10 ms·

Do Jails Kill People?

129 points by Tomasz_Papka 8y ago

xfitm3 8y ago
Incarceration 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,”
- renholder 8y ago
  >Privatization should be illegal and the plea system needs reform. IMHO, apathy about anyone who's ensnared in the legal system, "Well, if they weren't doing anything wrong...", leads to dehumanisation. Dehumanisation will - almost always - lead to many forms of abuse. I wish it were as simple as just making privatisation illegal and reforming the plea system but I fear that it would take far more than that to see true change. Put succinctly: The moment you no longer care about someone's life, in any shape or form, then that battle was already lost before it was even begun.
  - throwaway4224 8y ago
    "apathy" is an understatement. Surveys show clearly that many people in the US, compared to other cultures, firmly believe in punitive justice. People who broke the law are seen as "deserving" to suffer in order to restore a "just" world. Even if the suffering is not effective as a deterrent or as part of a healing process, it's expected for a philosophical (or religious) reason.
  - SomeHacker44 8y ago
    Everyone commits around three federal felonies a day, according to the premise of the book "Theee Felonies a Day" that I read a long time ago. We are all criminals and all do something "wrong" legally, all the time. The only difference is that the justice system focuses on some of us and not others, and the plea system harms most of those who are focused on, because any scrutiny at all can virtually always lead to an indictment. Just check the Skrelli incident for an example, or the whole Muller investigation. Virtually all those people would have escaped indictment had they just kept their heads down and avoided notice by justice officials.
    - blfr 8y ago
      This is a real concern in politically- or publicity-motivated prosecutions. And it gives prosecutors a wide avenue to abuse their powers. But are these a significant per cent of cases that lead people to Rikers? I'm gonna guess no, they won't add up to even a single per cent.
      - SomeHacker44 8y ago
        Just to be pedantic, Rikers, as I recall, is a state/city jail and not a federal prison. My personal belief is if the gov't wants you in jail, they can basically make it happen and only people with extreme resources may be able to belay that.
    - ataturk 8y ago
      It just drives home the reality that we live in a police state where the government is far from a disinterested party--there is a power or profit angle to lording over the peasants. There always has been. Part of the Enlightenment was the concept of individual rights. We have been suckered into giving up most of them. There's always a reasonable sounding justification for everything government wants to do. But it's always a one-down relationship with government, always.
    - hopler 8y ago
      That book was a huge exaggeration. It's central thesis was that most things that that are felonies are larger scale versions of minor acts (like battery is unwabtedt touching, so supposedly you could be convicted for bumping someone on a subway, and since the law accounts for mens rea, anyone could be party to a crime if the crime occurred and the judge/jury believe it was intentional. What's the alternative, to make any crime legal as long as the perpetrator has a partner and they both blame each other for being the mastermind? Your example of people who very clearly commuted major crimes, but could have avoided punishment, is the opposite of your thesis. very few people steal over a million dollars.
      - Casseres 8y ago
        I just looked at the reviews on Amazon. One reader wrote, "If you're looking for everyday examples of the felonies you and I unwittingly commit each day, you won't find them here." I guess I won't be buying it.
- blfr 8y ago
  Rikers Island is operated by the New York City Department of Correction, not a private company, and 85% of Rikers' residents have not been convicted (at least not yet) so how are your suggestions supposed to help with any of the issues outlined in the OP? If anything, moving away from plea bargaining would mean more people in jails awaiting trial. More generally, what is the value or repeating things like argument-less slogans about prison privatization or "if you don't pay for it, you're the product", especially to people who must have read it dozens of times?
  - pjc50 8y ago
    If you don't want to keep hearing the slogan, find a different way to fix the underlying problem.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - xfitm3 8y ago
