Summary: Similarities Of Police Violence And Guard Violence

Similarities of the Police Violence and Guard Violence In the summer of 2015, I read a literature that theorizes about the police violence. In Police Violence (1959), Westley argues that the abuse of the power by the policemen are due to misunderstanding that the power, “a property of the state”, is thought to be given, not loaned, to be used “at [policeman’s] discretion”, and social nature of the job pressures one to adopt more cruel methods when dealing with the sexual deviants and felons, so that one can improve the “social status among the colleagues” (Westley, 47). When I was reading Solomon and the violence among the guards of the immigration detention centers, I saw some parallels to the work of Westley, since the socialization among the guards that dehumanize the “deviants” is recognizably innate to the violence in the detention centers.

Solomon, adding on the interview, expresses that “through their labor . . . own legitimacy (Solomon, 7). First parallel is noticed: the immigration enforcers use the power that is lent by the federal government in their discretion, to achieve a certain social status that puts a line between the guard themselves and the deviants. And unfortunately, the most efficient way to prove one’s sanity and loyalty is through attacking on sexuality and gender deviants, just like the police officers do to achieve the “status”