February 12, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Ezra hits one of my buttons:
The crime this man committed for us to throw him into a jail where we know he'll be brutally assaulted, raped, and possibly contract a terminal immune system disease? Drinking and driving.We spend a fair amount of time talking about detainee treatment and Guantanamo. But there is no greater, or more common, human rights abuses in America than those occurring in our overcrowded, constantly expanding, jails.
I can't improve on what I wrote about this before, so I'll just recycle:
I do not believe the state is morally allowed to do that which individuals are not morally allowed to do; I do not believe that prison sentences should have "off label" uses; and I think that if you are willing for the state to impose a sentence in your name, you should be willing to carry it out. I am not willing to execute a prisoner, or to rape one. Therefore, I don't authorise the state to do things for me. Nor do I want those tasks delegated to some fiendish thug in order to give myself plausible moral deniability.If you do think that rape is an appropriate punishment for securities law violations, then you should say so. You should pressure your representatives to write these penalties into law. And when volunteers are needed to carry out the sentence, you should be willing to put your name in the hat.
And how, how, my heart cries, can people who profess to be shocked and disgusted by the Bush administration's endorsement of waterboarding suspected terrorists, suddenly enamoured of rape and crippling beatings when the victims are disgraced CEO's?
That was written about the people who were having fun trading sneering jokes about Jeff Skilling getting sodomized in prison. But I'll expand it further: I do not think that there is any crime for which the appropriate punishment is rape.
I'm a pretty patriotic type. Yet when I think about how many of my fellow citizens apparently (to judge from the jokes--and the indifference) think that having someone sexually brutalised is a valid response to crime, I feel a sick shame.
Posted by Jane Galt at February 12, 2007 11:34 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>The litmus test sounds about right. And I imagine that the part about volunteering for the executioner's position holds water too, when you think about extreme violent crime. Many would agree to pull the trigger or even swing an axe on a serial killer/rapist or a robber/murderer...
Posted by: ...Max... on February 12, 2007 12:17 PMUS military jails have a much, much lower rate of assaults and rapes.
Good luck talking the guard unions into conducting 11 hour a day close order drills.
Posted by: Reagan Fan on February 12, 2007 12:20 PMFormer NYC Mayor Ed Koch made an interesting case in an essay supporting the death penalty decades ago. (I read it in 1990 in college. Yes, I'm paraphrasing.)
The state has rights that the individual does not and can never have:
1) When an individual demands a portion of his neighbor's income and threatens punishment if he refuses to comply, it's called "extortion." When the government does it, it's called "taxation."
2) When an individual forcibly seizes his neighborhood's land, it's called "theft." When the government does it, it's called "eminent domain."
3) When an individual takes his neighbor for a perceived offense and holds him captive for an extended period of time, it's called kidnapping. When the government does it, it's called punishing criminals.
4) When an individual deliberately kills someone, even if that person did something evil, it's called murder. When the government does it, it's called capital punishment.
If you were drafted for wartime service in the military, would you invoke CO status and refuse any role in which might lead to killing enemy personnel?
Posted by: D------ on February 12, 2007 12:26 PMTo be clear, I was referring to your objection to capital punishment. I agree with most of everything else you have written in this post.
Posted by: D------ on February 12, 2007 12:29 PM"I do not believe the state is morally allowed to do that which individuals are not morally allowed to do;"
Do you believe that I am morally allowed to force people to pay for vaccinations when they would rather spend their money otherwise?
Posted by: James on February 12, 2007 12:37 PMI agree with you all the way, darling. It's disgusting.
Posted by: linton on February 12, 2007 12:37 PMThe state has rights that the individual does not and can never have: (etc)
I think it can be reasonably argued that government could not properly function without the first three of these exceptions (though they be ripe for abuse). The same case could not be made for capital punishment.
Posted by: brad l on February 12, 2007 12:39 PMUS military jails have a much, much lower rate of assaults and rapes.
Than what, civilian jails? I thought Jane was talking about civilian jails to begin with, so this seems a further indictment.