    "Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose. Faced with this choice, individuals almost uniformly surrender the right to trial rather than insist on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, defense lawyers spend most of their time negotiating guilty pleas rather than ensuring that police and the government respect the boundaries of the law including the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and judges dedicate their time to administering plea allocutions rather than evaluating the constitutional and legal aspects of the government’s case and police conduct. Equally important, the public rarely exercises the oversight function envisioned by the Framers and inherent in jury service." https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-innocent-people-pleading-guilty-a-new-report-says-yes/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-inno... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-bargaining-courts-prosecutors/524112/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-ba...
    - heydonovan 8y ago
      Plea bargaining makes innocent people admit to things they didn't do. Given the choice to plead guilty and receive 30 days in jail vs taking a chance in court at the risk of 3 years in jail, which would you take? Not to mention the insane costs of hiring a lawyer, which only wealthy people can afford. With the current trend of "guilty until proven innocent", it's no wonder folks take this approach.
- Paul-ish 8y ago
  Privatization isn't the issue. A lot of the abuses you see in private prisons, you see in public prisons. I recommend anyone read "Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform"[1] by John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham who focuses on these issues. It addresses a lot of misconceptions about the criminal justice system and suggests reforms. You can find a 1 hour talk by Pfaff that gives a good overview of the book[2]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Locked-Causes-Incarceration-Achieve-Reform/dp/0465096913 https://www.amazon.com/Locked-Causes-Incarceration-Achieve-R... [2] https://cdn.cato.org/archive-2017/cbf-04-26-17.mp4 https://cdn.cato.org/archive-2017/cbf-04-26-17.mp4
  - xfitm3 8y ago
    Great points, thanks for the reference to that book. I follow Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner[0] and I think he's headed in the right direction. I'm not in Philadelphia but reports of his efforts are very positive. The reason for me knocking privatization is corruption. Kickbacks/lobbying[1] and nepotism[2]. While most of these actions are legal I don't think it is ethical. I'll do some more reading before commenting further. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Krasner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Krasner [1] https://outline.com/MzTc9f https://outline.com/MzTc9f [2] George W. Bush & Gus Puryear https://medium.com/@pavelsokolov_56935/private-prisons-in-america-9a291d78dcfd https://medium.com/@pavelsokolov_56935/private-prisons-in-am...
mnm1 8y ago
It'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.
- c22 8y ago
  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.
  - kevingadd 8y ago
    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.
  - mnm1 8y ago
    I agree that no one should be tortured and murdered, but my point still stands because Americans are so apathetic to the suffering of convicts (and suffering of anyone in general). Most probably assume people in jail deserve to be there. There may be some convicted people in jail, true, but then it becomes a multi-purpose facility that's both jail and prison.
adamnemecek 8y ago
https://outline.com/ZrqS5y https://outline.com/ZrqS5y
zkms 8y ago
A 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-impossible-for-prisoners-to-sue-prisons https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-its-nearly-impo... or https://casetext.com/analysis/nineties-crime-and-punishment-redux 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.
- taxicabjesus 8y ago
  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-isolation-units-was-exposed-desperate-handwritten-n969531 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.pdf https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PC-GA-0020-9000....
- quasse 8y ago
  I've found it hard to find out who was responsible for PLRA, but what I do know is that it seemed to enjoy wide congressional support, received little scrutiny, was signed into law by Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden was one of the only senators who raised concerns about it preventing meritorious lawsuits. [1] [1] https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-2/please-pass-the-dictionary-defining-de-minimis-physical-injury-under-the-prison-litigation-reform-act-1997ee/ https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-2/please-pa...
August-Garcia 8y ago
