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jeffrey-anderson · 2 days

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Injustice in the Justice System: The Ethical Plight of Arkham Asylum

It is a common saying within Gotham City that you can set your watch off of Arkham Asylum’s regular breakouts.

Founded by Dr. Amadeus Arkham well over a century ago, this government-funded penitentiary has morphed from a well-meaning mental hospital to quite literally a house of horrors. Sanctioned as an asylum for the criminally insane in 19XX, Arkham Asylum has been affected by corruption and fraud every year since its founding - a reality only exacerbated by the breakout rates that have spiked by almost 46% annually since the Joker’s posting as a publicly known terrorist.

Anybody who lives in Gotham has been affected by the persistent breakouts plaguing the asylum. It’s been the Riddler’s bombings of the subway system. It was the threat of Gotham’s water supply being polluted by Joker toxin (only narrowly avoided by vigilante Batman’s interceptions). It was literally any Halloween these past few years. Take your pick.

Arkham Asylum is wholly an ethical nightmare. Its moral values and code of conduct have completely warped since its founding, and a lack of accountability has transformed it into an unethical hovel for anybody incarcerated there. Corruption runs rampant in the system. Any bribe of any size can be weaponised, and prisoners can do anything within and including escaping.

The poor legislation and the lack of accountability likens Arkham to the El Salvador gang jails. Both of them have death rates in the hundreds, and both do not receive programs preparing inmates for reinsertion into society. The two of them have inmates who are rarely - if ever - allowed outside.

These so called ‘reformatory’ institutions are unethical, unlivable hovels for anybody incarcerated. The abusive living situations make it a wonder any of Arkham’s convicts ever even consider choosing to stay within the prison walls.

Speaking of Arkham being an unliveable hovel - asylums throughout America have progressively gone out of style within the last forty years. However, Gotham is a city that leans more towards traditionalism - a view paired with and reflected throughout the city’s beautiful architecture and the scarcity of new bills, legislations and laws that are passed as a result of the city stagnating and being unwilling to create change.

This languishing, this lack of desire for movement and progress, is part of the systematic problems that threaten to topple Arkham. It is part of why it is inhumane.

Asylums have been going out of style for a reason - both sides of the system suffer. There is a relatively low rate of recovery from patients in asylums who are mentally unwell - even lower in Gotham City. Caregivers are pessimistic about their future outlooks because of the low success rates, feeding back into the cycle with no positive yield. This vicious pattern makes it nigh-impossible for anyone within the system to get any sort of fulfilment from it.

Although Arkham is officially a psychiatric ward, it houses patients who are arguably sane and yet are sentenced to life with the mentally unwell. Take Adam Bomb for example (article linked). Convicted of terrorism after trying to blow up the city, Bomb worked with criminally insane terrorist Firefly and thus was convicted of insanity beside him despite all claims that he was not mentally unstable.

It could be argued that these inhabitants aren’t perfectly sane, but an overwhelming amount of evidence from court records show otherwise. XX% of convicts in Arkham were allegedly intended to go to Blackgate Penitentiary, but couldn’t as a result of the overcrowding in the system. This whopping XX% percent of inmates, forced to live in padded cells and treated as less than human because of an insanity that they don’t have, live in an oppressive scheme which in turn makes it more difficult for actually unwell prisoners to receive the help they require. Furthermore, inmates who are criminally insane likewise suffer - the heightened risk of assault, dangerous gangs, and trauma in result of the organised crime fester a wholly unhealthy environment for the patients in the system who are meant to be there.

This misconduct is really highlighted in 20XX’s horrifically dubbed “Haunted House” breakout, where seven inmates (both sane and insane) attempted an escape. One of their psychiatric patients (a Ms. A. Smith) was killed in the panic after experiencing a psychotic break and subsequently attacking one of her fellow escapees after watching one of the sane male inmates assault a staff member.

