Prisons

That, or they didn't run fast enough.

The "best" is the jail in Arizona, called "Tent City". Tent City is exactly what it sounds like: a pile of tents in the middle of the desert, obviously not air conditioned, with a huge fence around it. The conditions are just barely on this side of brutality (it gets to be around 130F out there, and there is no shade sans inside the tents). Food is overheated balony sandwiches. There have been a lot of battles as to whether or not this is cruel and unusual punishment; Sheriff Joe Arpaio says no, prisons are overcrowded, this is what these people deserve, they are criminals.

Keep in mind that, for obvious reasons, Tent City cannot contain actual violent hardcore criminals being as it is not exactly the highest level of security. Who is in Tent City, then? Mostly petty thieves and drug offenders.

It fucking makes me sick to be honest.

Note: I have been locked in a dank basement for the past 23 years, with only a television set playing loops of government-funded antidrug commercials to keep me company and teach me to read and speak, so my opinions may be biased.

0.7% + the number of people employed to run prisons, which is a mjor industry in some places. The Fast Food Nation guy wrote an article about this.

And every year every inmate costs US the tax-payers $30-60K each.

Urgh. I am fairly hardline when it comes to prison treatment but this skeeves me out beyond words. Sell a dimebag in Tempe and get three years of scalding hot balony sandwiches and vicious heat poisoning. YEAH THAT'S FAIR.

when those mexicans get a name as good as fife symington, then we'll talk

Hey, wasn't he in A Tribe Called Quest? FIFE-DAWG!

Who are these people? One of every 15 inmates is a woman. Forty- six percent of those behind bars are African-American, 36 percent are white and 16 percent are Hispanic. Nearly one in every 10 black men between the ages of 25 and 29 is in prison, compared to 1.1 percent of whites and 2.9 percent of Hispanics in the same age group.

Sorry to keep ruining this perfectly good thread. I'll go back to my basement now.

I'm not just talking scalding hot here--you'd often see sandwiches that were turned green being served. Arpaio was proud of this: "We aren't wasting the tax payer's money, if they don't want to eat it, then they don't eat at all."

I really wish I was making this up. I could talk for hours about the horrors of the Maricopa County Police Department. The most disgusting, stomach turning story I ever heard about cops involved a teenager who stole a car and took it joyriding. Cops follow him down, not a chase mind you but just followed at distance. Kid pulls into a Circle K and suddenly is surrounded by cops--we're talking eight or nine squad cars for this ONE truck. Which is, you know, whatever, but obviously the kid freaks, tries to back out, taps one of the cars.

The cops proceed to blow away the car, 116 shots total. Most of the shots, inexplicably, were focused on the passenger side.

Passenger side was kid's pregnant girlfriend, who by all accounts had no idea her boyfriend stole the car.

One of the cops ended up getting a fucking medal a year later, something else. None disciplined. Local reaction? Mexicans shouldn't joyride, and girl was a slut anyway.

This is nothing about prisons since they didn't really have a chance to make it there but anyway. US justice system ain't fo' shit.

In that case, wouldn't most of them have shut down by now, being that the privately run companies are being liquidated by the recession?

I think the fact that a similarly disproportionate number of minorities live in poverty has more to do with it than out-and-out racism.

Dan, trust me, it's a good thing the right to crucify is denied most of us.

A very cynical portion of me thinks that as long as the US conflates racial issues with class issues, the far right can continue to denigrate minorities from behind a safe smokescreen while the moderate left can continue to patronize them by organizing awareness seminars and sensitivity-raising exercises as opposed to actually funnelling money into their communities. (The far left is too busy worrying about animal rights to give a fuck about other human beings of their own ethnicity, let alone "others".)

The moderate and radical left aren't known for their ability to funnel money anywhere, much less specific communities. And it's all so capitalist...

Last I heard one fo them was on the brink of bankruptcy, which brought up the isssue of what you do with prisoners if the company keeping them goes belly up.