> 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: * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPB2ZA4096SESz_VZVzHoA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPB2ZA4096SESz_VZVzHoA * https://www.youtube.com/user/FreshOutSeries https://www.youtube.com/user/FreshOutSeries
taxicabjesus 8y ago
I'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/ http://www.taxiwars.org/who-are-your-lifelines/ (originally posted at kuro5hin.org) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Step_Act 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-anachronism.html 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-servants.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2017/10/ordinary-rendition-public-s...
- sn41 8y ago
  A related note on prison systems designed as cheap labor: Solzhenitsyn argued that the Gulag system was not a Stalinist aberration from the Soviet ideal : Lenin himself had envisioned forced labor in an extensive network. Solzhenitsyn remarks that the Soviet productivity in public works was dependent on this system of slave labor. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
- hopler 8y ago
  The US prison system is a direct reaction to the Constitutional Amendments that banned chattel slavery except for prison. Et voila, immediately a huge prison system immediately popped up.
- trhway 8y ago
  >This passenger had gotten a series of "driving without a license" tickets, and now owes $10,000+ in fines. Because of the outstanding balance, the state issues him an identification card that expires every 3 or 6 months. People who don't have balances with the state get identification cards without an expiration date. the state behaves just like a petulant cruel child, so typical of GOP and their puritanical mentality. If ID is required by state to access basic rights, then having such an ID is a right not a privilege. In this case, beside everything else, AZ by de-facto denying ID to those people effectively strips them of their right to vote for example.
unnouinceput 8y ago
Do jails kill people? No. Jail is a tool. People kill people.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vertex-four 8y ago
  Jails are a system in which people operate, and how that system is designed lacks accountability and encourages guards to kill people. The people within that system have responsibility for how they behave, yes, but as long as the system continues to exist the behaviour will as well.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  People don't kill people. Loss of oxygenation of the brain kills people.
- gerbilly 8y ago
  Jails do harm and even kill people. Jails and prisons inflict violence daily on the inmates, and even the guards and staff, just from the very nature of the situation they create. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
- techbio 8y ago
  They're not really people, they are officers acting in official capacity, ie. agents of a state. They are, as people, often immune from legal consequences for their actions. Would they behave the same way otherwise? https://reason.org/commentary/privatization-qualified-immunity/ https://reason.org/commentary/privatization-qualified-immuni...
kakarot 8y ago
My experience with jail: I was having severe heart palpitations in jail and the guards would not give me my medicine. When I got irate they would threaten to throw me in the hole without food and water for a few days. I also have a spine disorder that brings me extreme discomfort and the cots were the same units they'd ordered in the sixties. No stuffing at all, and I would wake up slightly paralyzed waist up for a few hours, with intense shoulder pain and barely being able to walk from sciatic flare-ups. I coincidentally was suffering from multiple dental infections accelerated from black mold in my apartment, sometimes running fever, again with no medicine because I "didn't feel out the medicine form". They never gave me one and wouldn't give me one. They wouldn't cover an emergency dental operation either because "I wasn't going to be in there long enough". I really thought I was going to die or at least become critically ill and in need of hospitalization while in there. Only two or so weeks after I got out, I ended up developing an infection that paralyzed me almost completely until I was able to secure antibiotics. Best part was, the entire conviction and incarceration was illegal but the prosecutor changed my public defender and the new one refused to help me or let me appeal my case. I was also handed the maximum allowed sentence for the conviction, despite absolutely no evidence and several conflicting testimonies. The American justice system really is something. Edit: forgot to mention a juicy part: The jail lied to me and told me the only way that I could bail out the night I was arrested was if I signed a particular form which I later found out waived my right to a fair and speedy trial by jury. I was tricked into taking away authority over my case from the people and bestowing it entirely to a judge with corrupt motives.
