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The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

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Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#111

Post by gnaritas »

XorNot wrote: post #42
gnaritas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple solution to that, set people free. We don't need to build more prisons, we already imprison more of our population than any other country in the world, we have too many prisons and too many people in them. We need to imprison less people. Release all inmates who committed victim-less crimes, if more room is needed, release all inmates who committed non violent crimes-there are better ways to deal wit…

You miss the point. It's easier to stop prisons being built then to set people free. But it would probably be easier to deal with the whole problem if in fact we were a lot stricter about ensuring proper prison capacity, construction and staffing were followed. But then again, doing any of that is a lot harder then egging on the narrative that prison is actually meant to be a mad max wasteland, and pretending we're t…

No, I don't miss the point, I just don't agree that building more prisons is acceptable.

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#112

Post by gnaritas »

rtpg wrote: post #75
gnaritas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple solution to that, set people free. We don't need to build more prisons, we already imprison more of our population than any other country in the world, we have too many prisons and too many people in them. We need to imprison less people. Release all inmates who committed victim-less crimes, if more room is needed, release all inmates who committed non violent crimes-there are better ways to deal wit…

I agree that we should have less people in prison. In order to be lucid about the situation though, it's important to realise that a very large part of the prison population is in there for violent offences. Even knowing this, I still believe we should be reducing sentences (I have a hard time justifying putting anyone in a cage for 15 years as a punishment...) but there probably needs to be some alternative things g…

> In order to be lucid about the situation though, it's important to realise that a very large part of the prison population is in there for violent offences.

When that's 100%, then other things can be explored, but a large part of the prison population is also not violent and that's a place to make change.

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#113

Post by atemerev »

jessaustin wrote: post #94
ljf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but what is making the US a more violent place than other comparable countries? http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/02/is_the_u_s...

USA is a historically-colonized nation with a large diverse population. "Comparable" would be Mexico, Brazil, or Nigeria. Comparing USA to Netherlands is a joke.

OK then.

In Nigeria, incarceration rate per 100,000 people is 30. In Mexico, 196. In Brazil, 193.

In the US, 737.

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#114

Post by neffy »

briandear wrote: post #61
neffy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society doesn't think like that. What US society thought, was that everything should be determined by free markets. This is what happens when you put the prison service out to the lowest bidder. And lets not even get into the part where the private companies running the prisons now have a vested interest in hiring lobbyists to provoke tougher sentencing. But perhaps it would be easier simply to stop at Society doesn'…

Have you been in La Sante prison in France? How about any Central, South American or Asian prisons? This has nothing to do with prison privatization and it's clear many don't have a clue of the conditions outside of a few newsworthy European prisons. Talk to a US consular officer who's been at the job more than five minutes, then we can make some comparisons. Blaming privatization is a red herring.. Venenzuela prison…

By all accounts the (state run) Russian Gulags weren't much fun either.

But do you really want to compare your country with the third world, or the first?

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#115

Post by kazagistar »

MajorLOL wrote: post #104
lkbm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put some numbers on the part of the prison population there for violent offenses: * Bureau of Justice Statistics says 53% of state prsionsers and 7% (what?!) of federal prisoners (2014): http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14_Summary.pdf * Federal Bureau of Prisons says 46.5% drug offences (no specification on violent v. non-violent) and 9.2% immigration as the third largest group. Second largest is more violent s…

Heres something to consider; Drawing such a sharp distinction between violent and non violent crimes omits many real-world factors. What kind of criminal is this person is different from what was this criminal convicted of. I can be a part time drug dealer, shooting rival gang members, robbing houses and pimping whores. But land myself in prison for 10 years due to my 6th possession charge. If you draw a hard distinc…

> I can be a part time drug dealer, shooting rival gang members, robbing houses and pimping whores. But land myself in prison for 10 years due to my 6th possession charge. If you draw a hard distinction statistically, I fall into the 'I can't believe we imprison people for having a little pot'

"You" are a strawman invented to support strict drug laws. How about we jail people for crimes we can actually prove they did, rather then assuming that if you sell pot, you must be "pimpin hoes" and "shooting rival gang members".

> What percentage would have turned violent if confronted during their crime? I suspect that these people who steal your car, break into your home and business and steal your things are effectively violent offenders.

I suspect not, but either way, I don't particularly feel like throwing them in prisons helps things at all. Read up on the gang presence in prisons: its its not like giving someone 10 years for stealing cash from your car is going to rehabilitate them very effectively, and certainly not with the state of prisons being what it is.

