SS2030 Introduction to Criminology

Semester A 2021

Reflective Worksheet
This is worth 25% of your overall grade. The word count is 1000 words, including all refer-
ences. You may go over the word count by 10% (1100 words).
Please submit your work to TURNITIN by September 27th Monday 2021, 7pm.
Late submissions will be penalized.

Name / SID: Pang Lok Tung/56622188

Instructions
1. Please watch the following YouTube video ‘How Yoga can Help California Over-
crowded Prison’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWik2Hr5Scc

2. You are not expected to provide an academic discussion, your personal reflection on
the topic is what I am looking for.

3. Feel free to refer to other relevant source, use English sources.

Questions
(1) In your opinion, is introducing yoga and meditation programs an effective way to re-
educate prisoners? Why? (maximum 600 words)

(2) In general, do you think prison is effective in keeping crime rates low? Why? (maxi-
mum 400 words)
SS2030 Introduction to Criminology
Semester A 2021

(1)
In my opinion, introducing yoga and meditation programs can be an effective way to re-
educate prisoners, but the effectiveness might be different for different kinds of prisoners.
First of all, as the video clip mentioned, yoga and meditations can help calm the prison-
ers. Yoga relaxes the prisoners, helping them to sleep better, it also help release stress
and brings brighter moods1, while meditation has similar benefits, it help reduces negative
emotions, letting them learning to manage their stress and increasing patient and toler-
ance2, which are very important elements for re-educating prisoners, as they usually have
aggressive mood and feeling stressed all the time. I think to re-educate a person, starting
with their mental health could be the most effective way, as human is easily affected by
their emotions.
However, not every prisoner can be re-educate only by yoga and meditation. From my
points of view, I think female offenders are more acceptable on yoga when comparing
with the male. There is an inherent impression that female are more good at doing yoga
than male, therefor male might think it is a girlish activity and refuse to do so. As yoga
and meditation depends a lot on the person willingness to do it themselves, if they are
only force to do so, the effectiveness maybe much lower.
On the other hand, aggressive crime and white collar crimes may also have different reac-
tion on yoga and meditation program. Aggressive crime, which include rape and sexual
assault, robbery, assault and murder3, will be affected more by yoga and meditation than
white collar crimes. As aggressive prisoners’ mental health are more likely to be worse,
they are having a more rude and violent motive, which means they will need a way to
solve their anger, and to sooth their rage. During meditation, they will have a private time
to reconsider the path they choose, the mistakes they have made, and a quiet time can
help them to release stress. Therefore, yoga and meditation in this case can be very help-
ful. For white collar crime, their motive might be much softer, for example to obtain or
avoid losing money, property, or services or to secure a personal or business advantage4.
They make no harm to people in physical, and the crime admitted are nonviolent. I think
yoga and meditation might still help in reconsidering their own mistakes, but the effec-
tiveness will be much lower when comparing to aggressive offenders, because their mis-
take are less serious, and they maybe less guilty for admitting crime, after all they just
made financial losses to the victims.
Despite of doing yoga and meditation, there are other alternatives to reeducate the prison-
ers. One of the example is using color. The use of pink in prison cells has been experi-
mented in several countries across the world, including the United States, Switzerland,
Germany and Spain5. It is used to calm aggressive prisoners, looking at pink walls all the

1 9 Benefits of Yoga
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/9-benefits-of-yoga
2 Meditation: A simple, fast way to reduce stress
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/meditation/in-depth/meditation/art-20045858
3 Violent Crime | National Institute of Justice https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/crimes/violent-crime
4 White-Collar Crime https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/white-collar-crime.asp
5 There’s a Science-Backed Reason Why These Prison Cells are Pink https://fotoroom.co/pink-cells-
angelique-stehli/
SS2030 Introduction to Criminology
Semester A 2021

time make them feel calm and relax. It might also be an effective way to “re-educate”
prisoners from the inside.
To conclude, having yoga and meditation program might have different results in differ-
ent gender, and different types of crime. However, overall, I still think these are a quite
effective way to help release stress and build up a brighter mood for the prisoners. They
can have a private time doing different activities instead of having a boring jail life. Help-
ing them from the inside is definitely a effective way to re-educate them.

(2)
Prison is definitely a good way to keep crime rate low.
Firstly, prisoners should receive their punishment for admitting crime. Of course despite
of sending them into jail, there are still a lot of way to punish them, such as paying fine,
doing volunteer work. However, the above situation cannot stop them from admitting
crime again. Some of the prisoners might have admitted crime because of the unstable
emotions, even if they had paid fine or being watched, they can still have the chance to
admit crime again. Also, after they had an experience on doing bad things, they will have
the courage and tips to do it again, which can’t keep the crime rate low. Therefore in this
case, it will be much better if you keep them in the prison. In the jail, they can’t get in
touch with the outside world a lot, a fixed schedule is planned for them, and they will
need to discipline themselves. With the guards’ eyes on them, how can they admit crime?
Also, after the well-disciplined life in jail, many of them would have got used to it, and
they can be a better person when they get back to the society. That’s why sending them
into the prison will be an more effective way.
Secondly, sending prisoners into jail can also alert people from admitting crime. The pun-
ishment must be strong enough so that citizens will not admit crime easily. Some people
might suggest to have death penalty, I strongly disagree with that. 6Death penalty cannot
help with anything, sending the prisoners to death instead of re-educate them is a violent
move. Why should we use violence to punish a person that is violent? That really doesn’t
make sense. This is not a solution for punishing people, nor to comfort the victims. We
can see from India, even with death penalty, their crime rate is still high and increases
from time to time.7 Many people may think wasting time in jail is even worse than death,
imagine you have to stay in the same place, having the same routine everyday for years.

Therefore from my points of view, prison is the most effective way to re-educate prison-
ers and alert people who are still thinking of admitting crime. It can definitely keep the
crime rate low.

6 Death Penalty | Amnesty International https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/

7 Crime in India https://www.numbeo.com/crime/country_result.jsp?country=India