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I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

theguardian.com

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Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#81

Post by erikpukinskis »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #51
erikpukinskis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a straw man argument. No one claimed it was the worst country ever.

A country that would, and I quote, "...blatantly violate every kind of basic human right" doesn't sound particularly nice, does it? Every kind of basic human right? I guess we're tied with North Korea, then? If that's the United States, who's worse?

You really don't see the difference between the phrases "worst country ever" and "not particularly nice"?

You're going to have a hard time both learning and teaching if you can't reign in your language a little. No one around you is actually understanding you because your language doesn't represent your true thoughts. You are the only person hearing the arguments you think you're having.

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#82

Post by autokad »

lostlogin wrote: post #56
hellcow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. Looking for a solution here, the central problem with the US prison system seems to be the incentive structure. Private prisons are paid based on how many inmates they have. Prisons are therefore incentivized to keep people as long as possible, and ensure that if a convict is ever released, that person commits another crime quickly and winds up back in prison. Instead, what if the state paid…

> Instead, what if the state paid prisons a one-time fee for accepting convicts I might to too cynical but I'm guessing that more prisoners would mysteriously die.

I also disagree with their idea.

I think we should just change the purpose of prison to one and only one thing: Reform. Leave justice out of it, and the rest will follow

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#83

Post by hellcow »

ryandrake wrote: post #78
lostlogin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, what if the state paid prisons a one-time fee for accepting convicts I might to too cynical but I'm guessing that more prisoners would mysteriously die.

I don't think that is cynical at all. Such an incentive structure + the general public's lack of interest in the human rights of prisoners, would guarantee that outcome.

Then could we make a small change to the incentive structure such that this becomes a non-issue?

For instance, could the government pay out the fee over 10 or 20 years (perhaps paying it in full on release), and stop future payments if the prisoner dies while in custody?

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#84

Post by jernfrost »

arcticbull wrote: post #7

Honestly, I find the US prison system absolutely horrifying in all respects. As satisfying as it may be for victims to feel the person that did something to them is 'gone' they will eventually be let out, and when they do I want them to be ready to integrate with society. Recidivism rates in the US show it is objectively not working, with state prisons leaving inmates to re-offend 76% of the time. [1] In Norway, much…

I am Norwegian, so I thought I'd add a few points, which I think greatly influence the difference.

1) Prison guard education is just a few weeks in the US to my knowledge. In Norway it is a 3 year college education, where you learn about mental illness, why people become criminals, how to rehabilitate people etc. The prison guard job in Norway, is by American standards more like a social worker. Guards spend a lot of time doing activities with inmates. They are not simply there hit misbehaving inmates.

2) The criminal justice system is largely under professional control. We don't elect sheriffs, judges etc like in the US. So there is less opportunity for populist "though on crime" politics to win through. Policies are mainly driven by professionals in the field.

3) Norwegian culture isn't as hung up on good and evil as American culture. I guess that is partly because religion has little importance in Norway. Christianity is quite focused on the idea of good and evil. Norse mythology was never like that. There was no evil devil. The world was divided into order and chaos not good and evil. The world "evil" almost never surface in any discussion. It isn't just the justice system, but Norwegians themselves aren't very interested in revenge. E.g. I've never heard a single survivor from the Utøya massacre express a desire for revenge.

I don't know why it is like that, but perhaps a reason is that Viking culture was very revenge and honor based. But this mentality was destroying society so authorities worked hard for hundreds of years to change this mentality.

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#86

Post by jernfrost »

robotresearcher wrote: post #79
RubenSandwich wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should add hubris to your list of 'why it won't happen'. America is very proud and very rarely in my life have I seen a proud person admit to wrong, much less change their behavior.

US slavery was ended. Women got the vote. Segregation was ended. Gay marriage arrived. Eventually and painfully in many cases, but things do change.