Good luck talking the guard unions into conducting 11 hour a day close order drills.
People do all kinds of unpleasant jobs, the question is usually one of salary. Of course, that is assuming there aren't other ways besides this to limit the number of rapes in prison.
Posted by: brad l on February 12, 2007 12:47 PMAt least once a month, I have people in the blogosphere tell me that the elected officials who are charged with enforcing the law (like Elliot Spitzer and Bill Lockyer), including within the walls of prisons, and who tolerate the rape and beating of inmates, sometimes even tolerating correction officers who use beatings and rapes as a deliberate means of punishment, sometimes even threatening those yet to be convicted with beatings and rapes, are not as hideous as those in the Bush Administration who have promoted actual physical torture. These blogospheric rationalizers inform me that the likes of Spitzer and Lockyer are to be preferred because in American prisons, it is the other inmates, and not the correctional officers, who are physically performing the beatings and rapes.
If there is any issue which illuminates how so many find behavior intolerable, as long as it is being engaged in by people of the opposing political party, while excusing ANY behavior, as long as it is being engaged in by people of the same political party, the torture of prisoners is it.
Gee, I sometimes wonder how I became so cynical......
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 12:48 PMI am ambivalent on capitol punishment but agree with the what you said here. But it should have covered all convicts not just CEOs.
Posted by: Blaine on February 12, 2007 12:54 PMAgree that this seems to be less a principled partisan issue and more of an "It's good to do bad things in prison to people I don't like and it's bad if people I don't like do bad things to people I do like" issue. I say this as a DP supporter who finds it appalling that we tolerate these horrors in prison (thought to be realistic, it can't be easy to prevent brutal criminals from brutalizing). I just don't see any consensus for change.
Posted by: AT on February 12, 2007 1:06 PM"I do not believe the state is morally allowed to do that which individuals are not morally allowed to do;"
Sure you do Jane. You support the State doing all sorts of things that you would never allow individuals to do whether it’s taxation, imprisonment (unless we are to interpret your opposition to prison rape as being a segue into calling for the abolishment of prisons entirely), mandatory vaccinations, and a whole host of other things. The belief you expose here may be comforting but it isn’t particularly well thought out.
Posted by: Thorley Winston on February 12, 2007 1:12 PMI saw the video where the report was waterboarded. He was terrified while it happened but was essentially unharmed afterwards. I'd much rather be "tortured" via waterboarding or sleep deprivation or whatever else our military does than forcibly raped by a violent criminal in an American prison. I'm also sure I'd rather be in Gitmo than a maximum security prison.
The War on Drugs has led to the criminalization of many things that I don't believe warrant a prison sentence. As it stands, though, we've got violent criminals in the same prison with otherwise peaceful drug users.
Our prison system needs to be rethought and revamped. There is a huge body of evidence that shows that punishment and negative reinforcement doesn't correct or change behavior. The system we have today is designed to produce more criminals not less.
EI
Posted by: Earnest Iconoclast on February 12, 2007 1:23 PMAlso, this is why I find so much of the rhetoric regarding the Bush Administration's torture policy to be so ridiculous, like when people proclaim that the Bush Administration has taken the American polity to to degarding depths never before experienced. The critics are right that being complicit in torture is degrading, but the notion that the Bush Administarion took us there is either hideously ignorant of hiedously dishonest. Most of the people who rightly decry Abu Ghraib are far more complicit regarding conditions every bit as bad, if not worse, in places within a few hours drive of their front door.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 1:24 PMWhy is prison rape such a popular blogosphere topic? I'm against it (obviously), but it just seems to be something that all blogs talk about. (Perhaps I just have a limited reading scope.)
Posted by: Klug on February 12, 2007 1:25 PMThe War on Drugs has led to the criminalization of many things that I don't believe warrant a prison sentence. As it stands, though, we've got violent criminals in the same prison with otherwise peaceful drug users.Really now, about how many “peaceful drug users” are imprisoned right now for merely being “non violent drug users” as opposed to “peaceful drug users” who were also drug dealers and other types of criminals?
