>During an edition of BBC's Timewatch program, an eyewitness described the carnage in Cell Block 4. They saw an inmate held up in front of a window; he was being tortured by using a blowtorch on his face and eyes until his head exploded. Another story was about Mario Urioste, who was jailed for shoplifting. He was originally placed by officers in a violent unit where he was gang-raped by seven inmates. Mario had filed a lawsuit against his rapists, so prison officials had housed him in Cell Block 4 for his own protection. Urioste was one of the targets for revenge. His body was found hanged, with his throat cut and his dismembered genitals stuffed into his mouth.
>Men were killed with piping, work tools, and crude homemade knives called shanks. One man was partially decapitated after being thrown over the second-tier balcony with a noose around his neck. The corpse was then dragged down and hacked up. A fire had been set in the gymnasium to burn a pile of corpses, but it had gotten out of control and burned through the roof. Besides the fire that had been set in the Psychology Wing, a fire was also set in the Protestant Chapel. The Protestant Chaplain had been nicknamed "Ax Handle" for his participation in the Night of the Ax Handles four years earlier. The Catholic Chapel next door was left untouched. Situated across the hall from the main control center, the prison library also was only touched by smoke. A third fire had been set in the records office, burning all records that could have been used as evidence related to the prisoners' civil rights claims in the Duran Consent Decree.
I think the country that has a justice system where being blowtorched until your brain explodes is a possible consequence of detention compares unfavorably to the country that has zero prison riots. It's also worth noting that the Human Rights Watch report on prison conditions in Japan contains zero mentions of the word "rape"—let alone "gang rape". Is it so hard to admit that they have to be doing something right?
Put yourselves in the shoes of a Japanese citizen—what could possibly make you look at American prison conditions and think "wow, I wish we had that instead", riots, gang rape, drugs, and all? What aspects of Japanese justice are so intolerable that they make all "palatial" by comparison? It's true that Japanese guards are strict—are Supermax guards so much nicer?
I think the country that has the highest incarceration in the world could learn something from the country that enjoys the lowest incarceration rate in the developed world. Whether it's civilization arrogance or some pathological aversion to discipline, I don't know—but it seems bizarre to me that a prison system where you could end up with a mouthful of your own severed genitals could serve as a model to anyone.
As for confessions, here's another example of the superior American way.
>Several hours into the interrogation, Scott told the detectives he thought he needed a lawyer, an attempt to invoke his constitutional right to have an attorney present during questioning. But APD detectives testified last week they believed Scott was only thinking about asking for a lawyer—the same response they gave at Springsteen's trial last summer. When Springsteen asked about a lawyer during his interrogation, detectives left the room. When they returned, they promptly changed the subject.
>And in the Scott interrogation's most infamous moment, Detective Merrill brought a revolver into the interrogation room to "help" Scott remember what he might've done that night at the yogurt shop through some "role playing." Gun in hand, Merrill walked around, then stood behind Scott and jabbed him in the head with what appeared to be the barrel of the gun. Merrill testified that it wasn't the gun but his finger. Nonetheless, the few seconds of video are startling. While the state could argue that the moment occurred well into the confession and couldn't have affected previous admissions, what does it take to render a confession false?