For this discussion post, watch the following video about the difference between direct violence, structural violence, and cultural violence.
https://youtu.be/LW_rTeawAi0
Then, you should read this article from Vice News https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyayb/i-begged-them-to-let-me-die-how-federal-prisons-became-coronavirus-death-traps
about the types of violence experienced by federal prisoners during COVID-19
Respond to two of your classmates and address one of the questions asked within their initial post. Responses should be substantive and further the discussion by using examples, making comparisons, posing scenarios, providing additional resources, referencing a current event, challenging the initial author’s opinions, etc. Each response post should be at minimum 150 words. Fully develop the response with examples, comparisons, references to current events, media.
Course Material: Cahn, D. D., & Abigail, R. A. (2014). Managing conflict through communication (5th edition). Pearson.
Q1: “During the Covid 19 pandemic, illness was spreading like wildfire throughout all environments and lifestyles across the world. There is no exception to this for prisoners, as they possibly had it worse than anyone else. The Covid 19 illness was not being taken seriously in federal prisons. For example, staff members were ignoring the inmates symptoms which lead to mixing healthy and sick people in cells. This lead to even more sickness across the board, and the prisons resulted to trying to transport the prisoners across the country to avoid the madness being ensued. These examples could be described as structural violence. This is when social structures are manipulated to affect people’s basic needs. In the example above, not giving the prisoners the space needed and proper treatment (only 13% of prisoners were getting tested) only lead to bad results across the board. Along with this, the prisoners experienced cultural violence as well. This is when certain actions of violence are essentially normalized due to social norms desensitizing us to interpersonal and structural violence. An example of this is shown in the article as one prisoner said, “Instead of trying to help these people, they are covering it up and trying yo control the public’s perception of the situation here at Elkton.” Their unwillingness to help prisoners was starting to become a normal occurrence, leading to countless inmates to die. While there are many other examples from this horrible time in history, what other ones did you guys pick up on? Were there any examples of direct violence that I missed?”
Q2: “After reading the article on the types of violence experienced by federal prisoners during COVID-19 and with the help of the explanations in the video showing the differences between direct, structural, and cultural violence it’s easy to identify the kinds of violence that were reflected in the article. While reading the article it was clear to me that in a way all three different types of violence shown in the video were experienced by the inmates during their sentence being served at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. First of all, direct violence can be identified through the title of the article alone, “‘I Begged Them To Let Me Die’: How Federal Prisons Became Coronavirus Death Traps”, in the video direct violence is described as the physical threat of life ending, which is exactly the situation presented in the article, while the virus itself was not caused by the prison, the physical conditions that came with the virus that were becoming life threatening for the inmates was not only not prevented by the prison, but the conditions were worsened for them by the lack of appropriate health measures causing health conditions to be worse and in this case life threatening. Secondly, structural violence can be identified by this group being hindered of equal access to appropriate health care and being kept in these conditions as collateral damage for being a separated group. And finally cultural violence, can be identified in an indirect way, not necessarily as race in this specific conditions, but the normalization of targeting this group with the stereotype being that since they are imprisoned they aren’t a priority that needs to be treated.
My question for all of you is, which of the three types of violence did you identify first when reading the article?”