Why is prison rape such a popular blogosphere topic? I'm against it (obviously), but it just seems to be something that all blogs talk about. (Perhaps I just have a limited reading scope.)
I don’t know, being that Jane writes for the Economist and sometimes runs topics by on her blog, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an upcoming article on this topic there. Unless she read something on it recently (the Ezra Klein post she linked to is over 5 months old).
As far as why many blogs write about the same topics. People have blogrolls of blogs that they regularly read and often link to articles on them and comment and people who read their blogs link to their pieces and comment and so forth.
Personally, I've always thought that one of the damning things about the Abu Gharib mess is that the worst abuser was a prison guard in civilian life. And she immediately started in on the ridiculous sadistic acts upon getting there. Certainly makes one wonder what goes on behind closed doors.
Not, sadly, that our country is anything close to alone on this, at least if you trust Amnesty.
It seems to me that the state "screws up" involuntary confinement at least as much if not more than it screws up the death penalty, no?
Posted by: John Thacker on February 12, 2007 1:33 PMWell Jane, what's YOUR solution to prison sodomy, gang fights, etc? I'm not in favor of Jeff Skilling being sodomized in prison but, short of building a cell and exercise year for each prisoner I don;t know what the solution is.
Posted by: Richard Cook on February 12, 2007 1:37 PMKlug, I have no idea regarding how popular the topic is in the blogs, but the reason I am keenly interested in it is because it is to me the most shameful aspect of our society, or nearly so. I think future generations will look at our tolerance of the conditions in our prisons in the same way we do now regarding the tolerance of lynchings.
Thorley, what is the moral difference between a peaceful drug user, and a peaceful drug dealer? I know the popular conception of a drug dealer is a guy who packs a TEC-9 and does drive by shootings, but given the amount of drug use in our society, especially in regards to marajuana, the incidence of peaceful drug dealing must be fairly high.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 1:37 PMBaloney, Richard. Adequate staffing, and zero tolerance management of the staff, would greatly reduce the incidence of illegal violence in our prisons. The reason that Federal lock-ups are generally more safe that state pens is because more money is spent on the Federal level, on a per-prisoner basis. Would it be eliminated completely? No, but murder on the outside isn't eliminated completely, and that isn't seen as reason to tolerate rampant homicides.
Of course, none of this has to much to do with law enforcement officials like Spitzer or Lockyer actually threatening citizens accused of crimes with rapes and beatings. The citizens of New York should be so proud of their new Governor.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 1:46 PMThorley, what is the moral difference between a peaceful drug user, and a peaceful drug dealer?The difference is that many “peaceful drug dealers” deal to minors. Posted by: Thorley Winston on February 12, 2007 1:58 PM
And many don't, Thorley. Why the use of scare quotes?
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 2:03 PMI find it interesting that there seems to be no difference in anyone's mind between state sanctioned torture and torture that is not state sanctioned.
Now Gitmo (if we are to believe everything that we've been told goes on there) is state sanctioned torture and it shouldn't happen. Period. We should stop it because we are the state.
Jeff Skilling was not actually raped by the state, he was raped by other prisoners who were under the state's custody. Yes, the state has an obligation to try and make sure that jails are a safe environment for their prisoners, but it is not as if the rape was a decided punishment by the warden. I agree, it should be monitored more carefully and that rapists should be confined to solitary, but I think the situation is different.
And should Jeff Skilling get a buy because he was convicted of a white collar crime? Absolutely not. If you have committed a crime and have been found guilty of the crime you should be punished and since our punishment for committing a crime is going to jail, then you should go to jail.
Whether Jeff Skilling should go to jail is irrellevent when what we really need to do is make our prisons safer.
