ABSTRACT
The chapter describes the different strains of single-mindedness aversion, aspiration and avoidance and documents the danger of their collective effect. There will be considerable evidence of this sort of single-mindedness as we describe aversion, aspiration, and avoidance. There is also a sense that the tone of some legal scholarship is not quite right, that it goes against the grain of most other writing about prisons: There is one final clutch of reasons we want to mention that might explain avoidance. We believe that legal consciousness and rights consciousness could usefully be explored by looking at the Non-government organization (NGO)s, at prison management and personnel, and at prisoners themselves. And we need to know if and how rights discourses disempower other discourses of justice. We also need to know about the role of courts in precise contexts: general democracy discussions do not draw out when, and where, the equalizing or levelling power of strong courts has been crucial.
