Criminal  What makes a criminal a criminal and can anyone become a criminal? The way we commonly define criminals is someone who has committed a crime (broken the law). We define criminals through our legal system and through our rhetoric. Society has molded our minds to believe that all people in jail are bad people and deserve to be there. The essay’s “Teaching Literature at the County Jail,” by Christina Boufis, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” by Jose Antonio Vargas, and “The Long Good-bye: Mother’s Day in Federal Prison,” by Amanda Coyne all focus on some aspects of criminalization. These essay’s suggest that our definition of “criminal” might be thought of in more complexity. Christina Boufis’s “Teaching Literature at the County Jail” describes the life of a woman teaching in a women’s jail. According to Boufis, “Many were homeless before incarceration; few had support from parents, friends, or partners.” (Boufis, 98.) The women were given non ideal circumstances before going to jail. In this case many of the women have lived troublesome lives. “Studies vary, but several show that as many as 90 percent of incarcerated women have been sexually, emotionally, or physically abused.” (Boufis, 99.) From that statement, it seems that the women in jail aren’t the criminals but instead the victims of circumstance. The essay focuses on one prisoner in particular, Tanya. She is a nineteen year-old woman who has been in and out of jail. She never received the education that a child should and for that has suffered. She is a young mother and ended up back in jail for selling drugs. She was selling because she needed money to buy clothes. An administrator says, “It didn’t occur to her to get a job.” As a Boufis points out, “knowing her education level, I wonder how easy it would have been for her to get one.”(Boufis, 100.) It seems like when people are around these situations all of their lives they don’t know anything else, they don’t know how to function as a normal person in society .Without knowing the people imprisoned personally, it is hard for us to actually understand them. Many aren’t given many options and have to turn to drugs in order to survive. Does this make them criminals, or does this make them like us just trying to get by. Amanda Coyne’s, “The Long Good-bye: Mother’s Day in Federal Prison” is an essay about a day in the life of mothers in prison. It’s Mother’s Day and families come to visit their loved ones in prison; whom many of them are mothers. When one hears the word mother, they don’t associate it with criminal; however, mothers do end up in prison. All of these mothers have done something wrong in order to end up there, but are they all criminals? One of the women is being imprisoned for ten years for conspiracy. Ten years for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When we know why she is there, do we still think of the word criminal? No, we think of the loving mother who is suffering because she made a mistake. In the essay her child asks, “Is my mommy a bad guy?” This is a very powerful question which prompts the answer, “Toby, your mother isn’t bad, she just did a bad thing.” (Coyne, 89.) Making mistakes is a part of being a human being and shouldn’t define you. Jose Antonio Vargas’s, “My life as an Undocumented Immigrant” reflects upon the life of an illegal immigrant from the Philippines trying to live his life in America like a normal person. According to the government and society, he is not a normal American; he is a criminal. Jose had to live his entire life in America as a lie. He had to always live his life in fear of being caught. He attended school like any other American child and graduated to go onto college. He went onto have a promising career as a journalist. According to Jose, “On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.” (Vargas, 220.) To American citizen this would be satisfying, but not Jose because he had to lie to people and hide the fact that he was a “criminal”. Jose later went onto say, “I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.” (Vargas, 220.) What makes Jose a criminal? The fact that he came from another country is no reason to depict someone as a criminal. Being a productive member of society should be enough to be accepted, but it isn’t. All three essays focus on the people that many of us would call criminals, but after reading them we come to a different conclusion. These people aren’t criminals but people that have been given difficult circumstances and have had to pay for it. It is hard to understand what these people had to go through, and the life they could have had.We know the type of people that are not a criminal, but makes someone a criminal? Criminals are the people that murder, rape, or cause harm to others. Criminals are the mothers and fathers that abandon their children and leave them to live a difficult life. Criminals are the people that tell others that they don’t belong because of where they were born. Criminal is a word thrown around today that has lost its meaning. Before labeling somebody a criminal, we should understand what that person has gone through and if it is justified to call them one. Works Cited |
The long goodbye mothers day in federal prison
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