POV 296 - Special Topics in Poverty Studies

Planned Offering: Spring
Credits: 4

An intensive, in-depth examination of particular thinkers, approaches, policies or debates in the field of poverty and human capability studies.

Spring 2017, POV 296-01: Special Topics in Poverty Studies: Profit and Punishment (4). Prerequisite: Instructor consent. This course is taught in a classroom at Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville, VA. Students attend class together with prisoners who are pursuing higher education while in custody at the center. The punishment sector is large and profitable. This includes not just private prisons but also accessory services such as telephone and commissary services in prisons and jails, contracts for correctional medicine and transportation, and private bail and probation companies. Students in this course examine how the carceral apparatus, which impoverishes so many, simultaneously generates substantial market benefits. We analyze individual companies (Global Tel Link, Corizon, Securus, Geo, etc.) ethically and economically and consider related business-ethics topics such as prison labor and lethal-injection drug manufacturing. We consider whether and how market incentives can or should be removed from the punishment industry. (SS5) Brotzman.