- gnome_chomsky 8y ago
  I'm sorry that you experienced such an inhumane ordeal. Were you incarcerated at a publicly or privately operated facility?
  - kakarot 8y ago
    Public facility ostensibly, but essentially privately owned because the mayor's son is the district prosecutor, the (at the time) county's only judge, mayor and sheriff are political best buds, and the mayor is the bail bondsman for the county. To give you a better idea: Someone I know tried running against the district prosecutor last year, and ended up getting thrown in jail for made-up charges which magically appeared citing a rape of a woman 15 years ago. The district prosecutor was assigned to the case and this person has simply been fighting to have another prosecutor assigned to the case because obviously if the DA tries him he will put him away as long as he can as an example to others. These people get away with everything up to and including murder.
mruts 8y ago
The root of the problem is that we as a society can't agree on what the purpose of prison is. Is it punishment? Is it repaying a debt to society? Is it reform? Is it to prevent people from committing more crime? This is also the reason why the US justice doesn't make much sense either. Because people have vastly different views on the matter, we are unable to construct a prison system (or justice system) that makes any sense.
tyingq 8y ago
This story about a woman giving birth in a cell at a Texas facility is pretty disturbing: https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/07/10/premature-baby-born-at-dawson-jail-without-medically-trained-personnel/ https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/07/10/premature-baby-born-at-d... The guards just ignored her. The baby died. The story mentions other incidents in the same facility. There are several world class hospitals just down the street. It did get shut down, but likely solely due to this incident involving a child. The prior incidents were well known, but didn't kill anyone other than prisoners.
- tyingq 8y ago
  Also, this happened to be a privatized facility. I do think that's a big problem. On the other hand, there are plenty of state employee run facilities with similar issues. The conditions vary wildly by both state and specific facility.
forevertogether 8y ago
Has anyone watched the recent documentary 'The Work'? I think putting people in jail is possibly the worst crime of all. Let's get them in therapy instead. We can help to heal them by listening to their stories. The trailer for 'The Work' can be watched here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OVXG2GhpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OVXG2GhpQ
- ZeroFries 8y ago
  Good luck convincing anyone that listening to stories will drastically alter a person's neurology to the point of making them go from hyper-aggressive to docile. Until we improve our cognitive reforming abilities, violent criminals need to be segregated from the rest of the population. I do agree, though, that the vindictive aspect of "justice" is primative.
  - tdb7893 8y ago
    The issue is that most people in prison aren't "hyper aggressive". We incarcerate way more people than other places so your argument seems predicated on there being a lot more "hyper aggressive" people in the US than other places and I can't think of why that's the case.
    - ZeroFries 8y ago
      I never said victimless crimes need prison time. My argument is that hyper-aggressive people, and those that cause harm to others, need to be separated from the rest of society. The percentage of people that this applies to is greater than 0. The post I was commenting on said putting people in jail is a crime, when that's the best of bad solutions we currently have in a lot of cases.
  - Synaesthesia 8y ago
    I think we can move towards less punitive measures. In Europe there are far fewer jail sentences, I agree about violent offenders. The fact is most people are in jail for non-violent offenses. Even in the case of violent crime, the necessity of imprisoning them for as long as the US does, is questionable. Again in Europe jail sentences tend to be much shorter.
billfruit 8y ago
I read an estimate that the majority of rapes that happen in the US are prison rapes. If so then even the public discourse on rape itself is failing to highlight and protect these thousands of victims of sexual violence.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  It's so normalized in the cultural psyche it's the subject of jokes. It's not uncomfortable "trying to make terms with something" jokes, it's full on schadenfruede.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

