Scholars have already started talking about needing to reconstruct our understanding/assumptions about sex offenders. The intervention in this article is pushing scholars/readers/culture to go a step further and look at the online predator as well.

The analyses of all four narratives support the overall argument, which is that the media construction of the online predator is limiting and ineffective.

RQ: what are the limits of and problems with the construction of the online predator as a key site of sexual danger that is located in a specific embodied identity?

Method. I think it's effective/interesting (maybe necessary, depending on how much attention the event received from the media) to use multiple genres of media in a discourse analysis.

Intervention: he tells judges what they need to do and how we need to change our understandings in order to make the judicial system function more effectively

This is also a primary argument that he sticks with throughout the entire chapter: since the incorporation of mental illness/psychiatry into the penal system, we make decision based on who people are, not what they do.

I think this is one of Foucault's interventions, as he is pushing back on the modern system that we all subscribe to, which gives society certain rights over an inidividual rather than letting the individual have rights of his own.

More arguments based on the facts/research/historical information presented.

Another argument: when we made mental illness part of penal/legal considerations, we started to develop the characterization of criminals as insane/psychologically unstable. As well as the characterization of anyone with mental illness as dangerous

This is interesting, and makes me think about how a situation like this would be handled today and if that argument would hold up in court. I'm guessing if the family of the person had enough money, they would be able to hire a lawyer and pay for their loved one to be in a psychiatric hospital of some kind. A poor person would probably end up in solitary.

I suppose the "method" here is to case studies and historical examples that he provides to illustrate his argument

Start of the argument

This definitely applies to how women are told to understand assault/sexual violence. I think media change our understanding of the kind of person that a woman (or anyone) should be fearful of. Rather than an abusive partner, it's the crazy man hiding in the backseat of your car.

I don't feel as though the argument was very strong here. I was expecting a portion of this chapter to synthesize what the author found in thee 3 different kinds of films, to conclude with some more statements of significance. I'm not really convinced that there is an intervention here, besides just the idea that we need to further examine violent movies to see what they say about the nature of crime. I was also expecting the author to tie in more commentary or statistics about the effects of violent films on our understanding of crime.

RQ: what do violent films (slasher, serial killer, and psycho) say about criminal nature?

The method is analyzing slasher, serial killer, and psycho movies. Looking at their constructions of the criminals and what reality it might create for peoples' perceptions of serious crimes.

Ahmed's method is an analysis of Neighborhood Watch discourse (leaflets, popular articles, etc. )

re: argument

This gets at why there are so many more black people locked up for drug use, when white people use drugs at the same rate. There's plenty of white kids in suburban neighborhoods using/selling drugs, but they're never suspects because they aren't "strangers"

And where there are community members who have the free time/privilege to attend neighborhood watch meetings, volunteer for it, etc.

This reminds me of when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. As the neighborhood watch captain, Zimmerman was looking out for "strangers" who didn't belong in his gated community. The stranger, in this case, (and in a lot of cases, since the "stranger danger" concept is so racialized) was a black child in a hoodie.

I remember listening to this Here & Now segment) about gated community group think, which I think really applies here.

I think this is an overarching research question. "How does the discourse surrounding stranger danger prompt us to differentiate between who is a stranger and who is not?"

This further illustrates the argument and the RQ.

Main argument. The next few sentences go into a little more detail about the "techniques" and defining "stranger"

Argument for this chapter and for the whole book: we need a more complex understanding of how prisons (don't) work. We need to open up our minds and surrender the idea that prisons are necessary for a society to function.

Interventions. She lays out specific alternatives as a starting point and encourages the readers to go beyond what she's listed.

This, and the following paragraphs, are Davis's final and primary interventions of the book. She calls upon readers to expand their thinking beyond the notion that prison abolition means that prisons will all of a sudden disappear and we'll have to find some place to put all the "bad guys".

She calls for creative alternatives at all levels of society, recognizing how all parts of our culture are interconnected in a way that upholds the punishment culture and PIC.

This is one of Davis's interventions: stating that it is not enough to recognize the power of prison privitization, but that we must investigate how corporations are upholding and contributing to the PIC.

As mentioned by others, this is where Davis sets up her argument about how prisons profit off of the exploitation of incarcerated individuals (largely poor POC) and are entrenched in capitalistic values/norms.

I especially like this point. Male prisons cannot and should not function as "the punishment norm," as the issues that women face in prison are much different than those of men. The "feminist" notion of equality in the different facilities just ends up further oppressing incarcerated women.

Davis argues that our focus within prison activism/research is too male-centric and ignores the "centrality of gender to an understanding of state punishment." The issues that women face in a correctional facility are often completely different than the issues that men face.

Here, Davis sets up her intervention for the chapter by calling on scholars and organizers to recognize the gendered structure of prisons and punishment.

Davis uses this anecdote about Malcolm X to prove how the prison system is not rehabilitative. In order to engage in rehabilitative practices like education, Malcolm had to resist and work against the regime itself. In citing this story, Davis doesn't just argue that the prisons aren't working, but that they are the opposite of what we're told they are.

