance.
/hosting
Thank you for this Eutychus.
It has been the pattern of the last few years for me to spend a couple of weeks with a religious community, and over the years I have noted that things can get a bit intense. I worked alongside a lad from the senior service last year, and we chewed it a bit more. Most recently I have been working in the third of the settings I mentioned.
I think that there is something here about how institutions support individuals to manage undirected time....
So, in direct answer to your questions:
- not quite speculative, as it relates to a series of patterns that I have noted through events in my life.
- not immediate / practical
- not homework - this thread does not directly relate to any work. Inevitably, I may hope that the wisdom of the board might make me more informed and reflective in the settings I referred to above.
Cheers
Asher
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If you pick it, it won't get better
Posts: 224 | From: Norwich | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
Thanks for your speedy reply. I'm glad it was what it was ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Do carry on - I'll probably chip in non-hostlily later.
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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asher
Shipmate
# 97
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
How to manage? Don't know. How to understand? I'd have thought Goffman would be the classic starting point.
Thank you for this. I smiled when I read that religious communities were suggested to be 'retreats from the world'. This has not been my experience!
I wonder whether the instrumental /intentional communities (4 and 5 in the link), are different because of their voluntary nature?
Based on this helpful suggestion, I will do some reading and hopefully post something coherent!
Asher
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If you pick it, it won't get better
Posts: 224 | From: Norwich | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
The Rule of St. Benedict might be a good starting place, and the text should be online.
The Farm, a commune from the '70s, is still around!
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Peter Jenkins' account of The Farm in the early 1970s in his classic A Walk Across America is fascinating.
On intentional communities (and the infancy of the House Church movement) I would also recommend Love is Our Home (this link takes you to the entire book!), the story of the beginnings of the Post Green Community in the 1960s and 70s: it looks at some of the issues you raise.
As regards prison, I not infrequently use the illustration of a pressure cooker, and indeed see the role of chaplains, at least in part, as being a safety valve.
My other key observation is that even institutional life in prison is a social game which is played by unwritten rules everyone largely accepts. Here in France at least, a prison in which inmates mostly refused to cooperate would grind to a halt almost immediately. Just about everyone cooperates, even to keep their own incarceration running smoothly.
I could cite many examples of this, but the most striking one was in my early days as a chaplain, in an old prison I used to minister in.
There was once an alarm as I and my flock were leaving chapel. When there's an alarm, the staff have to close all section gates and halt all movement until the incident is dealt with. A single prison officer was struggling to close the rusty old gate corralling a dozen or so of us in the chapel area of the jail - and, amid protests from precisely nobody, an inmate or two on my side of the gate were helping him to complete this task, so we could all be locked in.
[ 31. October 2016, 05:43: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
I work in a mental health hospital where most of our patients have been sent to us by the courts. Their stay is measured in years, not weeks. Wards have about seventeen patients, the main site about six hundred. Many patients progress from being limited to the ward to greater freedom to use the whole site and beyond.
Community can be intense, but it can also be therapeutic. We all receive feedback about who and how we are from those we interact with in families, neighbourhood and at work. That can be unhelpful and keep us stuck in negative behaviours and thought. A supportive, accepting community can be a place that enables change.
I think our hospital community is a potent bit of therapy, enabling people to find new ways of being themselves, new strategies and skills. You could think of community as a greenhouse for personalities.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
You could think of community as a greenhouse for personalities.
Very good. Empathy is an interesting concept, and one that applies here, I think.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Eutychus--
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Peter Jenkins' account of The Farm in the early 1970s in his classic A Walk Across America is fascinating.
I love that book and its sequel "The Walk West". I don't remember what he said about them. But the Farm seemed to me to be one of the saner hippie communes. They survived, and are doing good in the world.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
He said that joining the Farm, at least at the time, involved full and total submission to its founder, which was basically why he decided to leave.