I got some faith too. While the US has a very strong conservative base who supports backwards policies. Liberals are quite strong as well. I think the main issue is that liberalism in the US until Bernie Sanders, seemed to care little about economic equality, which lays at the heart of almost all other social problems.

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#87

Post by scottLobster »

robschia wrote: post #3

I don't even know how to start. The US present themselves as paragons of freedom, and then they blatantly violate every kind of basic human right.

How to start? Go back a couple of centuries. Americans reconciling the American mythology with the actions of the American people/government is one of our unspoken national pastimes going back at least to Manifest Destiny in the 19th century.

But on that note I think "every kind of basic human right" is a bit extreme. We have arguably the strongest free speech protections in the world, people are free to move around as they see fit, we're a pretty great place to start a business as we're a massive single market that speaks the same language with relatively lax regulations and low corruption, our higher education is second to none, and most recently we just allowed gay marriage.

Granted some things need a serious overhaul, but while we get a lot wrong we also get a lot right.

And frankly you'll be hard-pressed to find a government that doesn't try to abuse its people when it's convenient. That just a function of power-hungry people typically being assholes. The difference is the US is the world superpower and we wave the flag a lot, not to mention we're just a massive, diverse country. So our hypocrisy is orders of magnitude greater just by virtue of scale, and then on top of that we're held to a higher standard by everybody else.

If you took the government of, say Norway (or some other government that you feel best respects human rights), gave them the size and diversity of the US, and then scaled them up to World Superpower status and gave them some cultural tweaks to actually be able to maintain that status, I think you'd see just as much hypocrisy.

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#88

Post by Toenex »

jernfrost wrote: post #84
arcticbull wrote: post #7

Honestly, I find the US prison system absolutely horrifying in all respects. As satisfying as it may be for victims to feel the person that did something to them is 'gone' they will eventually be let out, and when they do I want them to be ready to integrate with society. Recidivism rates in the US show it is objectively not working, with state prisons leaving inmates to re-offend 76% of the time. [1] In Norway, much…

I am Norwegian, so I thought I'd add a few points, which I think greatly influence the difference. 1) Prison guard education is just a few weeks in the US to my knowledge. In Norway it is a 3 year college education, where you learn about mental illness, why people become criminals, how to rehabilitate people etc. The prison guard job in Norway, is by American standards more like a social worker. Guards spend a lot of…

> The world was divided into order and chaos not good and evil.

What an interesting point.

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#89

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jernfrost wrote: post #86
robotresearcher wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US slavery was ended. Women got the vote. Segregation was ended. Gay marriage arrived. Eventually and painfully in many cases, but things do change.

I got some faith too. While the US has a very strong conservative base who supports backwards policies. Liberals are quite strong as well. I think the main issue is that liberalism in the US until Bernie Sanders, seemed to care little about economic equality, which lays at the heart of almost all other social problems.

They cared once upon a time. The watershed may have been with the civil rights movement. At that time, liberalism may have shifted focus from the economically disadvantaged to the structurally disadvantaged - disadvantaged by race, and then by gender, then by sexual orientation, then by not being sexually binary.

In doing so, though, those who were economically disadvantaged felt that the liberals - at least as represented by the Democrats - didn't care about them and their problems. This was a major factor in Trump's election.

Re: I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

#90

Post by grasshopperpurp »

randyrand wrote: post #70
nether wrote: post #62

This is the worst of racism. The next time a white HNer tells PoC to just turn the other cheek toward racist words, point them to this. Racist attitudes are what enable horrific crimes against blacks, such as these.

Anyone can be put into solitary confinement.

Anyone COULD be lynched in the 1950s. See your problem?

Prisons systems and welfare programs exist the way they do in the US mostly because of racism. If we were a country that all looked similar, we wouldn't be able to see our fellow humans treated this way. But, when it's someone that doesn't look like me? Sure, they look dangerous. Lock them up. Or, sure, they look lazy. Don't give them 'free stuff.'

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