129 points by Tomasz_Papka 8y ago

Incarceration 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,”

renholder 8y ago
>Privatization should be illegal and the plea system needs reform. IMHO, apathy about anyone who's ensnared in the legal system, "Well, if they weren't doing anything wrong...", leads to dehumanisation. Dehumanisation will - almost always - lead to many forms of abuse. I wish it were as simple as just making privatisation illegal and reforming the plea system but I fear that it would take far more than that to see true change. Put succinctly: The moment you no longer care about someone's life, in any shape or form, then that battle was already lost before it was even begun.
- throwaway4224 8y ago
  "apathy" is an understatement. Surveys show clearly that many people in the US, compared to other cultures, firmly believe in punitive justice. People who broke the law are seen as "deserving" to suffer in order to restore a "just" world. Even if the suffering is not effective as a deterrent or as part of a healing process, it's expected for a philosophical (or religious) reason.
- SomeHacker44 8y ago
  Everyone commits around three federal felonies a day, according to the premise of the book "Theee Felonies a Day" that I read a long time ago. We are all criminals and all do something "wrong" legally, all the time. The only difference is that the justice system focuses on some of us and not others, and the plea system harms most of those who are focused on, because any scrutiny at all can virtually always lead to an indictment. Just check the Skrelli incident for an example, or the whole Muller investigation. Virtually all those people would have escaped indictment had they just kept their heads down and avoided notice by justice officials.
  - blfr 8y ago
    This is a real concern in politically- or publicity-motivated prosecutions. And it gives prosecutors a wide avenue to abuse their powers. But are these a significant per cent of cases that lead people to Rikers? I'm gonna guess no, they won't add up to even a single per cent.
    - SomeHacker44 8y ago
      Just to be pedantic, Rikers, as I recall, is a state/city jail and not a federal prison. My personal belief is if the gov't wants you in jail, they can basically make it happen and only people with extreme resources may be able to belay that.
  - ataturk 8y ago
    It just drives home the reality that we live in a police state where the government is far from a disinterested party--there is a power or profit angle to lording over the peasants. There always has been. Part of the Enlightenment was the concept of individual rights. We have been suckered into giving up most of them. There's always a reasonable sounding justification for everything government wants to do. But it's always a one-down relationship with government, always.
  - hopler 8y ago
    That book was a huge exaggeration. It's central thesis was that most things that that are felonies are larger scale versions of minor acts (like battery is unwabtedt touching, so supposedly you could be convicted for bumping someone on a subway, and since the law accounts for mens rea, anyone could be party to a crime if the crime occurred and the judge/jury believe it was intentional. What's the alternative, to make any crime legal as long as the perpetrator has a partner and they both blame each other for being the mastermind? Your example of people who very clearly commuted major crimes, but could have avoided punishment, is the opposite of your thesis. very few people steal over a million dollars.
    - Casseres 8y ago
      I just looked at the reviews on Amazon. One reader wrote, "If you're looking for everyday examples of the felonies you and I unwittingly commit each day, you won't find them here." I guess I won't be buying it.
blfr 8y ago
Rikers Island is operated by the New York City Department of Correction, not a private company, and 85% of Rikers' residents have not been convicted (at least not yet) so how are your suggestions supposed to help with any of the issues outlined in the OP? If anything, moving away from plea bargaining would mean more people in jails awaiting trial. More generally, what is the value or repeating things like argument-less slogans about prison privatization or "if you don't pay for it, you're the product", especially to people who must have read it dozens of times?
- pjc50 8y ago
  If you don't want to keep hearing the slogan, find a different way to fix the underlying problem.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- xfitm3 8y ago
  "Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose. Faced with this choice, individuals almost uniformly surrender the right to trial rather than insist on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, defense lawyers spend most of their time negotiating guilty pleas rather than ensuring that police and the government respect the boundaries of the law including the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and judges dedicate their time to administering plea allocutions rather than evaluating the constitutional and legal aspects of the government’s case and police conduct. Equally important, the public rarely exercises the oversight function envisioned by the Framers and inherent in jury service." https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-innocent-people-pleading-guilty-a-new-report-says-yes/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-inno... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-bargaining-courts-prosecutors/524112/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-ba...
  - heydonovan 8y ago
    Plea bargaining makes innocent people admit to things they didn't do. Given the choice to plead guilty and receive 30 days in jail vs taking a chance in court at the risk of 3 years in jail, which would you take? Not to mention the insane costs of hiring a lawyer, which only wealthy people can afford. With the current trend of "guilty until proven innocent", it's no wonder folks take this approach.
Paul-ish 8y ago
Privatization isn't the issue. A lot of the abuses you see in private prisons, you see in public prisons. I recommend anyone read "Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform"[1] by John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham who focuses on these issues. It addresses a lot of misconceptions about the criminal justice system and suggests reforms. You can find a 1 hour talk by Pfaff that gives a good overview of the book[2]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Locked-Causes-Incarceration-Achieve-Reform/dp/0465096913 https://www.amazon.com/Locked-Causes-Incarceration-Achieve-R... [2] https://cdn.cato.org/archive-2017/cbf-04-26-17.mp4 https://cdn.cato.org/archive-2017/cbf-04-26-17.mp4
- xfitm3 8y ago
  Great points, thanks for the reference to that book. I follow Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner[0] and I think he's headed in the right direction. I'm not in Philadelphia but reports of his efforts are very positive. The reason for me knocking privatization is corruption. Kickbacks/lobbying[1] and nepotism[2]. While most of these actions are legal I don't think it is ethical. I'll do some more reading before commenting further. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Krasner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Krasner [1] https://outline.com/MzTc9f https://outline.com/MzTc9f [2] George W. Bush & Gus Puryear https://medium.com/@pavelsokolov_56935/private-prisons-in-america-9a291d78dcfd https://medium.com/@pavelsokolov_56935/private-prisons-in-am...

mnm1 8y ago

It'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.

c22 8y ago
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.
- kevingadd 8y ago
  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.
- mnm1 8y ago
  I agree that no one should be tortured and murdered, but my point still stands because Americans are so apathetic to the suffering of convicts (and suffering of anyone in general). Most probably assume people in jail deserve to be there. There may be some convicted people in jail, true, but then it becomes a multi-purpose facility that's both jail and prison.