He also said a lot of interesting things about the demographic of the original community - lots of higher education qualifications and almost all urban in origin. Sounds quite like a New Church, really ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
ETA somewhere out there is a documentary portraying the return of one of the original 'Farm babies' to the site, which IIRC was in some state of abandonment at the time of filming. I'm not sure how resemblance the current community bears to the original one.
[ 31. October 2016, 08:55: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Eutychus--
IIRC, there's a lot about the Farm's history on the site. I *think* there's something about the situation you mentioned, and the changes over the years. (I know I read something about it in the last several years, and probably on the site.)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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asher
Shipmate
# 97
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
As regards prison, I not infrequently use the illustration of a pressure cooker, and indeed see the role of chaplains, at least in part, as being a safety valve.
My other key observation is that even institutional life in prison is a social game which is played by unwritten rules everyone largely accepts. Here in France at least, a prison in which inmates mostly refused to cooperate would grind to a halt almost immediately. Just about everyone cooperates, even to keep their own incarceration running smoothly.
I could cite many examples of this, but the most striking one was in my early days as a chaplain, in an old prison I used to minister in.
There was once an alarm as I and my flock were leaving chapel. When there's an alarm, the staff have to close all section gates and halt all movement until the incident is dealt with. A single prison officer was struggling to close the rusty old gate corralling a dozen or so of us in the chapel area of the jail - and, amid protests from precisely nobody, an inmate or two on my side of the gate were helping him to complete this task, so we could all be locked in.
Thanks for this. As I read about Goffmann, he seemed to miss that even in a prison things operate by a form of consent. You make this usefully clear.
Having read round a little bit on Goffmann, I found myself thinking that resocialsation occurs in different ways and on different levels. Perhaps most clearly in a prison: the regime might seek to reduce reoffending, whilst the inmate social culture might move against this.
The pressure cooker: Is it just prisons or are all Total Institutions like this? Also, who do chaplains serve in this pressure relief, and how? Further, I wonder how pressure relief is facilitated in (for example) gathered religious communities?
Thanks again
Asher
(I am working my way through this histories of the intentional communities mentioned above)
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If you pick it, it won't get better
Posts: 224 | From: Norwich | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Simply put, prison chaplains in France are non-stipendiary. A little like my screen name character, we are perpetually on the edge between two worlds, in but not of.
Many of us "draw the keys", which basically enables us to enter any cell we have good reason to visit - and sit down on the bed and share a coffee with an inmate.
We are outside the inmate pecking order, yet don't wear a uniform. We can, if we do so very sparingly and judiciously, act as unofficial back channels that bypass hierarchies and protocol, whilst maintaining absolute confidentiality and thus earning trust.
Best of all, when we get fed up with all the pressure we can simply lock the door of whoever is just getting too much and go home!
Looked at one way, we are a security nightmare and/or a threat to the (secular) system, and some prison officers clearly see us that way.
Looked at another way, we offer a vital release of pressure, and I am convinced that our outsider presence is a good antidote to various abuses before we even open our mouths. During the daytime at least, I can turn up pretty much anywhere in the jail more or less unannounced, and I defend this as being important.
My chaplain general likes to refer to us as "little bearers of hope". And I quite like that.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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asher
Shipmate
# 97
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Posted
Thank you. A wonderful and costly vocation.
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If you pick it, it won't get better
Posts: 224 | From: Norwich | Registered: May 2001
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Looked at one way, we are a security nightmare and/or a threat to the (secular) system, and some prison officers clearly see us that way.
Looked at another way, we offer a vital release of pressure, and I am convinced that our outsider presence is a good antidote to various abuses before we even open our mouths. During the daytime at least, I can turn up pretty much anywhere in the jail more or less unannounced, and I defend this as being important.
My chaplain general likes to refer to us as "little bearers of hope". And I quite like that.
Or "custodiet ipsos custodes*" in the Bentham Panopticon of the modern prison (see Foucault).
Jengie
*watches the watchmen
[ 31. October 2016, 18:25: Message edited by: Jengie jon ]
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Constant surveillance is emphatically not the same as the constant ability to turn up, and I believe that in ECHR signatory countries it is permitted only under exceptional circumstances, such as (controversially) for Salah Abdeslam.
(I knew of one guy who at one point had to be checked on every fifteen minutes, round the clock. The officers had barely got round to making the entry in the register before they had to start back again to do the next check. I'm not sure who went crazy the fastest; I think the scheme lasted a matter of days).
[ 31. October 2016, 18:48: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
The point of Bentham Panopticon, which Foucault picks up, is that it does not require constant observation. It just requires that you do not know when you might be observed and when not. In such circumstances, people tend to self-censor behaviour in case they are observed.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
In that respect any behavioural self-censorship role that chaplains help enforce is with respect to staff rather than inmates. I always knock before unlocking a cell door (just another one of those little pentitentiary paradoxes).
For another kind of community under pressure, I stumbled back across the Biosphere 2 experiments yesterday. They clearly could have done with a chaplain ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
For another kind of community under pressure, I stumbled back across the Biosphere 2 experiments yesterday. They clearly could have done with a chaplain
As long as it was someone visiting from the outside - it seems to me that part of the value in your role lies in having a distance from the normal set of communal interactions that exist within the prison.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
]it seems to me that part of the value in your role lies in having a distance from the normal set of communal interactions that exist within the prison.
Picking up on the ship side of things, largely because no one else has, this is why it's very difficult to make naval chaplaincy work properly.
The best are very good indeed, but the distance from communal interactions is precisely what can lead to resentment and implicit accusations of "passengerdom."
Given that the chaplain has no rank (although messing with the officers he adopts the rank of whoever he's talking to), he has no real duties beyond maintenance of morale. This can go one of two ways, either you get around the ship and involve yourself in all the dirtiest, most mind numbing activities you can find, or you hide from them in the wardroom with a g&t. Personally, I've seen both approaches.
Even the ones that do get out and about have a fine line to tread between doing enough to be seen doing enough, and doing so much as to suggest that in some way you're patronising the lads...
Not easy at all.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Incarnationality isn't.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Well I was going to say something cheesy about Jesus being the ultimate visitor from the outside...
Betjemaniac, I see the problem. Hmm.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Well I was going to say something cheesy about Jesus being the ultimate visitor from the outside...
Betjemaniac, I see the problem. Hmm.
It is doable - but it takes an exceptional chaplain I think. One of the hands down most impressive clergymen I've ever met in any walk of life was my chaplain when I was training at Dartmouth. He was instrumental in my deciding to be confirmed (I ducked the classes at school, compulsory chapel was quite enough).
Others were really not as good. What has always been far more interesting to me is that (as was the case anecdotally in WW1) the average RC chaplain in the Royal Navy is streets ahead of the average CofE one. And I say that as an Anglican.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Incarnationality isn't.
No it isn't, but it's the Christian road to try. However, there's a world of difference (IMO) between trying to do that as an ordinary person in their daily life and trying to do it as a visibly ordained person. There is then a further difference between the average ordained person, and an ordained person who's locked into a tin box with 200 other people for 6 months at a stretch.
If you get it wrong, the contempt and ridicule must hurt a lot more in a small confined space where there're no days off and nowhere to run and hide....
Brave lot to sign up for it really, I often wonder how much many of them realised what they were taking on.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I think you're right that as chris stiles says, the 24/7 aspect, and the officer aspect, both make a difference.
The tendency in Western countries is for prison chaplaincy to be professionalised, with chaplains as paid staff - France is an exception here, but there is a strong push to follow the trend right now. Everything in me is against this, and quite apart from the fact that it would reduce chaplaincy numbers considerably, I think it would make a large and negative difference.
However, I have quite a bit of interaction with colleagues from other countries where professionalisation is the norm and it does seem to be doable. A lot is down to getting the right person for the job.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
What has always been far more interesting to me is that (as was the case anecdotally in WW1) the average RC chaplain in the Royal Navy is streets ahead of the average CofE one. And I say that as an Anglican.