The left has resources, just as the right does. The main issue is that there is more overlap in the various special interest groups who make up "the right" than there is amongst "the left" and "the right" can therefore come to compromise positions faster and present a unified front when election time comes. Also, the right appeals to the rich much more than the left because a cornerstone of the right's message is "use government to save you money" while the left says "pay more now for a brighter future for everyone tomorrow". Competing appeals between greed and compassion will usually swing towards greed because people are by nature self-involved and self-interested.

Might be naive, Dan. Shame you have to be frigging right, too, though.

I think the better question is, "How do you convince rich people who have decided against the compassionate system that it is in alignment with their interests?"

1. I knew a girl who worked in a prison for a year or in college. She told stories of prisoners who would piss and even ejaculate on to her as she walked by the cell doors.

2. I knew a kid at my college whose father worked in the prison system, and he worked there frequently during high school summers. He said the prisoners had it easy.

This thread seems to be less about the prison population and situation and more about the treatment of nonviolent drug offenders vs. murderers, kidnappers and rapists in this country.

Consider the fact that true justice is completely impossible to achieve.

Now consider the fact that the goal of prison is to prevent crime, either by locking away certain types of people forever because they cannot be relied on to follow the law, or by scaring the shit out of otherwise law-abiding persons so that they never break it again.

I heard on the radio recently that some state is starting a program of 4-month sentences for several nonviolent offenders to keep costs and prison population down, and it appears to be working rather well. 4 months isn't long enough to completely ruin someone's life and create an atmosphere conducive to recidivism and just long enough to put the fear of God into the sort of person who ends up in jail out of [bad luck + dumb] more than criminal intent.

I'm not going to participate in this thread much -- nor even read it, likely -- because of my personal experiences, but the above isn't accurate. What the goal of prison is has been the subject of a lot of debate within the prison industry -- yeah, it's a funny term, but go figure, people do work there and some of them think about what they do -- and there just isn't anything like consensus. Some prisons seek to reform. Some prisons seek to prevent. (Those aren't the same thing.) Some prisons don't try to do anything more than punish, and make no bones about that.

Anyone's experience in prison is going to vary greatly depending on where they're imprisoned.

Like I've mentioned on other threads: my brother was in prison for seven years, most of it federal, at three different levels of security. It's never easy in the long term, but the short-term can be very easy -- when he was in minimum security, he had a room larger than any dorm room I've seen, cable television with HBO, a Super Nintendo, and a hot plate to cook on if he didn't feel like going to meal hour.

At another place, he spent a month in a closet because the guy in front of him in line pushed the guy in the next line over.

It varies.

The whole way drug laws in the US are laid out is fucked up IMO.

but then i grew up in bloody arizona so i may have a slightly more cynical take on the question than most.

It IS possible for rehab to work for some offenders, but how to deal with those initially in prison for more serious offences? 120 days is only enough to scratch the surface. Some are adept at playing the model prisoner, until they get released.

Did you family have to buy him all of these items from the prison system, with no option of keeping any of them when he got out? (I wouldn't be suprised to see prisoners have to buy all of their food someday, like in a Mexican prison.)

I mean we could pay them more. Maybe higher salaries for the police would attract higher quality people. Then if they got respect from more folks instead of always catching shit they might stick around and enjoy their job because they get to serve the public, and not because they get to carry loaded guns everywhere and drive fast.

Basically - cops are doing a job that 95% of us would want NO PART OF, especially not as a lifetime career. Complaining about the behavior of cops at this point is like complaining that the high school janitor smells like cheap whiskey every day.

The best part about the police system in this country is that since suburbanites pay more taxes (even if they earn all that money in the city), cops in low-crime areas almost always get paid much better than their colleagues in the city. DC and NYC are great examples of this shit - I imagine SF and Atlanta are probably pretty similar.

But we don't give the janitor the power of life and death. No matter what kind of money they make, we have the right to expect some basic human decency out of cops, and not vicious, unnecessary deaths.