adamnemecek 8y ago

https://outline.com/ZrqS5y https://outline.com/ZrqS5y

zkms 8y ago

A 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-impossible-for-prisoners-to-sue-prisons https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-its-nearly-impo... or https://casetext.com/analysis/nineties-crime-and-punishment-redux 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.

taxicabjesus 8y ago
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-isolation-units-was-exposed-desperate-handwritten-n969531 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.pdf https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PC-GA-0020-9000....
quasse 8y ago
I've found it hard to find out who was responsible for PLRA, but what I do know is that it seemed to enjoy wide congressional support, received little scrutiny, was signed into law by Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden was one of the only senators who raised concerns about it preventing meritorious lawsuits. [1] [1] https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-2/please-pass-the-dictionary-defining-de-minimis-physical-injury-under-the-prison-litigation-reform-act-1997ee/ https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-2/please-pa...

August-Garcia 8y ago

> 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: * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPB2ZA4096SESz_VZVzHoA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPB2ZA4096SESz_VZVzHoA * https://www.youtube.com/user/FreshOutSeries https://www.youtube.com/user/FreshOutSeries

taxicabjesus 8y ago

I'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/ http://www.taxiwars.org/who-are-your-lifelines/ (originally posted at kuro5hin.org) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Step_Act 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-anachronism.html 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-servants.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2017/10/ordinary-rendition-public-s...

sn41 8y ago
A related note on prison systems designed as cheap labor: Solzhenitsyn argued that the Gulag system was not a Stalinist aberration from the Soviet ideal : Lenin himself had envisioned forced labor in an extensive network. Solzhenitsyn remarks that the Soviet productivity in public works was dependent on this system of slave labor. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
hopler 8y ago
The US prison system is a direct reaction to the Constitutional Amendments that banned chattel slavery except for prison. Et voila, immediately a huge prison system immediately popped up.
trhway 8y ago
>This passenger had gotten a series of "driving without a license" tickets, and now owes $10,000+ in fines. Because of the outstanding balance, the state issues him an identification card that expires every 3 or 6 months. People who don't have balances with the state get identification cards without an expiration date. the state behaves just like a petulant cruel child, so typical of GOP and their puritanical mentality. If ID is required by state to access basic rights, then having such an ID is a right not a privilege. In this case, beside everything else, AZ by de-facto denying ID to those people effectively strips them of their right to vote for example.

unnouinceput 8y ago

Do jails kill people? No. Jail is a tool. People kill people.

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vertex-four 8y ago
Jails are a system in which people operate, and how that system is designed lacks accountability and encourages guards to kill people. The people within that system have responsibility for how they behave, yes, but as long as the system continues to exist the behaviour will as well.
nkrisc 8y ago
People don't kill people. Loss of oxygenation of the brain kills people.
gerbilly 8y ago
Jails do harm and even kill people. Jails and prisons inflict violence daily on the inmates, and even the guards and staff, just from the very nature of the situation they create. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
techbio 8y ago
They're not really people, they are officers acting in official capacity, ie. agents of a state. They are, as people, often immune from legal consequences for their actions. Would they behave the same way otherwise? https://reason.org/commentary/privatization-qualified-immunity/ https://reason.org/commentary/privatization-qualified-immuni...

kakarot 8y ago

My experience with jail: I was having severe heart palpitations in jail and the guards would not give me my medicine. When I got irate they would threaten to throw me in the hole without food and water for a few days. I also have a spine disorder that brings me extreme discomfort and the cots were the same units they'd ordered in the sixties. No stuffing at all, and I would wake up slightly paralyzed waist up for a few hours, with intense shoulder pain and barely being able to walk from sciatic flare-ups. I coincidentally was suffering from multiple dental infections accelerated from black mold in my apartment, sometimes running fever, again with no medicine because I "didn't feel out the medicine form". They never gave me one and wouldn't give me one. They wouldn't cover an emergency dental operation either because "I wasn't going to be in there long enough". I really thought I was going to die or at least become critically ill and in need of hospitalization while in there. Only two or so weeks after I got out, I ended up developing an infection that paralyzed me almost completely until I was able to secure antibiotics. Best part was, the entire conviction and incarceration was illegal but the prosecutor changed my public defender and the new one refused to help me or let me appeal my case. I was also handed the maximum allowed sentence for the conviction, despite absolutely no evidence and several conflicting testimonies. The American justice system really is something. Edit: forgot to mention a juicy part: The jail lied to me and told me the only way that I could bail out the night I was arrested was if I signed a particular form which I later found out waived my right to a fair and speedy trial by jury. I was tricked into taking away authority over my case from the people and bestowing it entirely to a judge with corrupt motives.

