Do Jails Kill People?
newyorker.com
Do Jails Kill People?
1–10 of 77 posts
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#2Incarceration has been a sore spot of the american justice system for a long time. Privatization should be illegal and the plea system needs reform.
“Because jails are chaotic and concealed from outside view, we only become aware of them when very bad outcomes occur, such as deaths,”
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#3It's important to note that no one in jail has been convicted of a crime yet. These are all innocent people when they are in jail, being abused and murdered by the guards inside.
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#4Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#5It's important to note that no one in jail has been convicted of a crime yet. These are all innocent people when they are in jail, being abused and murdered by the guards inside.
I don't think this is entirely true. Where I live they don't move you to a prison if your sentence is less than a year.
It is kind of irrelevant though, don't you think? People who are guilty of crimes don't deserve to be murdered either.
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#6It's important to note that no one in jail has been convicted of a crime yet. These are all innocent people when they are in jail, being abused and murdered by the guards inside.
I don't think this is entirely true. Where I live they don't move you to a prison if your sentence is less than a year. It is kind of irrelevant though, don't you think? People who are guilty of crimes don't deserve to be murdered either.
It's an issue of magnitude that a lot of Law And Order types are happy to set aside for their purposes. Some people really are okay with convicted felons getting "what's coming to them" in prison, and you can see it in public discourse with jokes about prison shanking and prison sexual assault. (Personally, I feel like it should go without saying that none of that stuff is okay.)
If you make it clear to the average voter that the people getting hurt and killed by cops and other prisoners in jail are the elderly, single moms, etc - often held for a few days awaiting an initial trial, or even without charges - it becomes a lot more obvious to them that something is not right here. People are much more willing to blur the lines and shrug if it's "bad guys", and we talk a lot about "bad guys" in modern american politics.
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#7A major unaddressed issue is laws like PLRA (passed in 1996) that utterly wiped out federal court oversight of local/state prisons/jails. In addition, PLRA made it borderline-impossible for incarcerated people (whether convicted or not) to bring legit, non-frivolous lawsuits relating to unconstitutional conditions of confinement.
Pre-PLRA, there was some hard-won federal court oversight (consent decrees and the like) of state prisons/jails but PLRA forcibly evicted federal courts from that role (with nothing to fill their place). See https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-its-nearly-impo... or https://casetext.com/analysis/nineties-crime-and-punishment-... for more about this, as well as PLRA's ugly twin, AEDPA.
All this wanton brutality and abusive conditions of confinement in jails/prisons happens in part because PLRA countenances it, there's no other way around it.
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#8> The main cause of injuries was fights with other incarcerated people
Putting large quantities of aggressive people into confined areas does generally result in violence, yes.
Also, these two YouTube channels are by former prisoners, if you're looking for information from that perspective:
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#9A major unaddressed issue is laws like PLRA (passed in 1996) that utterly wiped out federal court oversight of local/state prisons/jails. In addition, PLRA made it borderline-impossible for incarcerated people (whether convicted or not) to bring legit, non-frivolous lawsuits relating to unconstitutional conditions of confinement. Pre-PLRA, there was some hard-won federal court oversight (consent decrees and the like)…
A federal judge in Georgia recently responded to an inmate's plea for help. Timothy Gumm had been arbitrarily thrown in solitary confinement for being accused of attempting to escape:
"Gumm’s handwritten lawsuit made it to U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles H. Weigle, who acknowledged having “serious reservations as to the ultimate validity” of Gumm’s claims. Laws aimed at curtailing frivolous lawsuits make it hard for inmates to protest prison conditions, and judges set a high bar for hearing such complaints. But Weigle noticed that several other of the 180 or so inmates in the Special Management Unit at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison were making similar claims. He eventually let Gumm’s complaint go forward, and assigned lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights to represent him free of charge." [0] (emphasis added)
I was not aware of the PLRA when I read this last night, thanks for filling in that detail.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-america-s-harshest-...
Edit: Docket for Mr. Gumm's suit: https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PC-GA-0020-9000....
Re: Do Jails Kill People?
#10I've decided that American jails are job projects [2]. They make work for guards, sheriffs and lawyers, at the expense of trapping people in a system from which they can't escape.
The passenger I bailed out of jail [0] was almost killed by jail policies. He was forced to submit to a daily injection of time-release insulin, on the basis of his high A1C levels at intake. This has the effect of suppressing his blood sugar throughout the day... Time-release insulin is probably okay on a normal diet with adequate amounts of sugar. The Maricopa County Jail feeds a starvation diet, where the only things worth eating are found in the vending machines.
I think we're slowly realizing the futility of fixing social problems by throwing people in cages. The recently-passed "First Step act" [1] is a baby-step in the right direction.
[0] Who Are Your Lifelines? http://www.taxiwars.org/who-are-your-lifelines/ (originally posted at kuro5hin.org)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Step_Act
[2] America's Make-Work Sheriff: The Anachronism of Joseph Arpaio - https://www.taxiwars.org/2017/09/americas-make-work-sheriff-...
[2] Ordinary Rendition: The Public Servants' Quagmire https://www.taxiwars.org/2017/10/ordinary-rendition-public-s...