“‘Our leverage was the threat of death’” Todd Ashker, an inmate at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, responds to writer for New York Magazine, Benjamin Wallace-Wells. In 2013, Asher, along with about 30,000 other people held a hunger-strike. The California hunger-strike led by Ashker is better explained by the administrative-control theory because of a sense of injustice and the fact that no prison or prison system is ungovernable.
According to Bert Useem, a professor of Sociology in Purdue University, and Michael D. Reisig, a professor in the school of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, in Collective Action in Prisons: Protests, Disturbances, and Riots mention that “administrative-control theory postulates that inmates come to experience a sense of injustice…” (1999, pg.327). Injustice would give reason for the inmates a reason to protest. In the Plot from Solitary, Ashker initiated the hunger-strike, along with three other inmates who shared a pod with him, to protest that the …show more content…
(1999, pg. 327) Ashker and his fellow inmates had their own pods. They were governed, they were maintained, and they were kept safe and alive. Regardless of the situation of the inmates at the time, they initiated the hunger-strikes. After the hunger-strikes, Ashker has been “more insolated than ever.” Ashker’s television has been removed. His mattress is uncomfortable. Rarely gets any phone calls. This gives Ashker the reason to say, “I feel like exploding.” (Wallace-Wells, 2014, pg. 8) The prison system is able to keep their watch on Ashker and is able to reprimand him from his wrong doings by removing his television, giving him an uncomfortable mattress et cetera. So, it is true, “…that no prison or prison system is ungovernable…” (Useem/Reisig,1999,
According to Bert Useem, a professor of Sociology in Purdue University, and Michael D. Reisig, a professor in the school of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, in Collective Action in Prisons: Protests, Disturbances, and Riots mention that “administrative-control theory postulates that inmates come to experience a sense of injustice…” (1999, pg.327). Injustice would give reason for the inmates a reason to protest. In the Plot from Solitary, Ashker initiated the hunger-strike, along with three other inmates who shared a pod with him, to protest that the …show more content…
(1999, pg. 327) Ashker and his fellow inmates had their own pods. They were governed, they were maintained, and they were kept safe and alive. Regardless of the situation of the inmates at the time, they initiated the hunger-strikes. After the hunger-strikes, Ashker has been “more insolated than ever.” Ashker’s television has been removed. His mattress is uncomfortable. Rarely gets any phone calls. This gives Ashker the reason to say, “I feel like exploding.” (Wallace-Wells, 2014, pg. 8) The prison system is able to keep their watch on Ashker and is able to reprimand him from his wrong doings by removing his television, giving him an uncomfortable mattress et cetera. So, it is true, “…that no prison or prison system is ungovernable…” (Useem/Reisig,1999,