gnome_chomsky 8y ago
I'm sorry that you experienced such an inhumane ordeal. Were you incarcerated at a publicly or privately operated facility?
- kakarot 8y ago
  Public facility ostensibly, but essentially privately owned because the mayor's son is the district prosecutor, the (at the time) county's only judge, mayor and sheriff are political best buds, and the mayor is the bail bondsman for the county. To give you a better idea: Someone I know tried running against the district prosecutor last year, and ended up getting thrown in jail for made-up charges which magically appeared citing a rape of a woman 15 years ago. The district prosecutor was assigned to the case and this person has simply been fighting to have another prosecutor assigned to the case because obviously if the DA tries him he will put him away as long as he can as an example to others. These people get away with everything up to and including murder.

mruts 8y ago

The root of the problem is that we as a society can't agree on what the purpose of prison is. Is it punishment? Is it repaying a debt to society? Is it reform? Is it to prevent people from committing more crime? This is also the reason why the US justice doesn't make much sense either. Because people have vastly different views on the matter, we are unable to construct a prison system (or justice system) that makes any sense.

tyingq 8y ago

This story about a woman giving birth in a cell at a Texas facility is pretty disturbing: https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/07/10/premature-baby-born-at-dawson-jail-without-medically-trained-personnel/ https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/07/10/premature-baby-born-at-d... The guards just ignored her. The baby died. The story mentions other incidents in the same facility. There are several world class hospitals just down the street. It did get shut down, but likely solely due to this incident involving a child. The prior incidents were well known, but didn't kill anyone other than prisoners.

tyingq 8y ago
Also, this happened to be a privatized facility. I do think that's a big problem. On the other hand, there are plenty of state employee run facilities with similar issues. The conditions vary wildly by both state and specific facility.

forevertogether 8y ago

Has anyone watched the recent documentary 'The Work'? I think putting people in jail is possibly the worst crime of all. Let's get them in therapy instead. We can help to heal them by listening to their stories. The trailer for 'The Work' can be watched here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OVXG2GhpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OVXG2GhpQ

ZeroFries 8y ago
Good luck convincing anyone that listening to stories will drastically alter a person's neurology to the point of making them go from hyper-aggressive to docile. Until we improve our cognitive reforming abilities, violent criminals need to be segregated from the rest of the population. I do agree, though, that the vindictive aspect of "justice" is primative.
- tdb7893 8y ago
  The issue is that most people in prison aren't "hyper aggressive". We incarcerate way more people than other places so your argument seems predicated on there being a lot more "hyper aggressive" people in the US than other places and I can't think of why that's the case.
  - ZeroFries 8y ago
    I never said victimless crimes need prison time. My argument is that hyper-aggressive people, and those that cause harm to others, need to be separated from the rest of society. The percentage of people that this applies to is greater than 0. The post I was commenting on said putting people in jail is a crime, when that's the best of bad solutions we currently have in a lot of cases.
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  I think we can move towards less punitive measures. In Europe there are far fewer jail sentences, I agree about violent offenders. The fact is most people are in jail for non-violent offenses. Even in the case of violent crime, the necessity of imprisoning them for as long as the US does, is questionable. Again in Europe jail sentences tend to be much shorter.

billfruit 8y ago

I read an estimate that the majority of rapes that happen in the US are prison rapes. If so then even the public discourse on rape itself is failing to highlight and protect these thousands of victims of sexual violence.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
It's so normalized in the cultural psyche it's the subject of jokes. It's not uncomfortable "trying to make terms with something" jokes, it's full on schadenfruede.

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