Would you mind unpacking this a little? It would be interesting to know what you felt the differences were.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think you're right that as chris stiles says, the 24/7 aspect, and the officer aspect, both make a difference.
Worth noting "the officer aspect." In the army and the RAF they are officers, with rank - so you get eg Sqn Ldr The Rev'd O. Slope, for example. In the navy, they do NOT have rank, they're all eg Chaplain the Revd Dr Grantly. A naval chaplain is the rank of whoever he's talking to, from able seaman to admiral of the fleet.
This is about the only way it can be made to work on a ship, and even the knockers of the chaplaincy concede that it actually does work insofar as nullifying the officer status goes.
Messing with the officers is probably unavoidable.
For all the newly minted chaplains who come in swinging that status and privilege is wrong, and they want to live on the messdecks with the lads, they haven't seen the reality that they're usually about 40, with a university degree or two, and a 30-man messdeck has an average age of about 22 and a group predilection for pornography, tattoos, and visiting the local ladies of the night in every port.*
They get far more respect from being around and available, than they would if they tried to actually live with them. In the end, messing in the wardroom just makes sense for the sake of everyone's sanity, not least the chaplain's.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
What has always been far more interesting to me is that (as was the case anecdotally in WW1) the average RC chaplain in the Royal Navy is streets ahead of the average CofE one. And I say that as an Anglican.
Would you mind unpacking this a little? It would be interesting to know what you felt the differences were.
This is going to be sweeping (it can't not be) so I want to acknowledge at the start that there are good and bad men (it's usually men) in both. Also as stated above that the very best chaplain I ever met was CofE (worth noting that numbers 2,3,4, and 5 were RC though).* There is a third leg of the stool which I'll deal with at the end for completeness.
I think some CofE chaplains can suffer from fancying the role for the status - uniform, mess dinners, oil paintings of battles, congenial surroundings in the shore establishments, etc. That and the fact that they start on over £50,000 per year, which is necessary to get volunteers through the door, but puts rockets under the stipend.
You get all that with some RC chaplains of course, but on the whole I always found them a lot saner. AIUI many of them (although they have to pass selection of course) are drafted to selection by their bishops, rather than volunteering per se, so you get a cohort of people who are their because that's where they've been sent, and it could quite as easily have been a parochial house in Blackburn, or an orphanage in Africa. They're the crack-on-and-doers more often than the CofE average IME.
Obviously they have dispensation to administer HC to all on their ship, as you only get one chaplain (at the most) so they can't be exclusive.
In shore establishments their lack of a family meant that they tended to live in with the unmarried junior officers and take a full part in mess life. Basically I always thought they were less distant. If I'd been coming to the RN with no religious background I think the RC might have got me in the end frankly.
The third leg of the stool is the brilliantly catch-all branch called "Church of Scotland and the Free Churches" - a motley collection of CofS, Baptists, Methodists, etc. I never really knew what to make of them.
*and yes, I have just spent a happy few minutes ranking "naval chaplains I have known....*
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
I think some CofE chaplains can suffer from fancying the role for the status - uniform, mess dinners, oil paintings of battles, congenial surroundings in the shore establishments, etc.
Very interesting. Thanks.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
A naval chaplain is the rank of whoever he's talking to, from able seaman to admiral of the fleet.
I stand corrected, apologies. What a great principle.
quote:
They get far more respect from being around and available, than they would if they tried to actually live with them.
This is another good point, and one I need to take to heart myself more in my chaplaincy ministry. Over-identification is as bad as standing aloof.
quote:
I think some (...) chaplains can suffer from fancying the role for the status
Believe it or not this is even true in prison chaplaincy. Some historic protestant churches especially see the local prison as coming attached to the pastorate and get very uppity if anyone else fills the position, even if they have nobody suitable.