The tragic events that transpired in the “Haunted House” jailbreak underline the desperation of reform required within our justice system. It is crucial that we address these issues within and around Arkham, as its current state has crossed lines and boundaries that even the worst cities throughout the globe have not passed.

Now, after considering these insurmountable problems, you may be wondering.

How is Arkham Asylum still standing?

Surely, some uncorrupted Gotham official is good, right? They would have seen the corruption, the abuse, the inhumane condition. Surely, somebody would have pushed for a change.

Well - you aren’t wrong. Arkham has been the focus of almost 15% of bills petitioned within Gotham City for eight years.

But there are good reasons why it is still functioning. Why nine out of ten of these petitions are rejected, despite the obvious poison to our society that it provides.

Arkham Asylum was made by a key founder of some of Gotham’s most foundational rules and regulations, Stuart Gordon. Nevada and Maine are the only other states to decriminalise sex work - but Gotham City, too, has special permissions under the state of New Jersey to abolish the law as a result of his work. Furthermore, Gordon pushed for Gotham to be one of the first cities (although highly debated and largely criticised at the time) to allow equal purchase and selling of property by minority groups within Gotham. Gordon’s lasting contributions to New Jersey’s sociopolitical landscape are likely partially why Arkham‘s presence continues to endure despite its increasingly intrusive existence in our modern society.

Arkham Asylum stands as a symbol of justice. Despite the rampant violence and a severe lack of accountability within its system, it is the most famous (and infamous) jail this side of America. When you look any closer at the system, its flaws and corruption reveal themselves to you in a disturbingly clear fashion. Yet when we think of the law, when we consider the justice system, Arkham is always the first to mind, given its wide discussion by people around the globe.

Arkham Asylum was a lot of money. A lot of money. For the first fifteen years of its construction, Gotham government’s annual transparency records reveal Arkham Asylum taking almost 40% of the budget allocated to police and law enforcement in its construction time. This rampant fund theft and poor budget of the government, exacerbated by the relative spike in crime rate during the years of its building, proves just how long they intend Arkham to stand. Why would the government put so much money into something that they didn’t intend to run in the long term?

These factors have made our authorities comfortable. Unaccountable. Stagnant. The level of ease that Gotham’s government holds about jailbreaks trickles down to regular citizens. They face no consequences from us as a result of our being excessively comfortable with the crime they permit.

If nothing is to change, we have a clear view on the future based on the long history we have with Arkham in the past. Gotham City’s complacency allows corruption to fester, and it leaves us citizens complicit in the tragedy of crime and disaster.

It is not too late to change course.

If we don’t stop this fraudulence now, it will be too late to change course.

The first step to change within others - our society - is change within ourselves and our standards. We must remind ourselves that this crime is not normal. Remind ourselves that we should not be comfortable. The disasters, the rampant crime and the rotating door of terrorists coming and going from Arkham is not something to be nonchalant about. We have to teach our children that the standards that Gotham’s bureaucracy sets for us isn’t acceptable, and that they should not be growing up with fear in their hearts and emergency exits in their minds.

Furthermore, it is imperative that we insist on more from our higher-ups. Allowing them to continue shrugging their shoulders and telling us that the establishment cannot be changed is only going to worsen the state of our city and justice system to the point of no return. We need to pressure new laws from them, so we can uproot the corruption that they have allowed to fester in our city for decades. We must demand new regimens for jails in order for us to be able to transfer inmates out of overstuffed systems and give resources to those who need it most.

Most importantly, we have to demand better, moral legislation. Regulations that seperate the harmless from the terrorists, and incite prisoners to remain in a prison that will not be cruel to them at every waking moment.

One voice can only do so much.

Many voices, speaking as a part of an undivided unit desiring wholly for change - that will get the government’s attention. That will make them feel the same discomfort we have been experiencing our whole lives. That will lead them to forging new change within this stagnant society, one which will better both the lives of AA’’s inhabitants and those of Gotham City.