Posted by: Kate on February 12, 2007 2:04 PMKate, in many states, including New York and California, it has been documented that correctional officers deliberately use beatings and rapes, peformed by other inmates, as a means of punishment. Thus, when the Attorneys General of those states use the prospect of rape and beatings to threaten the accused, it is every bit as state sanctioned as what occurred at Abu Ghraib.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 2:12 PMSo your solution is to spend MORE money on our prisons? No thanks. I just did a quick google and see spending can be anywhere from 22k to 59k per prisoner per year. And that was in state facilities so I have no idea what the federal level looks like. Certainly spending more is OUT OF THE QUESTION...
As far as the drug dealer morals....chances are dealers have no qualms about selling to a juvenile, while a 30 year old user is, in some people's eyes, only ruining his own life. I'd argue the 30 year old drug user is bad for society too, but clearly there is a difference in selling drugs to kids, whether they are 12 or 16.
Posted by: cdub on February 12, 2007 2:27 PMYes, cdub, I think a society which rightly imprisons people has an unavoidable responsibility to operate prisons as lawful environments, and that it is a responsibility that only the state can fufill. Of course, the financial cost would be mitigated if we didn't imprison people for the wrong reasons. Spending more money on prisons is no more "out of the question" than spending more money for a larger Army, if it is decided that one is needed.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 2:38 PMSpending more overall if the # of prisoners goes up can be understandable. Increasing spending to "improve" rather than re-distribute the money that's all ready being spent is crazy. There are plenty of things that can be done better in the US, that doesn't mean we have to do them all.
There's only so many resources to go around and you seem to be advocating that we can and should spend more money on everything when the government already taxes many of us too much and is still racking up tons of debt. More spending is the solution?
Posted by: cdub on February 12, 2007 2:50 PMI'll post here what I did last time you posted this. Institute the death penalty for rape that occurs in prison. For inmates who are already on death row, put them in solitary confinement. If someone claims to have been raped, and they find your seamen in their anus, that is an automatic death sentence.
Until the punishment involved with prison rape becomes worse than the reward, it isn't going to stop. And putting the offenders to death will not make our society poorer.
Posted by: Half Canadian on February 12, 2007 2:50 PMDoesn't the state have powers, not rights? And in theory-land those powers come from the people?
Posted by: max on February 12, 2007 3:04 PMcdub, if there "isn't enough money to go around", it is because the state is doing things that are not properly within the state's purview. Like, oh, I dunno, protecting the market for sugar beets, or transferring wealth from minimum wage employees to Warren Buffett. It is the state's responsibility to operate Attica as a lawful environment, just as it is the state's responsibility to see that Times Square is a lawful environment, and there is absolutely no excuse for doing otherwise. None. Period.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 3:05 PMSpending more overall if the # of prisoners goes up can be understandable. Increasing spending to "improve" rather than re-distribute the money that's all ready being spent is crazy.
I'd call not getting raped more than an "improvement," which is a word I'd associate with, say, a bigger cell or better TV. Is there no basic level of safety and decency that the state should be responsible for?
There's only so many resources to go around and you seem to be advocating that we can and should spend more money on everything when the government already taxes many of us too much and is still racking up tons of debt.
I don't recall anyone suggesting more spending on anything besides this issue. But it sounds like you are arguing against all taxation here, or even the prioritization of spending. If you are arguing that this is not your priority, fine. You are comfortable with what happens in prisons, which speaks to the point of the original post...
Posted by: brad l on February 12, 2007 4:11 PMI agree with the punishment of rapists in prison.
I don't think we need more prison guards, etc. etc. to sovle the problem, its more a case of better management and changing what must be the corrupt and immoral culture of those prison guards if they are indeed allowing this.
So in addition to strictly punishing any rapist in prison, send the prison guards to prison as well if they allow this stuff to happen under their nose. I'd have no sympathy for someone who watched their friend rape someone and didn't say anything, and I have even less sympathy for what amounts to a police officer observing the same and doing nothing.
All that said, I fail to see how spending even more per prisoner is the way to fix this.
