- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
For my paper I intend to approach both sides of the neoliberal question in my final paper, the first being how neoliberal policies created the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to mass incarceration, and the second being how neoliberal incentives have reinforced mass incarceration.
I chose to focus my research this week on the second part of this question – how do neoliberal incentives reinforce mass incarceration. In particular, I wanted to think about how neoliberal ideologies rationalize the privatization of prisons, which is a driving force in mass incarceration. For my research this week I read parts of The Privatization Decision, by John Donahue. This book is a political science book that discusses the privatization of services as a rational political decision. Specifically, the book discusses which services it makes sense to privatize (arguing that privatization makes sense when the service is clearly definable by officials, allows for clear evaluation of results, encourages market competition, and allows for failing contractors to be replaced) and when it makes sense to have the government directly provide the service (arguing that government implementation makes sense when officials are not able to draft detailed goals, or evaluate productivity, and when the task cannot inspire competition in the private market). I found it interesting to read this from a political science lens, because Donahue sees the decision to privatize as rational, which is exactly the neoliberal lens that I am interested in studying. Particularly, chapter 8, entitled The Private Prisons Debate (pg. 150-179) looks into how the government created policy that allowed for private prisons, contracting out incarceral services to private actors. This is a very useful source to me because it exposes the neoliberal ideologies that exist in government and create and reinforce mass incarceration that I hope to show in my paper. This is a very valid source, it is a 200+ page book published by a well know political scientist. While it is not a sociological source, I hope to use a sociological lens to interpret the reasoning of political scientists.
Comments:
I should read this book myself. It looks very interesting and I think it is a great idea for you to add this kind of source to your bibliography since it will help you follow the logic of a neoliberal form of justification for privatizing prisons, which will strengthen your own argument. It is based on what we talked about in class: growth model– a model that encourages the expansion of the market. It is indeed very interesting.