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With all of this talk
Posted on: April 25, 2009 - 7:57am
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With all of this talk
about torture of Iraqis,I thought that we really need to take a good look of how we abuse our own.Here is a really good essay,called Hellhole which appeared in the New Yorker. www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande Signature ? How ?
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I have mixed feelings about the issue of solitary confinement. Undoubtedly it can have permanent effects upon a peron's psyche. By the same token, being an American convict locked up in the general prison population where extreme violence can erupt out of nowhere probably alters a person's psychological condition as well. Actually, who wouldn't become emotionally drained if you had to constantly be on your guard where even your own cellmate might choose to attack you as you sleep ?
Loss of freedom and confinement is what makes a prison a prison. Of course any penal institution can go too far and I would say that the use of solitary confinement should be monitored and regulated but not neccessarily abandoned. US prisons are rough places to be because that is what they are meant to be. ( ps, the concept of "rehabilitation" is a joke. )
American prisons are admittedly not perfect but are still a far cry from most of the other prison systems operating around the world. ( sorry I attempted to link a youtube video entitled "Russian Prison Brutality" but was unsuccessful...it's pretty hard to watch, anyway
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Wow Prozac, that is a good point. There are many prisons around the world where you are lucky to get out with as many body parts as you had when you went in.
That being said, the article is a total piece of shit. The author has chosen to cherry pick his information to establish his personal bias. Specifically that American prisons can do nothing right and other countries can do nothing wrong regardless of how wrong they actually are.
As evidence of this, the author did not mention Garner Correctional Institute in the great state of Connecticut. The basic fact is that Garner has prison officials from all over the world coming to the facility to study what they do because they have figured out how to do supermax right.
Within a couple of years after Garner opened, violence n every other prison in the state dropped dramatically. The reason that is cited by the prison population is that the word is: “Don't get sent to Garner”.
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US prisons are all about punishment. Little effort is expended on rehabilitation. Not to say some people don't come out better for the experience, just saying that doesn't seem to be the focus.
I don't know enough about foreign prisons to make any claims.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
I don't need to read any essay.
Anyone that's not been in prision and is older than 10, would have had several opportunities to see video of people and prisoner treatment, in and out of jail / prison, not to mention the policy in the U.S. of our legal killing of kids and trying young kids as adults, for the same or similar reasons.
Not to mention the philosophy of "what we need are more prisons!"
In my mind, you have to harness the convict's desire to avoid these things. Make it a simple choice, work on your own rehabilitation, or live in a box for your sentence. Make it so that if you want human contact, the way to get it is through councellors and classes. I do computer work for the local jails, and several family members are guards. Some of these people are lost causes. Society at large would be best served by losing the key to their cell. But a lot are people who have learning disabilities or other developmental problems(fucked up family, poverty, abuse) and were taught that they were useless. Given some hope and some help, a lot can be saved from this cycle. And right now, it seems that the largest group of people trying to get to these inmates are religious recruiters. In the small county prison I'm closest to, there are at least 3 churches which hold services and bible studies to attempt to gain converts.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Do you know what the unemployment rate would be if we included the 3+ million people in jails and prisons?
(Opps! I forgot. We do put a number of the them to work for about 2 bucks a day.)