The JWs recently qualified to be prison chaplains in France via an ECHR ruling and I'm pretty sure this was as much about securing some social acknowledgement as any particular vocation*. This is certainly more of a danger if chaplaincy is a paid position.
==
*It can lead to some odd situations too. The JW chaplain in my prison is old enough to have done time in the same establishment (or at least its predecessor) for refusing to do military service or conscientious objection, which was the position the JWs took at the time. They had virtually a whole wing stuffed full of JWs not on military service.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
In that respect any behavioural self-censorship role that chaplains help enforce is with respect to staff rather than inmates. I always knock before unlocking a cell door (just another one of those little pentitentiary paradoxes).
Did you miss the Latin in the initial post?
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
No. If you're trying to score a point, you'll first need to demonstrate that watching the watchmen (as opposed to the inmates) was anything other than a secondary benefit of Bentham's Panopticon in his view. I refer you in particular to Panopticon Or the Inspection House, Volume 2, letter VI.
Or, if you are broad-minded enough, Wikipedia:
quote:
the essential elements of Bentham's design were not only that the custodians should be able to view the prisoners at all times (including times when they were in their cells), but also that the prisoners should be unable to see the custodians, and so could never be sure whether or not they were under surveillance.
If that's incorrect, you can of course edit it appropriately, with properly supported sources, and thus improve everyone's general knowledge.
[ 01. November 2016, 19:51: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
No. If you're trying to score a point, you'll first need to demonstrate that watching the watchmen (as opposed to the inmates) was anything other than a secondary benefit of Bentham's Panopticon in his view. I refer you in particular to Panopticon Or the Inspection House, Volume 2, letter VI.
Or, if you are broad-minded enough, Wikipedia:
quote:
the essential elements of Bentham's design were not only that the custodians should be able to view the prisoners at all times (including times when they were in their cells), but also that the prisoners should be unable to see the custodians, and so could never be sure whether or not they were under surveillance.
If that's incorrect, you can of course edit it appropriately, with properly supported sources, and thus improve everyone's general knowledge.
I thought Jengie was saying that part of your job was to hold the prison staff to account? If I am wrong she will doubtless correct me.
I was reminded of the occasions when I was involved in the custody suite and witness protection, back in the day. I was told in no uncertain terms that the officers interrogating the suspects may have been my friends and colleagues but, if the wheels came off, my job was to make sure the suspect was all right. This rarely, if ever, happened in my little corner of law enforcement, in large part because of the professionalism and decency of my colleagues but, in an Augustinian world, because they knew that if they did start slapping the villains around they knew that we would not cover up for them at the subsequent inquiry.
As I am here, and as Betjemaniac has given us a splendid account of his experience of naval chaplains, I thought I would work an anecdote about army chaplains into this post. There are two sorts of initiation courses for army officers. One for the regular army and one for chaplains and other auxiliary staff - medics and suchlike. The latter is, of course, known to the troops as "vicars and tarts".
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
I thought Jengie was saying that part of your job was to hold the prison staff to account?
It's not a part of my job so much as a fortunate byproduct.
In much the same way that 'watching the watchmen' appears to have been a secondary benefit of Bentham's ideas, not, as she appeared to imply, the central one, which was the possibility of inmates being watched at all times.
This latter possibility is neither part of my remit nor a secondary benefit thereof.
As it happens, I can think of two particular locations in the prison I work in, excluding cells, where there is a conspicuous lack of CCTV. One appears, intentionally or otherwise, to provide a safe spot for inmates to do dodgy business. The other one is certainly not to the inmates' benefit and I can only speculate about whether it is intentional or not. I'm told use is made of it, though.
[ 01. November 2016, 20:26: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
What has always been far more interesting to me is that (as was the case anecdotally in WW1) the average RC chaplain in the Royal Navy is streets ahead of the average CofE one. And I say that as an Anglican.
The same idea is stated in Kipling's Kim, which was published more than a century ago..
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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