Sarah Dover's Letter Summary

Decent Essays
Summarize: The author, Sarah Dover, urges the point that all prisoners deserve basic human rights. The idea is achieved through the use of Hamilton jail as an example. Dover claims that these prisoners’ voices are being silenced by the prison guards “are not working”. She claims that people that are treated the worst are the ones that have not yet been proven guilty. It is quite obvious that she is in favor of basic rights for prisoners. Dover ends her letter by claiming that human rights should never be used from bargaining chips in an argument. Human rights are concrete and cannot be taken away from the prisoners no matter what crime they commit or do while they are in prison.

Assess: This source is good when searching for a source that

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    According to Davis imprisonment has become an ordinary dimension of community life for men in working-class, Black, Latino, Native American and a slight percentage of Asian Americans, it has also become a continuous increasing issue for women in society. Davis points out astonishing facts of the involvement of inmates in prison construction,…

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Her book challenges us to stand up to the human rights havoc in our correctional facilities. As she so convincingly contends, the contemporary U.S. routine of super-imprisonment is nearer to new age slavery than to any conspicuous arrangement of criminal equity. One quote from her book that presents the matter in a rhetorical question, “the fact that more than two million people (out of a world total of nine million) now inhabit U.S. prisons, jails, youth facilities, and immigrant detention centers. Are we willing to relegate ever larger numbers of people from racially oppressed communities to an isolated existence marked by authoritarian regimes, violence, disease and technologies of seclusion that produce severe mental instability?” Davis even faced the effects of system herself when she was accused for plotting or conspiring regarding the 1970 armed control of a Marin County, California, court, in which four people were murdered.…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Letter To Margaret Sanger

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Ranjit 2 Sukripa Ranjit Edward Dudlo History 1302 3rd March 2017 Mothers seek freedom from unwanted pregnancies In 1916, Activist Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, United States. She was arrested and imprisoned for violating the Comstock Law of 1873. More than 250,000 women wrote to her asking for help and suggestion regarding pregnancies and birth control.…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He uses specific language like "caged" again to reinforce the subhuman treatment of criminals in prisons, adding to the view that jails rob people who need help of a chance to make up for their mistakes. Posing pointed questions at the readers, they must…

    • 1383 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Letter From Birmingham Jail” written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was composed to give his moral stance of the injustice, taking place during the time period of 1963 in the United States. The letter focuses directly on the inequality concerning the black community in Birmingham, Alabama. In order to show the importance of equality and racial justice he ambitiously uses rational, ethical, and emotional appeals throughout the letter. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s thesis expresses the reasoning of why he is in Birmingham and the relevance of his appearance. Injustice is happening in Birmingham and he cannot live life, pretending to not be troubled about the matters surrounding him.…

    • 144 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Joshua Strickland’s policy speech, “Prison Reform”, he discusses the present prison reform in the country. He shares his views while exploring possible solutions in effort to improve the conditions and the penalty system inside prisons all over the country. Strickland starts his speech with an analogy requesting his audience to do three things. First, he requested his audience to close their eyes and visualize the world as it is today, secondly, he solicited them to imagine their own perfect utopia and how it would be like and lastly, he asks them to merge these worlds together and consider the result.…

    • 909 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Under the U.S. Constitution, individuals who are sent to prisons are entitled to certain rights and liberties. Incarcerated individuals are guaranteed the rights to sustain a reasonable way of life. Some of the familiar rights afford to these incarcerated individuals include free from cruel and unusual punishments, access to the court, voices complaint about prison conditions, practice of free speech, press, and religion, free from discrimination and sexual harassment. Even though not stated explicitly incarcerated individuals have the right to receive medical care and mental health treatment guaranteed under the Eight Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court determined “it is but just [righteous] that the public be required to care for the prisoner,…

    • 1652 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Flight of Activism “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are”. These were the wise words of the reputable, Benjamin Franklin. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to address the horrendous issue in not only Birmingham, but the United States as a whole as well. Throughout this letter, King exploits many different rhetorical devices such as imagery, while portraying a multitude rhetorical questions all through this letter, and to convey a sense of powerful diction through the duration of this mind altering letter.…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Prison, as described, by Stanley is not a place where anyone wants to be (Williams, 9). Inmates in the main prison eat breakfast and dinner in a large cafeteria, for lunch all inmates are given brown paper bag lunches, eaten in their cells or on the exercise yard. Death row inmates do not leave their cells for meals, they are given their food through a slot in their door (Williams, 25). There is no privacy in prison. Each time a prisoner leaves his cell to go to another part of the prison, he is handcuffed and strip searched (Williams, 49).…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One thing that stood out from the reading was New York Theological seminary (NYTS) program which “offer a graduate program designed for long-term prisoners at the facility.” (Marable, 2011, p.387) I believe that we should support more program like this to educate prisoners. Education are very important in our society. The reading also discussed the racial discrimination in the U.S.…

    • 83 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Davis, explores the history of prisons in the United States of America, as well as their social, political, and cultural facets. Additionally, she makes the argument for the abolition of prisons within America. Throughout the book, Davis forms three main assumptions: racism is real and wrong, prisons are racist institutions, and prisons should be considered obsolete. To start, Davis argues that racism is real and wrong by examining the history of racism in the United States, and the way in which minority children are raised. Secondly, she points out that prisons are racist institutions due to the history of prisons themselves, as well as the way in which prisoners are treated.…

    • 1579 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Many human rights violations have occurred and been accounted for, supporting the idea that guidelines and handbooks simply are not effective. We must, at the very least, hold the legal systems accountable, reform the failing…

    • 1793 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Eliza Stacey's Letter

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The letter was written by Eliza Stacey to her father in law, Edward Stacey, impassionately described the hardships of her current situation at home, due to her husband's imprisonment. Eliza Stacey wrote her letter to persuade her father in law to help her family once again. Eliza Stacey opened her letter by stating her current hopelessness and sorrowfully reported the misery that her family went through. The opening sentence is highly exaggerated and unqualified. The mood of the letter is established through the opening sentence with Stacey’s usage of syntax and diction.…

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Vanson Ma 12/3/15 ENGL 2000 Rehabilitation vs. Punishment As Americans, we are very proud of our freedom. Ironically, the “land of the free” has more people imprisoned in proportion to its population than any other developed country in the world. There are over 2 million prisoners throughout the United States, and approximately 750,000 of them will be released within the year. With the current methods in place in the prison system, most offenders will likely fall back into the same way of life that originally landed them in jail. In fact, roughly two-thirds of prisoners being released today will end up back in prison within the next three years (Petersilia).…

    • 1667 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    One key element to providing those prisoner rights is the 8th amendment. The 8th amendment states that excessive bail amounts will not be charged to the defendant, and no cruel or unusual punishment will be imposed. Though this was originally only applied to federal prisoners, the U.S. Supreme court later began applying various aspects of the bill of rights to state jurisdictions as well. As such the 8th amendment became relevant to how inmates were being treated, and the conditions they were being forced to live under. Prisons are now accountable for filthy and unsanitary prison cells, as well as any misconduct on the part of the guards.…

    • 1256 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays