Five Doors, Three Cameras, and A Dead Bolt: How Fear of Crime is Filling Our Prisons and Consuming Personal Liberty (2011)

I. INTRODUCTION C. Wright Mills encourages us to use our sociological imagination when attempting to interpret the social world in which we live. In order to understand yourself, it necessary to consider three questions concerned with structure, historical period, and the prevailing type of human nature in your (Mills 1959). For instance, in the United States, we live in modern capitalist society, stratified by class and further by race. Many of our norms, values, and effectively, institutions are based on the Protestant ethic, individualism, and religious devotion to the dollar. As citizens, we are socialized to encounter our world in terms of good and evil, right and wrong. This dichotomous thinking forces us to see our fellow citizens in terms of lazy versus hardworking, black versus white, male versus female, and so on. Our current sociopolitical milieu one of turmoil and uncertainty. In the past ten years we experienced fall from grace unparalleled in our nation's short history, marked by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, two prolonged and unpopular wars, and devastating economic collapse that sent our unemployment levels skyrocketing and forced many hardworking families out of their homes. Generalized fear rampant. Yet, throughout all of this, the prevailing human nature that exists in our one of savage individualism, protectionism, and strong adherence to the principal of survival of the fittest (Appelrouth and Edles, 2008, 151). Mills says the sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of variety of individuals (Lemert, 2009, 348). In other words, it enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society (Lemert, 2009, 349). This can be accomplished in two ways. An inquisitive mind can start at the macro level by examining social issue in hopes of finding the underlying personal troubles that comprise it. Or, they can start at the micro level, piecing together personal troubles that together form social issue plaguing particular society. It my hope that, throughout the course of composing this paper, I might be able to relate personal trouble of my own to social issue affecting our society. It important to note that by personal trouble Mills meant a private matter: values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be threatened (Lemert, 2009, 350). An issue, on the other hand, is public matter: some value cherished by publics felt to be threatened (Lemert, 2009, 350). For this particular inquiry, the personal trouble I hope to unravel that of fear of crime and the ensuing loss of privacy I experience because of it. The social issue that my personal trouble relates to that of prison overcrowding in general, racial profiling specifically, and the dehumanizing practices of the criminal justice industry. II. PERSONAL TROUBLES I am going to start by fleshing out my personal trouble. From the time I wake up in the morning, until I go to bed at night, everything I do recorded and potentially monitored. I sometimes wonder how much of my life might be pieced together from the endless hours of footage that consist of my everyday actions. The websites I visit are recorded. My children and I are recorded in the elevator in our building and then again in the parking garage as we load into our car. If we decide to go into the library we are taped and the books we borrow are logged. At the grocery store, gas station, recreation center, and school, we are recorded. In addition to this constant external monitoring, there vigilant internal monitoring that goes on as well. If you find yourself in my apartment, it means you have gone through five locked doors, and passed on average three video cameras. While I would like to think that I find this nuisance, some of this barricading self-imposed. …