Posted by: cdub on February 12, 2007 4:32 PMcdub, in older facilities in particular, there is inadequate staff and/or technology to allow the prisoners to be under adequate observation. There is no replacement for keeping an eye on people who have a track record of violent behavior. I have architect clients who design jails and prisons, and modern design allows for adequate observation with smaller staffs, but a very large percentage of lock-ups are very old buildings, and to keep a lawful environment in those places, you simply need to have extremely large staffs.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 4:43 PMI would point out that the question of whether it is appropriate to wish that Jeff Skilling be raped in prison is almost certainly theoretical,(*) regardless of whether you think he should be in prison or not. He's in a low security facility in Minnesota that used to be a college campus, along with a bunch of other white collar criminals and low-level drug offenders. It's not a nice place to be, but it's not Oz, and it is not particularly likely that any harm will come to him.
(* Put me down for a "no" on that question, incidentally.)
Posted by: alkali on February 12, 2007 5:33 PMWhy are prisons so damn expensive? I could live in a two bedroom apartment and eat good food for a fraction of what it costs to incarcerate a prisoner. And supposedly these guys are housed several to a room? Where does all the money go?
Posted by: Ryan on February 12, 2007 6:41 PMRyan, part of it is no doubt the inevitable higher cost of monopoly pricing, but I think people also underestimate how diificult it is to control people committed to mayhem. My clients who design such places have told me stories of what they have to plan for, in terms of what destructive abilities some inmates have, and it is truly mind-boggling.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 12, 2007 6:47 PM"Thorley, what is the moral difference between a peaceful drug user, and a peaceful drug dealer?
The difference is that many “peaceful drug dealers” deal to minors"
More of an argument to bring a lot of the activity above board, so you can get at those that do the most harm. Think prohibition vs. licensing. Think gun laws. Think cigarettes and minors.
Posted by: drug dealer on February 12, 2007 7:25 PMYou know what I'd like to see more of? Sensory deprivation. Months and months of solitary sensory deprivation in a tiny concrete room for the smallest infraction in prison. I think it'd be harder to rule that kind of thing as 'cruel or unusual' since prison is supposed to be isolating. It'd make things easier on the guards since you don't have to worry about moving a person from place to place. And it'd still be a decent deterrent to the inmates.
Posted by: Ryan on February 13, 2007 2:43 AMThe currently available options for punishment of crime are limited. The currently available variety of crime is unlimited. All sorts of non-violent offenders end up in general population in medium security prisons. Their fate is far more harsh than anything a chief executive officer ever received. And it can be argued effectively that their crime harmed less people than the CEO.
I believe in the very old cliche. Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time. That certainly should apply for an occupation that requires significant education indicating the offender knew exactly what he was doing. The arrogance of the "I didn't know" excuse almost begs for severe consequences.
The problem with prisons isn't that our penal system is too harsh. Our prisons are inherently flawed. Incarceration is not cruel. What is allowed to happen within a prison may be. But then we can't afford to do it the right way. And if more attention were paid to how we operate society, e.g., family structure, love, discipline, education and all the prerequisites for building a successful life, we would not be asking these questions.
The real purpose of drug laws:
Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit.
This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security.
Bene Gesserit Coda
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
A full employment program for government thugs.
Thorley Winston is probably a government lawyer from his comments over the past several months I've been reading this blog. As far as I can recall off-hand he has always supported a Statist position.
I'm with you on this one in general, but:
> If you do think that rape is an appropriate
> punishment for securities law violations, then you
> should say so. You should pressure your
> representatives to write these penalties into law.
> And when volunteers are needed to carry out the
> sentence, you should be willing to put your name
> in the hat.
I am not sure that volunteering to rape somebody would really increase my respect for the point of view. Somebody who would volunteer might NOT be just doing his or her civic duty.
It is categorically false that we cannot afford to operate prisons as lawful environments.
