What police procedures are used during arrests, and how do these procedures lead people to feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized?

Please login to the following Web page: http://www.prisonexp.org/ and take a tour through the slide show, which shows actual footage of the Stanford Prison study.

Please respond to three (3) of the following discussion questions;

What police procedures are used during arrests, and how do these procedures lead people to feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized?

If you were a guard, what type of guard would you have become? How sure are you?

What prevented “good guards” from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards?

If you were a prisoner, would you have been able to endure the experience? What would you have done differently than those subjects did? If you were imprisoned in a “real” prison for five years or more, could you take it?

Why did our prisoners try to work within the arbitrary prison system to effect a change in it (e.g., setting up a Grievance Committee), rather than trying to dismantle or change the system through outside help?

What factors would lead prisoners to attribute guard brutality to the guards’ disposition or character, rather than to the situation?

What is “reality” in a prison setting? This study is one in which an illusion of imprisonment was created, but when do illusions become real?

Post your answers to the discussion board and comment on at least two posts of your classmates.

Prof. Karina