No to both -- he could be given money to buy things either by mail order (only if they mail things in a package clearly labelling where it comes from, etc.) or from the store, and my mother gave him money for Christmas and his birthday -- but he also earned money doing whatever jobs he was assigned at the time (dishwashing, etc.)

The TV and cable were provided automatically -- he bought the hot plate and the Super Nintendo.

True enough, and you already know my opinion of the pay scale of the NYPD (for everyone else, it is absolutely repugnant that Suffolk County PD makes at least twice NYPD despite the fact that like half of Suffolk County works in the city, and there is a helluva lot more crime here). However, that really hardly excuses the behavior exhibited by certain police departments on a regular basis.

Maricopa County PD examples are easily explained: funded by wealthy neo-Nazi voter base=hiring neo-Nazi public servants.

the purpose of prisons should be rehabiltation, they eventually get out, and really i do not want to see these people worsened.

the best way to rehabilate is of course making sure that people eat, are clothed and educated, but then that would mean beliving in radical egliatrianism, which isnt happening soon.

so what we have instead is a racist, classist, homophobic and viloent method of social crime.

we need to stop treating intelligent adults as petulant infants.

xpost: anthony not all of them are intelligent adults.

i think that we can convince them what they have done is wrong, and that they can never do it again.

i also think it is wider and deeper in the culture then we suspect (lolita, britney spears, school girls, steacys mom by fountains of wayne, sally mann) and that we need to make a difference b/w pedophilla and ephebophilia or in laymans terms between 7 and 17.

also their is so little research done into this, b/c of the tendency to view it as lock them up and throw away the key. They are still using skinners methods, which are deeply ineffective.

as for rapists and serial killers-- the jesuits said "give me a child at 5 and i have them for the rest of their lives. i belive that, and think that most of the perptrators of sex crimes showed behaviour that indictive way before they did anything to people.
(for example, if we caught dahmler killing kitty cats at 10, we could have dealt with it then, and we wouldnt have a cannibal on our hands)

and do you want to know something.
if we actually tried something new we might have miracolus results.

There is also the issue in deciding whether or not someone who commits an act like that should be given the right to re-enter society.

You've destroyed someone else's life. Fuck you, why do you get another chance?

I don't think rehabilitation is the right word here? I don't think those people should be in society.

i live (for the next two days anyway) by the county courthouse and prison, and on my daily bus rides i often hear people talking about how they've just got out, their cousin/brother/dad/lover is doing a bid. there is no shame in it, anymore. the young girls who talk about their boyfriends inside are proud, if anything. this isn't even making them worse: it's just "the way it is."

- raising arizona

I've noticed that too, the "my man is doing time" phenomenon, I'm like why is that something you'd even want to deal with?

But having said that some cases are not susceptible to rehabilitation, as things stand now, I do think that there should be loads more emphasis in that direction. And far fewer people in prison for things that aren't hurting others.

If the prison is supposed to be so disciplinary, is it actually achieving the goal of deterring more crime? (asking half sarcastically, half earnestly)

Military discipline of the old-school sort (see 18th, 19th, most 20th century navy methods) might function to an extent in 'deterring' lots of undesirable behaviors, but that didn't exactly produce model citizens, either - just subservient troops and sailors.

Not to get all Starship Troopers on everybody, but there's a sense of entitlement on this thread that bothers me somewhat. What has anybody done to earn all these 'rights' we keep talking about? A rapist or a murderer hasn't done shit but put holes in society and fuck up people's lives. Why does he deserve another chance? He certainly doesn't deserve the same chance as somebody who hasn't committed a violent crime.

(jess email me yr new place and I'll send you immediately)

I agree about second chances for the criminals Millar mentioned.

Millar is deep. Someone who puts holes in other people's lives doesn't have the right to anything. I agree.

