Attorney: Sale of Controlled Substances
The story is about a student, who is currently an attorney. He joined the college as a shy student, but everything else changed when he received his first student loan and met a friend by the name ‘Luke’. Luke was interested in making fast cash for running drug deals, and as such, he resolved to finance Luke’s activities since he had the money. He earned a percentage of the profits that were obtained from the drug syndicates and started living an incorporated lifestyle with lots of friends, most significantly girlfriends. With time, he started smoking as much as Luke could sell, but at the end, he managed to halt smoking without being caught. After college, he went to a law school and now works as an attorney in a firm and practices in another. His name has been run through various background checks, but he has nothing to worry about, because he was never caught and no records will show. Since he was never caught, nobody would label him as a chain smoker, therefore non-deviant. This explains the clearance that he enjoys while working, and the image his employers have about him is that he never participated in the sale of drugs.
The parallel story is about a lady who was in need of money to buy college books. She got employed to prepare and serve tea while dressed scantily, or in a bikini, but she felt harassed. Since her cousin moved to town, she helped him expand his drug peddling market to college students. Within a short while, she was arrested and she pleaded guilty to the charge. Consequently, she could not reside in the dormitory or with her Mom in a public house. She dropped out of college and now spends the night on her friends’ couches, in addition to strenuously attending forced classes and appointments ordered for by the court. During the previous week, she got a call from one of her former clients who was never caught or charged. Her client would be graduating from college in May. This lady is deviant because the society she was caught and police officers, together with judges have already labelled her a drug dealer, that is why her former clients still call her for supplies. She is unable to complete her school and now lives a strenuous lifestyle because of her negative image or picture as defined by the society.
The phrase ‘carceral culture’ gives the connotation of a restricted or controlled lifestyle. Using surveillance as a mechanism of social control would mean monitoring how rogue individuals or probable rogues behave, socialize, and communicate. To a larger extent, it would mean tapping their calls or monitoring the mails, messages, telegrams, and electronic mails that they send with the help of electronic devices or surveillance cameras and television sets. This makes the lifestyle of these individuals restricted, thus, they live a carceral culture. Since technology becomes more and more sophisticated, more so mobile or handheld devices, the chances of having surveillances meant for social control also become higher, and as such, it is becoming easier to identify and label individuals as deviant by authorities or police officers.