Sensory deprivation is approximated in the most severe supermax lock-ups. It tends to drive a non-trivial number of inmates insane. It is possible to design incarceration that greatly limits contact with others, without getting to that point. With the most uncontrollably violent offenders, however, the severe supermax lockup may be the best alternative.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 13, 2007 3:09 PMWhy is prison rape such a popular blogosphere topic? I'm against it (obviously), but it just seems to be something that all blogs talk about. (Perhaps I just have a limited reading scope.)
Judging by some of the comments as well as other blog posts on the topic, I’d say that prison rape gets a lot of play in the blogosphere because it provides a segue for people to complain about the War on Some Drugs which gets brought up by some people no matter what sort of topic was originally being discussed*. For others, it gives them an opening to rail about the Bush administration’s supposed “torture” policies. And then there are people like Ezra and Jane (and many of the commentators) who are just horrified by prison rape in and of itself rather than seeing it as a springboard for their own pet issues.
* My libertarian tendencies aside, I’ve realized that the Drug War is much like abortion as one of those issues that gets brought up by obnoxious single-issue voters no matter what the original topic of discussion was.
Posted by: Thorley Winston on February 13, 2007 7:23 PMJens,
Why did I hear Deuling Banjos at that point?
Posted by: Bill Dalasio on February 14, 2007 9:19 AMAn excellent way to avoid getting raped in prison: Don't go to prison.
An excellent way to avoid going to prison: Don't commit crimes.
Geez.
Posted by: RMc on February 14, 2007 9:43 AMGosh, RMC, why don't you have the courage to advocate that rape be written into the legal code as a means of punishment? Wy do you believe it is acceptable for the state to deliberately operate prisons as lawless environments? Since you support operating prisons as lawlwess environments, how are you any better than some prisoner getting raped as we speak? Or even better than the prisoner doing the raping? Because you have more power?
Posted by: Will Allen on February 14, 2007 10:49 AMI really don't see how not being willing to fight a crusade to end prison rape makes you have the same accountability as the prison raper. Clearly you are off your rocker as far as this is concerned.
But no matter, every other person who posts on the internet behaves in such an all or nothing manner.
Posted by: uh... on February 14, 2007 10:55 AMuh..,no, there is a difference between "fighting a crusade", and adopting the stance that outlined in these phrases....
"An excellent way to avoid getting raped in prison: Don't go to prison.
An excellent way to avoid going to prison: Don't commit crimes.
Geez."
......just as there was difference between not fighting a crusade to end lynchings in 1929, and saying "An excellent way to avoid being lynched is to avoid being arrested for committing a crime against white people, or otherwise giving offense to white racists. Geez". The former person is simply deciding to not expend energy for the purpose of stopping gravely immoral acts. The latter person is transferring some of the responsibility for being lynched to the victim.
It doesn't matter why someone is in prison. The people who run (politicians) and fund (us) prisons have an absolute responsibility to see that they are operated as lawful environments. If someone gets mugged in a city park at 2 A.M., only a moral imbecile thinks the response should be limited to telling the victim that he or she had no business being there.
......just as there was difference between not fighting a crusade to end lynchings in 1929, and saying "An excellent way to avoid being lynched is to avoid being arrested for committing a crime against white people, or otherwise giving offense to white racists. Geez".
Wrong. Blacks got lynched in the old South basically for being black. People get sent to prison for committing crimes. Please note: "The Shawshank Redemption" is just a movie, not reality.
It doesn't matter why someone is in prison.
It doesn't? Are you serious? Do you think The Man scoops innocents off the streets so they can be raped in prison by agents of The System, at the direction of Karl Rove?
Prison rape is a crime, and it should be treated like one. But I'm not about to shed a tear for violent criminals...they made their bed, now they can sleep in it.