The biggest problem with the prison/justice system, in a way, is the burden of proof and our limited means of solving crimes. Whereas a kid with a glovebox full of pot is very easily convicted, it can be almost impossible to track down and convict a killer or a rapist who goes on the run. Even then, the evidence may be so unclear that they get away with a much lighter sentence than they might receive if the DA had a more solid case. And innocent people are constantly being convicted of shit they never did (which is why I can't ever agree with the death penalty).

If you ignore the idea of rehabilitation, then the 'justice system' becomes purely a question of revenge - he fucked up their lives, so let's fuck his forever! - which tends to work against the concept.

Millar, how can revenge be the driving concept behind justice. They're two very different words. Maybe that's what our justice system has morphed into, but surely there are some higher underlying ideas that we should maybe try to get back to.

xpost Dada stick to threads where you might be slightly welcome, like not this one

Re: this topic - overall I think our "penal" system is a joke. No one is rehabilitated. We just train them to be better criminals. As many of you know my father has been in prison for 16 years now for violent sexual crimes. The Texas penal system, although no tent city, is still among the worst. He has recieved no counseling or treatment for his crimes and probably won't get any before he's released. Obvioulsy this is not good.

Part of me feels sympathy for anyone in prison over the long haul b/c it hurts the people who love them more than anyone AND it turns them into completely useless members of society. Another part of me, the victim maybe, could really give a shit. Ultimately I think the former sentiment, the sympathy, should carry more weight b/c as a society we are only as strong as our weakest member. If we are churning out useless, resentful shells of human beings due to our ideas of "justice" we should all be worried.

I'm all for humane conditions; in no way do I believe prisoners should be tortured. However, I don't think that serial killers, 1st degree murderers, rapists, and child molesters deserve more chances in society. It's not a video game, you don't get a power up and restart the game and go about like nothing happened. Your victim lives in a mental prison for years, quite possibly forever; why do you get 5-10 years, if that (specifically talking about rape/child molestation, obv. serial killers don't get this benefit)?

These types of crimes are a small segment of the people who are in jail, so the cost of locking them up forever really isn't the issue; if we reformed the laws about stupid ass crimes it'd cut down on the prison overpopulation/overspending issue tenfold. So fuck it: you don't have an inalienable right to a second chance. It's not in any constitution I've ever read--"Hey, here's your get out of jail free card, one really massive affront against society is ok."

Sam, I'm really sorry about your father. I know the Texas system is really horrific and I don't think anyone deserves to be treated the way the Texas/Arizona systems treat people.

But like you said, the victim part of me don't give a fuck which sometimes is a really horrible feeling in my stomach but it's really not as bad as the feeling I had 8 years ago.

I wanna go back to talking about Tent City! Maricopa County also reinstituted chain gangs!

I really shouldn't post here and I know this is more a USA based thread but OH YES IT FUCKING IS - anymore than a week in prison is enough to f*ck up somebody for a very very long time.

Erm...that is a male "instinct" (I don't think it's an instinct, but...). In fact, some women and girls don't even report rapes because of this overreaction on the part of men who want to protect "their" women. Don't forget why, in the past, men got so upset when women were "violated".

If that's an "instinct", then so is a lot of other nasty patriarchal BS from the past.

ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html?_r=1&ei=5088&en=353bf6ba42c6ee84&ex=1361941200&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1204229216-KRzd6xAAHYvwuXIpknJjQA

i mean not surprising i guess. but still amazingly depressing.

great article about joe arpaio in this weeks NYer

casts him as less of an evil scumbag and more as an insecure subliterate old man with a pathological need for attention

hmmm

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison10-2009aug10,0,2160318.story

With the large number of foreign nationals at Klong Prem, the prison is able to hold a football World Cup. Teams of 10 are chosen by prison staff to represent Nigeria, Japan, the US, Italy, France, England, Germany, and Thailand. Games consist of two 20-minute halves on a half-sized pitch. The winners are given a replica of the real World Cup trophy, which is made of wood in the prison workshop.