Friday, February 24, 2012

McDonaldization is All Around Us.


       We have been talking about in class about McDonaldization and how it has an effect on our society. We see forms of McDonaldization everywhere around in today’s world. A big example of one of the first examples of this was Henry Ford and the invention of the assembly line and California’s Three Strikes Law. According to the McDonaldization of America’s Police Courts and Corrections, they say that the three strike law was made to increase the efficiency of the criminal justice process , but we know that is has had the total opposite effect. (Robinson,78)   

                                               (Example of one of the first assembly lines)
                                                          http://youtu.be/IXkxl8dSXb4

        The Mcdonaldization process represents the three components of the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system relies on these specific departments the police, courts and corrections each system containing a form of McDonaldization. The police are responsible for apprehending offenders in the system. The courts being responsible for determining the punishment factors and the correctional system being here to carry out the sentencing of the courts. All of these systems being involved in an assembly line such as the Ford T Model and McDonalds restaurants. I’m going to focus more on the prison impact of our society. A lot of people don’t agree with the fact that businesses are expanding due to the outrageous costs to increase prisons. To run a prison is no easy job, there are a number of people such as the warden, correctional officers and inmates who impact the prison systems. The assembly line of a prison starts at the police making and arrest up to the courts sentencing the offender and then finally putting the offender into the inmate status. Once put into the system they are then watched by correctional officers who are watched by the sergeants, lieutenants and chiefs who are then watched over by the warden and it doesn’t even stop there the line goes all the way up to the director of the prison and the governor of the state.

          We put all this money into a prison and half the time we can get the same exact thing for less. Things in every type of organization tends to get overlooked in many aspects. In ways we can compare and contrast the sizes that McDonalds offers and the types of security systems that prisons have to offer, maximum and super-max facilities. The sizes tend to increase and the value decreases, making things seem a lot better from individual’s perspectives. We build facilities that are over the top and spend too much money on expensive equipment, but what they should be doing is focusing on expanding and adding to facilities and improving space for inmates to hopefully decrease overcrowding in the prison systems.

         Either way this McDonaldization effect can be either positive or negative, but at least it’s a start to a development of a business or system. We need to focus more on what really is important and is perhaps overlooked in the criminal justice system. Maintaining order in law enforcement is not only important to everyone not just police officers, judges and wardens, the criminal justice system is the root cause of hopefully changing parts of McDonaldization.  
      
Video: http://youtu.be/IXkxl8dSXb4
Robinson, Matthew B. "McDonaldization of America’s Police Courts and Corrections". pg. 77-78. 

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