“Prison brutality”, I thought during class. That is something that the novel The Power of One is built around. The only difference is that the brutality in the novel happens inside of a boarding school, not a prison. Peekay, the main character, was terrorized and abused by the Judge, a boy attending the boarding school alongside of Peekay. We see violent abuse, verbal harassments, degradation, and dehumanization happening to Peekay in The Power of One. Unfortunately, these problems of abuse are still transpiring to this day inside of our prisons in our nation.
Prison brutality in and of itself is overall a horrible problem. What I believe is even worse than the abuse itself, is when abuse does occur, and no one speaks out. Only 1 out of every 8 cases of prison brutality are reported to the federal government for investigation due to the circumstances, such as fear of retaliation, or that a guard abused an inmate himself. “The Department of Justice chooses to exclude the bulk of violence committed inside its correctional facilities from the national crime surveys” (“Prison Crime Rate: The US Violent Crime Rate Is Falling”). In The Power of One, Peekay, the Judge, and the Judge’s “clan” could not have been the only ones present in the boarding school at the time, nor could they have kept that many incidences of abuse quiet throughout the duration of the months that they were attending. The supervisors in the novel are said to have “walked around with a whip” (Courtenay) and they did nothing to stop the abuse from occurring to Peekay. Prison guards do the same actions- “The guards encouraged fighting… When fights broke out.. the guards did nothing to stop them. They beat, choked, and threatened to kill the inmates on a daily basis” ("Inside OPP: Prison Guards, Inmate Detail Brutality inside Jail”). “On man on death row for killing a prison guard was brutally beaten to death. He began writing to Florida newspapers about prison brutality and corruption. "So a gang of guards stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs, punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die” (“Torture in US Prisons”). The supervisors in The Power of One may not have been such a physical factor in the abuse to Peekay, but they let the situation go on continually, and took no apparent action to put an end the conflict. It is the duty of those appointed to such high authority to take action to protect humans, under circumstances, both in the novel and in today’s prisons.
I have always been fascinated, but horrified, by stories about what happens behind bars and in our nation’s prisons. I find myself under the documentary section in Netflix, glancing through the one’s associated with prisons. Seeing how horrifying some of the conflicts that take place inside of our prisons, makes it inconceivable how these stories can just go unreported. If I was a supervisor in Peekay’s boarding school and I heard about these things happening, after looking into the hearings more, I would go straight to the principal. If I worked in a prison and I observed abuse happen unjustly, I would not be able to restrain myself from going to the warden. When I first read about the brutality done to Peekay in The Power of One, I couldn't help myself but think what would’ve happened if he had told someone. Just as if a guard told a warden about observing brutality to inmate. Would anything be different?
Works Cited
Picou, Jelpi. "Inside OPP: Prison Guards, Inmate Detail Brutality inside Jail." New Orleans City Business. N.p., 17 Nov. 2011. Web.
Courtenay, Bryce. The Power of One. New York: Delacorte, 2005. Print.
Voorhees, Josh. "Prison Crime Rate: The US Violent Crime Rate Is Falling." Slate. N.p., 30 June 2014. Web.
Lendman, Stephen. "Torture in US Prisons." Rense. N.p., 14 Nov. 2010. Web.
Great first blog Elissa!
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