Sign this petition, and stand with me. Stand with all of us who are appealing for a difference within a society. Help us create change that will last for generations.

-Jeffrey Anderson

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ryemiffie · 13 hours

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Not sure if this has been thought before, but I was thinking about Jason and Tim's relationship and how everything went down with Jason's whole revenge plan or whatever and I present the thought of:

Jason is revived, spends his time with the league and then goes and sees that Batman has 'replaced' him with Tim, of course he's hurt by this and he starts to question if Bruce ever really viewed Jason as a son or if it was all just in Jason's head, he doesn't want to believe that Bruce would replace him but the evidence is damning.

Jason being so hurt by this he decides he can't tell Bruce he's back, and goes on to plan all his Red Hood drama. At first Jason is content with doing what he thinks is right as Red Hood and is fine just killing the Joker on his own. As long as Joker is off the streets and can't hurt anyone else Jason thinks this will be enough.

Years pass and Jason has made a name for himself as the Red Hood, and during this time he has become accustomed to seeing Batman fighting alongside his new sidekick, his new Robin. Whether in passing or from a distance, Jason has seen how the two interact and function with each other, and he recognises how much Tim seems to care for Bruce. It's hurtful to think of Bruce having moved on and replacing him but Jason sees his younger self in the way Tim looks at Batman while they're in battle.

In this time Jason has not been able to bring himself to kill the Joker, his own mental turmoil at the idea of facing the man who killed him keeping him from acting on his anger, instead he only fights against the joker from afar, foiling his schemes in ways that didn't require him to ever actually have to face the twisted man.

Jason tries his best to avoid Batman and his new protege, and just continue working in the shadows of Gotham as Red Hood without having to deal with any conflict from the dark knight/his dad, while from afar feeling a sort of connection with Tim, he is technically his younger brother now right? Even if Jason can't bring himself to so much as wave in his direction when near enough that Tim might see him. During a team up of some kind, probably with someone like Harley Quin, Red Hood is informed of the Joker Jr incident and is suddenly filled with such rage, such anguish at the idea that not only had Bruce failed to save Jason, had let him die and then allowed the Joker to keep his own life, but that Bruce would allow Joker to hurt another one of his sons, to hurt Jason's brother. That even after seeing both Jason and Tim suffer at the Joker's hands that Bruce would still let that man continue with his life, continue to hurt people whether those people be members of the batfamily or just civilians caught in the crossfire of an endlessly painful rivalry between the clown and the bat. That Bruce would continue to take Tim out in the field and put him anywhere near the Joker to fight. When it was just for his own peace Jason could've ended the Joker on his own and let that be enough, sure it hurt Jason to think that the man he had seen as his father didn't care enough to avenge him but he would've survived, as long as he got to watch the life drain from Joker's face and the smile spill off his face when he died. But now, knowing what Batman had allowed to happen, not just to himself, but to Tim as well? It was just too much.

That would be the final straw. The thing that makes Jason finally go directly after Joker, to reveal himself to his father, to scream at him and air out his pain, his sorrow and his anguish, yelling "How could you let him do it? How could you let him continue living after what he did to me? How could you have allowed him to live on to hurt Tim? You couldn't protect me so why didn't you protect him? Was it not enough? To lose me? Was that not enough to make you realise? If I wasn't enough why wasn't Tim? It should've ended with me and it needs to end with Tim! How many more Robins will you let him hurt beyond repair? How many Bruce?! You need to end this! Please end this! If you couldn't do it for me please do it for Tim, he deserves better than you gave me!"

Anyway, just a thought I had. it's kinda hard to articulate in this typa format but maybe I'll write it out as a fanfic and it'll make more sense? Don't know if I will though, let me know if that's something anyone would be interested in I guess. But yeah, I'm just like really interested in Jason and Tim's dynamic and the potential they have for brotherly angst and shenanigans so I might just write some random Tim and Jason interactions for funsies whether or not I decide to post 'em.

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