{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.017218543046357615, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0013245033112582781, 'mean_word_length': 4.90625, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Cancer of Punitivity

Chapter 6 raises crucial ethical and political questions about the practice of punishment by means of the prison. It discusses the central importance of power in the carceral environment and its potential for humanitarian abuse. After a reading of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ the chapter outlines G. B. Shaw’s and Karl Menninger’s metaphoric thesis of imprisonment as crime and goes on to present an analysis of punitivity in current penal policy and public polemic. The second half of the chapter turns to a delineation of the close affinities between penal punitivity and colonial oppression, analysing memoirs by Robben Island inmates and the Malawian Sam Mpasu, as well as poetry by Dennis Brutus and Jack Mapanje.