ethnography

Brooke McKinnon

Holly Pappas

English 101

May 10, 2012

Ethnography

As for the fact that I chose criminal justice as my theme, there are many different environments that I could go to that would express different natures of the people in that environment. Seeing people who have committed a crime and watching them learn from their mistakes is something that at some points, can't really express much besides feeling. In my past 18 years, I have myself have been able to witness what a jail cell and what the inmates look like. There's not much to say about them besides the fact that they are all about feeling. Seeing them in the cell shows nothing but them being upset and very mopey. For this ethnography I feel like going to see more inmates might not give me enough room to explain different points of their daily lives and better yet their stories. Thinking more and more about different environments for my theme, I thought about maybe the people that work with criminal justice as their job for example police officers, detectives, etc. Observing police officers in my city of Westport, not much goes on at one time. Therefore I would definitely need to observe a place much more exciting where there is a lot more stuff going on that I could capture and write about. In Fall River, exciting criminal stories are almost always happening every hour of the day. Actually being with a police officer for the day or even a couple hours would not be easy to do though. They don't let just anyone go in the car with them to enjoy the ride. At this time point, violence is happening throughout many different ages, starting from almost 15 to around 70. Maybe some of them may not be as serious, but a lot of them are entertaining which something that really interests me is. The easiest way for me to be able to observe something like that is to maybe observe of interview the security guards on the BCC campus. They aren't out fighting crimes everyday, but they definitely go through many different calls daily on campus whether it’s from fighting, to getting a ticket. It would also be very entertaining considering the fact that I am almost always on the BCC campus and this is something that most of the students can relate to and get a better point of view on.

For the ethnography, I did get to observe something that goes on in the crime world but not as much as I really wanted to view.  On May 1, 2012 I visited the Westport, MA police station located on Main Road. When I arrived there I talked to one of the dispatchers about what exactly I would be able to witness and watch. She told me basically the only thing I would be able to watch was her and her other dispatcher partner and see what kind of phone calls they get daily. She started to explain to me that during the day is when they mostly get phone calls for senior citizens. Because most senior citizens are living on their own, they usually call because they are lonely and can get attention; basically just someone they can talk to. Because Westport is such a small town, not much goes on. They basic phone calls that they receive are mainly assault and battery, or medical ambulances.  The police officers in Westport are known to drive around aimlessly and pull people over as much as they can because that is basically the only money they are really making.

All in all, I’m glad that I did visit the police station because I did learn a lot about my own town in the end. Except for the fact that I didn’t get to actually see much besides a walk around the police station, I’m glad that I did get to see something.