Global Citizenship And Prisoners Concern

Global citizenship insights varying positive responses to the abuse and violence observed in prison settings within and outside of Australian borders. () defines a global citizen as someone who looks beyond national borders, sees themselves as belonging to a world community and seeks to foster values and practices of benefit to broader well-being and cooperation. Modern containment/prison settings include but are not limited to prisons, juvenile detention centers, remand centers and processing centers. These forms of holding facilities are notoriously pronounced for their history of violence between contained persons and staff. As observed in the abuse of juveniles in the Winlaton youth training center in Nunawading, Victoria, and the Los Angeles county prison’s sexual violence against prisoners, the abuse of power demonstrated by prisons guards displays how different responses to miscarriage of justice are encouraged by global citizenship. Through the values of global citizens, beneficial changes to society are encouraged and have aided in the enhancement of a more civilized and equal society.

The idea of being a global citizen has been speculated as an important aspect of globalization, that is the development of a global civil society (). The significance of globalization in creating a fairer and more affable global community relates back to the aims and principles of global citizenship. A key value of global citizenship, being the act of looking beyond national borders, enabling international catastrophe’s to be learned from and worked on from the worldwide support and push for change. As stated by (), the best hope for the world is to learn from such appalling tragedies and move forward without compounding evil with evil through the involvement of concerned individuals in dialogue. A global citizens belief that they belong to a worldwide community enables the amplification of world problems, resulting in more people endorsing practices of benefit to broader welfare and collaboration instead of enabling segregation and indorsing the ignorance of international tragedies. These key aims of global citizenship, facilitating the development of a global civil society that benefits all through harmony and shared values for a better civilization.

() states that the aim of a youth training center is a form of modern containment that’s purpose is to rehabilitate teenagers with a criminal background back into society intending to aid in the prevention re-offending in the future. Generally, misjustice in an individual’s home country insights a stronger emotional response and gains more acknowledgment as opposed to an international matter, in the case of Winlaton youth training center, a good global citizen would care for both genders equally without favor of either and would show great concern over the abuse and prejudicial treatment of inmates, irregardless of their locality. The female detainees of Winlaton youth training center were racially profiled for their ethnicity (generally targeted if aboriginal) and placed into custody for fear of future threat through detainment after being caught committing minor crimes such as public drunkenness. Although Winlaton training center was originally a facility that housed both male and female youth members of society (this changed to a female only facility 20 years after opening), the women who had been detained there were generally subject to a lot more abuse. Once contained in the youth training center, many of the incarcerated were subject to harsh beatings, poor housing conditions, insufficient food and water access, with many of the females being sexually harassed or sexually assaulted. Global citizenship encourages people to foster values that benefit all others’ well-being and in the case of the abuse that the detainees of Winlaton youth training center were subjected to, global citizens should feel disgusted at the way these women were treated and would feel a great need to instigate change. After a public inquest was lodged on the conditions and treatment of the detainees by global citizens, Winlaton youth training center was closed in 1993 much to the relief of the hundreds of people whom had been forced to live there all at the hands of people who fought for a royal commission irrespective of their locality or place in society.

A model global citizen looks beyond national borders and cares about international misjustice the same amount as they would if the abuse of prisoners occurred in their home country. Much alike the Winlaton youth training center, there is strong evidence that race and gender played a strong role in the miscarriage of justice and the abuse of women in the Los Angeles County Prison. The female inmates of this prison spoke up on their experiences of sexual violence and rape that the prison guards had been inflicting on them as forms of punishment and to assert dominance over the women. Women in prisons across the United States have been subjected to structured and various types of sexual abuse including vaginal and anal rape, forced oral sex and molestation, demand of sex for drugs, safety, or favors, physically abusive pat searches and strip searches, inappropriate and unnecessary observation by male prison officers while naked or using the toilet, sexual threats and harassment (). Of the near one hundred women to come forward or make allegations of sexual assault at Los Angeles County Prison, 48% of whom had been abused were Latina, 33% were of an African American descent, 12% were white and the remaining 7% were of Asian descent. A true global citizen would care greatly for the exploitation and oppression of these women and would recognize the predation towards minority groups that aren’t ‘white Americans’. It was global citizens that pushed for the change in American laws in the 1960’s in order to enforce equality amongst races and to reduce prejudicial treatment towards African American people that caused their segregation from the wider, “whiter”, community. The Los Angeles County Prisons useless attempt to erase their extremely troubled reputation by changing their name to ‘California State Prison’ sparked fury in the eyes of past inmates and global citizens alike. These same global citizens have also been pushing for the investigations into more women’s prisons like Los Angeles County Prison that have been trying to abuse women based on their race and their perceived inferiority to men along with taking the steps to submit a request for a public inquest on the abuse of women at this particular prison.

Overall, the importance of global citizenship in enhancing fairness and growth in an ever-changing society is demonstrated through the relationship between global citizenship and making a change to legislature and community values. As observed in the instances of abuse by prison guards at Winlaton youth training center, that saw women being raped and assaulted, global citizens initiated the royal commission into the abuse of youths in this training center, generating Winlaton’s permanent closure. Similar to the miscarriage of justice that occurred at Winlaton, the correctional officers of Los Angeles County Jail also preyed on minority groups when abusing them verbally and sexually to assert dominance and exploit the inmates for money. It can be seen that there is a disgusting trend of victimizing women of aboriginal (in Australia) cultures or African American, Mexican and Asian women (in America), with the aid of global citizens, more steps are being made in order to minimize this inequality and abuse of women.