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#116

Post by Dove »

omegaham wrote: post #98
gnaritas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple solution to that, set people free. We don't need to build more prisons, we already imprison more of our population than any other country in the world, we have too many prisons and too many people in them. We need to imprison less people. Release all inmates who committed victim-less crimes, if more room is needed, release all inmates who committed non violent crimes-there are better ways to deal wit…

According to this site[1], felons incarcerated for drugs comprise 16% of the total prison population. 64.8% are incarcerated for violent offenses and property crimes, both of which have victims. The most interesting part, to me, is the "public-order" criminals. When my girlfriend worked corrections, she noted that at the state level, the vast majority of prisoners were in for violent crimes - rape, robbery, murder, a…

> this is the natural result - businesses that exist solely to profit off of human pain and despair and create it on an industrial scale

There are plenty of middle ground options between criminalization and total freedom. And in fact, if you look at the way alcohol is handled, you see a lot of those. It isn't illegal to possess alcohol in large quantities or to drink to excess, but in some places, public intoxication is illegal (or seen as something of a public nuisance that police are expected to humanely help with). It isn't illegal to sell alcohol, but sometimes it is illegal to knowingly sell it to a drunk person. There are age limits. It's banned at certain events. So forth.

There are a lot of rules, and they vary a lot, and I wouldn't go so far as to say they are rational, exactly, but some are humane. And some do strike a good balance between allowing people to choose to enjoy responsibly (or even irresponsibly), while limiting the danger and nuisance to the rest of society, and while -- on the third hand -- limiting how predatory you can be in selling it and preying on human weakness.

It would probably be naive to suppose that the exact same set of rules would work for all substances, but it does suggest that outright criminalization and junkies on the sidewalk aren't the only options.

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#117

Post by kazagistar »

Karunamon wrote: post #38
superuser2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also what happens when well-intentioned people are vastly more successful at fighting prison construction than fighting mass incarceration. Our prisons are routinely at 1.5x, 2x, 3x capacity. Being against the prison industrial complex feels good, but in doing so you become directly, personally responsible for the fact that there are now 3 people in a cell meant for one, people living on cots in a gymnasium w…

Thought experiment: What would happen if the laws were amended so that, should someone be sentenced to prison time, and all prisons within a reasonable radius are at capacity, that either the person with the lowest amount of time to serve in that prison (barring violent offenses) is automatically set free, or the sentence is commuted to probation or such? There's an argument to be made here that cramming two people i…

We should call it the Kanban Prison System.

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#118

Post by clort »

gozur88 wrote: post #56
rdtsc wrote: post #5

People talk about institutional evil. This is an example of it. You can almost trace their thinking "Oh, so solitary is bad now. We'll fix it. Put two people in a 10x4 cell. See, not solitary anymore, and we doubled the capacity too. Bonuses for everyone". Ideally you'd think those who made those decision would be disciplined, pensions would be cut, etc. But nothing like that is gonna happen. Even if the family wins…

>Oh, so solitary is bad now. We'll fix it. Put two people in a 10x4 cell. See, not solitary anymore, and we doubled the capacity too. Bonuses for everyone I doubt that. The people running the system don't decide how many inmates they get or how many beds they have. They put people where they have to put them. And they have to deal with this kind of fallout. They're doubling up because they don't have room to do anyth…

> They're doubling up because they don't have room to do anything else

then they shouldn't admit them.

You know, I've been all over the world and in many third world countries as many people who can get on the bus, just get on the bus. The driver allows it because he gets a dollar for everybody who gets on. In my rich western nation, there is a number posted high up near the ceiling. This number is the number the bus is licenced to carry, and the bus driver gets paid an hourly wage for driving the bus about. When there are too many people at the bus stop, he says he can't allow them on as he would lose his job and he drives away. The potential passengers have to wait for the next bus, or walk. This causes angst amongst the populace who complain to the bus company, or the local government which may effect change.

In the USA, it seems, when more and more prisoners are served on a prison, they just take them and cram them into smaller and smaller spaces.. because they get paid for each one and there is no rule against it. The prison should be licensed for a certain number of inmates, and if more prisoners turn up then they should NOT be accepted (under pain of losing their license), and they would remain in the custody of the persons bringing them. That would quickly cause a problem where the local police were too busy babysitting prisoners to go out in the streets and find more for the courts to convict, and THAT is when the populace will suffer angst and demand some change.

Re: The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate

#119

Post by clort »

willu wrote: post #95

"The only way to alert a guard was to bang on the door and hope the sound could be heard above the din." Do cells not have cameras? I would think it'd be feasible to detect fights with basic motion detection.

  "The space itself appeared to be decomposing.
   The front wall, next to the door, was made of corroded metal.
   The paint on the wedge-shaped shelf had almost completely chipped away;
     the beds were caked in rust;
     and the floor underneath the toilet was stained brown and black.
   Dust and crumbs accumulated in every corner."
You suppose this was a high tech institution?
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