Here, Davis goes into the history of "prison reform," which falls in line with her method for the rest of the book: gathering historical evidence and contemporary anecdotes/statistics to connect her points to one another and prove her argument.

It's interesting to think about how women may have been, in a way, disadvantaged by not being subject to incarceration, but to private forms of punishment. As Davis attests to, domestic violence and punishment within the home is much more difficult (nearly impossible) to regulate from a public level, so violent corporal punishment against women continued for much longer than it did for men.

This is one of Davis's interventions. She doesn't just provide a history of how slavery/incarceration are connected and intertwined, but encourages the reader to interrogate what they've been taught and engage in critical questioning beyond the pages of this book.

This makes me think of what the "exception" would be if we were to abolish prisons. I see the abolishment of prisons creating a moral panic, where we find reasons to keep people (especially poor people of color) incarcerated, or as close to "incarcerated" as we can. When I think about this, I see the possibility of those people being transferred to psychiatric hospitals/facilities and those facilities becoming a new sort of prison.

I think this is one of the existential questions (maybe not a research question) of the chapter/book. On one hand: slavery was abolished, but racism still very much exists. However, through the historical links she examines, Davis argues that mass incarceration & the PIC is essentially the re-manifestation of slavery. So, have we really "eliminated" slavery?

Just a general comment: I loved how she used this case study of CA prisons to represent the larger issues she speaks to. The methodical expansion of the prison system over the last century+ is simultaneously shocking and expected. I'd be interested in seeing how these numbers have changed, as I know that CA passed a law in the last few years that has now shifted the overcrowding issues from prisons to jails.

I think this last sentence encompasses Davis's argument and intervention.

Argument: prisons are not the way to keep our society "safe" and stop crime from happening. They are especially unjust for the number of ways they oppress poor people of color.

Intervention: anyone who knows about the criminal (in)justice system, prison industrial complex, or mass incarceration likely agrees that prisons aren't working. The immediate assumption (both from policy makers and the general public) is that we should fight for prison reform. However, Davis argues that we should go further and "creatively [explore] new terrains of justice," where prison is no longer something that consider inevitable/necessary.

Similar to Leah's comment on the next question Davis poses: I think this is getting at a research question. As other peers have said, I don't think "are prisons obsolete?" is the RQ, because her arguments are much more nuanced/complicated than that.

Davis goes on throughout the book to dispel myths about incarceration and the PIC and push the reader to consider prison abolition rather than prison reform.

Again, this gets at an intervention, but it's not strong enough for me (as others have mentioned). Who are these "some people" that the author talks about? I think this would be a good place to include specific activists/organizations/etc. that are doing this work.

As I previously mentioned toward the beginning of the piece, the most frustrating part of this chapter is that many claims were not adequately supported. In this paragraph alone, the author says "lots of activists," "many people," "some people," and "others." But who is she talking about?!

I think the author could have done a better job tying hate crime legislation and LGBTQ rights into these 5 points. I forgot that the primary argument was about the limitations of hate crime legislation, because it was hardly mentioned in this analysis.

Yes! I think this is the beginning of an intervention that the author is trying to make to extend the argument that the criminal justice system does not adequately prevent violence. The author calls for readers to take action by recognizing the frequency of violence and to "focus on how to prevent violence and heal from it." It's not a very specific call to action, but it opens the door for one.

Hints at the RQ: how/why is hate crime legislation ineffective at preventing violence and bringing justice/accountability to perpetrators and the community after said violence has occurred?

Method: analysis of five realities of violence and the criminal justice system.

I see this as the authors' primary intervention, as it expands upon their original argument. It's common to think that the "who cares?" isn't necessary when speaking to an audience of people who clearly care about the issue you're speaking/writing about. However, the authors argue that generally, we should always include statements/questions that explain why what we're saying matters.

I agree with the authors that this "dramatic tension" is helpful, even necessary, if you expect your audience to care about what you're saying. However, I think they could have mentioned the importance of knowing your audience. For instance, "dramatic tension" will mean something completely different for a theoretical piece in an academic journal vs. a lecture to a room of college students, even if the topic is the same.

I like the idea of being explicit with the "who cares?" question, but I'm not on board with Graff's suggested template here. Maybe it's just the way it's worded, but I think there's more eloquent ways of asking the same thing that would fit better with Grady's writing style that I'm gathering from the excerpts included in this chapter.

For the method, the authors dissect this passage from a NYT article. I think this method was effective. However, I think it may have helped to analyze more than one article, to show a wider variety of techniques that authors might use to show the significance of their arguments.

Agree with what others have already said: this is the primary argument, which is further addressed at the end of the first paragraph on page 93.

Graff is arguing that speakers/writers/lecturers will tell audiences that what they're saying holds significance, but never specify why their arguments matter. This leaves the audience uninterested in learning more after they leave the talk or finish reading the article.