Reflection:

Mr. Bishop held a more international view of youth imprisonment and helped me relate my investigation to issues outside of Switzerland. To begin with, when he lived in the United States, he would volunteer to go to youth prisons to provide education for them, when telling me his experience and story he would link again many underlying issues with the US prison system, socio-economic background, culture and more, which I thought was extremely interesting and very similar to the situation in Geneva. I asked him many questions about his opinions and views on the matter, and whether he found that prison systems are doing enough for these younger inmates in order to create opportunities for them after incarceration but he felt as though the prison system was failing the inmates. We also discussed material such as the documentary 13th which highlights the exploitation of inmates and this made me interested to see whether Switzerland was also possibly taking advantage of prisoners for labour and economic benefits. Whilst he has had no experience or connection to Switzerland and the swiss federal system, he has a lot of personal and general knowledge regarding prison institutions and underlying causes and factors that inhibit progress. His international and more foreign perspective on the issue allowed me to broaden my understanding and engagement as well as see that certain issues are not only possibly regional or local, but almost global in many cases. He also acknowledges that many are uninterested in providing economic funding for prisons as they believe it is either a waste of money or that they do not want to invest their money into criminals. Whilst discussing with him, many of the issues Mrs. Babel was discussing were also issues he had experienced when working with the prison institutions and this again displays the how this issue is altogether one that will be very difficult to resolve. Even when it came to him volunteering to help educate the younger inmates, it was very challenging for him to get into them and sometimes the prisons did not want them there. He also shared a personal memory of a young boy that he met that was very kind and intelligent yet was in prison for a triple homocide, which comes to show how other influences further crime and violence. This also made me think of the youth inmate in the 13th documentary which was sent to a regular prison facility due to overcrowding or the sheer lack of effort to protect him, and resulted in him being emotionally and physically abused in the facility and forced him to end his life as soon as he was able to leave. I felt as though this clearly connected to the overcrowding prisons in Switzerland and I am sure this has happened before, which is also an important link to my research question in regards to how successful is the system in integrated these youth ex-prisoners into society once again without long lasting effects on their mental or physical health. Overall, the interview was very enlightening and helped me connect what I had understood from Mrs. Babel to a more international perspective.