:: The 4th Era ::

Good discussion for syllabus dotpoint Human impacts on ecosystems within the HSC topic Ecosystems at Risk.

I chose to add this article into my folder because it talks about earth entering a new geological epoch. This is exciting yet scary news because it's mostly pollution that justifies /proves the new epoch. The news is exciting because it's something that we are currently experiencing. The evidence that proves the geological epoch on the other hand is terrifying. It just goes to show how awful we have been treating our planet like if the next generation is going to be finding fossils in plastic bags that is a problem.

This article is interesting from a geographic and social perspective, because the overhead pictures show just how much we alter the land with our prisons.  What is really interesting is how the US has less than five percent of the world's population but has one quarter of its prisoners.  Because of this, it can be inferred that the country has many prisons.  Yet, what astonished me about the prisons is that they seem to be out in the middle of nowhere.  The buildings seem expansive on the landscape and dominate it.  It just makes me wonder, how much does the United States spend on building and up-keeping these complexes.

This article explores a graphic representation of the quantity and volume of prisons throughout the United States. The project has no figures, statistics, or words - the pictures stand on their own as statements about the growing amount and size of prisons across the country. The photos show many rural prisons that house prisoners from urban areas, which changes both the areas where the prisons are and the areas that the inmates came from.

The photos are an intriguing visual of the money and materials put into prison systems in the United States. The photographer (Josh Begley) noted that upon seeing all the images together, the thing that stood out to him was that there were baseball fields in almost all of them. He says, "the baseball field mimicked the form about these buildings as well. There was something very American about it when I first saw it."

It's surprising to see how much material is necessary to, as the article described it, "warehouse" people. While prisons do more than just house inmates, seeing a visual representation of all the money put into prisons in the United States makes me wonder whether it could be better spent on reformed versions of prisons, rather than on maintaining the ones we already have and the new ones just like those that are currently being constructed.

- K

These picture demonstrate the power of satellite imagery and technology perfectly. While I am amazed by the sheer beauty in spatial organization and design by these prisons, I am horrified at the maps incarcerations that are occurring in America, especially the mass incarceration of poverty stricken minorities in America. Prisons demonstrate a larger social issue than what I previously thought. I never knew that such a thing as prison-based gerrymandering could even exist. Prisons demonstrate economic and political problems as well. With more prisons, state must allocate more of their budget to supporting these facilities. The fact that so many prisons are being built demonstrate a larger problem in the political world, and that maybe there is an issue with the justice system. Fixing the system would allow for states to allocate more money that would have been use on supporting prisons to supporting education and helping those who are less privileged.