No, RMC, your responsibility, as a moral agent, is to strongly advocate that the prisons you fund are operated lawfully. This responsibility is not the least bit contingent on why any particular inmate is in prison. Your responsibilty as a moral agent is not the least bit contingent on you having sympathy for inmates. If a strange neurological disease were to afflict every violent offender, in every American prison, through no neglect or malfeascence by our correctional system, and kill every last one of these offenders, I would have very little, if not zero, sympathy for those killed by the hypothetically selective disease. That has nothing to do with my responsibility to strongly advocate that the prisons I am responsible for as a citizen are operated lawfully.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 14, 2007 3:50 PMNo, RMC, your responsibility, as a moral agent
Hey, I like that: "RMc, Moral Agent 007...License To Snark!"
is to strongly advocate that the prisons you fund are operated lawfully.
What part of "Prison rape is a crime, and it should be treated like one" did you not understand while you busy making laboured comparisons with lynchings?
Posted by: RMc on February 14, 2007 3:55 PMRMc, perhaps your titanic intellect never grasped that everyone here is very, very, (very!) aware that only people convicted of crimes live in prison, thus you thought you should, in your initial post, point that out, in case someone had reached a different conclusion. On the other hand, a reasonable person might conclude that someone whose contribution to a discussion regarding the shameful way in which American prisons operate was to inform the audience, via the application of pure reason, that criminals live in prisons, was mostly trying to avoid the central issue being discussed here. Got it?
Posted by: Will Allen on February 14, 2007 5:42 PMHas anyone here been in prison? I didn't think so. I had the unfortunate experience of doing a month in a medium-security New England prison (DWI, wrecked my car, fled scene, no injuries, for those wondering).
I was not raped, just "asked" for cigarettes (all I had of value), and heard anectodes about one skin-head fellow in our cell block, but the entire social scene was about illicit favors and vendettas, including the guards. And it was harsh.
Want to stop prison rape and improve the whole corrections system? Simple. One person, one cell, you don't have to come out if you don't want to, meals are supervised or delivered, and you can have unlimited reading material. I would have been much more rehabiliated in solaritary confinement, reading, than having to socialize with the bunch of assorted lawbreakers I was in with.
But most prisons are very overcrowded. The cell I was in (aprox. 6x10) had bunk beds, a toilet, and a narrow strip of floor - and three inmates. If you had to pee in the middle of the night you had to straddle the guy sleeping on the floor. We played a lot of Rummy. I read and annotated a long technical document. There was a segregated wing for sexual offenders, due to the tendency of most of the rest of the inmates to do anything they could to harm them. I did have the chance to learn some clever survival skills, like how to light a cigarette with 2 AA batteries and a disposable razor.
I read of a study that showed that persons sentenced to up to 90 days in jail showed reduced recidivism, and those sentenced to longer offended more. My experience affirms this observation.
This was a long time ago, and I am doing well now, thank you.
Posted by: Ben There on February 14, 2007 6:17 PMGot it?
Yeah, Will, I get it. I get that you're a self-important litle tw*t. Go away, boy, ya bother me.
Rape in prison is a crime, the same way it's a crime outside of prison. It gets reported/punished less often because these people are convicts, people who have already committed awful crimes themselves. Obvious, no?
Posted by: RMc on February 15, 2007 7:59 AMThe irony of someone who believes it useful to report to the world that criminals live in prisons, attributing self-importance to another party, would be amusing, if not for the subject matter.
Posted by: Will Allen on February 15, 2007 10:11 AMI'd report to the world that you're a moron, Will, but that would be even more obvious. Next!
Posted by: RMc on February 15, 2007 4:12 PMLet's not confuse powers with rights, Brad. Individuals have rights; governments have powers--rarely legitimate.
What's legitimate? The power to defend an individuals rights. What's illegitimate? Bullying the unpopular through majority rule.
Posted by: Brett on February 15, 2007 5:57 PMSolutions?
Quit making criminals out of the citizens. This country had more than enough law 150 years ago.
Rely on incarceration to punish real crimes. Definition? Violating our rights to life, liberty (of action, not freedom the objects of your disapproval), and property. This last is an almost forgotten value, but liberty is impossilbe without it.
Much of our law punishes people who have violated no one's rights. None of these defendants should ever darken a jailhouse door.
Posted by: Brett on February 15, 2007 6:04 PM