7 ms·

Spending between $495 and $2,000 to learn how to avoid being raped and getting faeces smeared on you seems like a good investment. Even when you are not rich.

sschueller 7y ago
The fact that this is considered a possibility is abhorrent and should be addressed immediately. As a society how can one accept such realities as normal but at the same time condemn other countries that have gulags and prison work camps?
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  I totally agree. I'm appalled about about the lightness with which prison rape jokes are thrown around. The punishment doled out by a judge is the removal of freedom. It shouldn't include additional abuse or even rape.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    How is it even constitutional to send someone to a place where rape is a strong likelihood? I hope some of the political energy we have for sexual freedoms could be spent in this area, which clearly needs public discussion.
    - jopsen 7y ago
      > How is it even constitutional to send someone to a place where rape is a strong likelihood? If the state controls the environment how is even a "weak possibility" acceptable?
      - pintxo 7y ago
        Does the state control the environment [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_comp...
        jopsen 7y ago
        Yes, it holds the contract.
    - tropo 7y ago
      I think we decided that it wasn't constitutional, in most cases, to keep prisoners safely isolated from each other. Somehow, having the safety of a private cell is considered cruel, while having to sleep in a cell with a convicted criminal is not.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    > I'm appalled about about the lightness with which prison rape jokes are thrown around. That often happen in US and not in many other societies. I'm even more appalled that in some states the family of a murder victim is allowed to witness the execution of the perpetrator. They even cheer. It's all connected to the "just world" fallacy and the idea that people that cause suffering "deserve" to be punished and made to suffer.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      I think there is some reversal of cause and effect. The fact is that the US has always been much more violent and less stable than Western Europe. The murder rate in the US was 5-10x higher than in the UK over the entire 20th century. That includes during the period before prohibition and between prohibition and the drug war, and before there was meaningful gun control in either country. So it may be that US attitudes are the result of a more violent and less stable society. Good evidence for that is the fact that there was a trend toward increased focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment in the 1960s. Capital punishment was illegal in the US from 1967-1977. But crime started to skyrocket at the end of the 1960s. Following about a decade behind that, particularly in the 1980s, you saw a “war on crime” that led to longer sentences, increased incarceration, etc. But all that was a lagging indicator—it was a response to increasing crime rates. The increase in incarceration rates followed behind the increase in crime rates, and incarceration rates didn’t actually catch up until violent crime peaked in the 1990s. That all suggests that harsh attitudes towards punishment are a reaction to high crime rates.
      - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
        You are not providing any evidence that links desire for punishment with high crime rates. You are talking about "longer sentences, increased incarceration" and that's not the point. Ironically, large part of modern psychology and neurology has developed in the US.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Stuff like that really doesn't happen as often as internet comments would make you think. Most people in prison are just there do do their time and GTFO. Unless you choose to hang out with the crowd that's responsible for most of the physical violence odds are you will never be a victim of physical violence... just like in the normal world.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    >It really doesn't happen as often as internet comments would make you think. How about the US Justice Department? >"After asking around, and performing some calculations, the Justice Department came up with a new number: 216,000. That’s 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year. The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008" https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/politics/raise-the-crime-rate/ https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/politics/raise-the-crime-ra...
    - marcinzm 7y ago
      There are over 2.2 million people in US correction facilities and probably more if you count over a whole year. That gives a rate of under 10% which is high but supports the previous comment of the vast majority of prisoners not being assaulted.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Exactly. If you assume the population in general is "people caught up in violent crime", "people unlucky enough to be caught for petty crime" and "everyone else" then take a sampling of the first two groups (i.e. prison) and then re-check your crime stats of course it's going to look bad compared to the overall population stats. That doesn't mean the risk of becoming a victim of violence for the "people unlucky enough to be caught for petty crime" group goes up anymore than it would if they suddenly found themselves in equal contact with the "people caught up in violent crime" group outside of prison.
- rayiner 7y ago
  At some level, you have to understand the fact that people who go to prison are generally very bad, violent people, and putting them together in the same place is bound to cause problems. Some things about prison conditions you can definitely control and those should be fixed. For example, the treatment of pregnant prisoners in US prisons is often horrible. (You hear stories of women going into labor and being forced to delivery in their cell.) But other things you can’t fully control because they emerge from interactions between the prisoners. Look at schools. We live in a school district that’s extremely proactive about addressing bullying. Yet, our friend’s kid recently had water poured over her head on the bus. If you can’t banish physical violence in schools, among normal children, is there any prospect of doing the same in prisons?
  - throwaway55554 7y ago
    > At some level, you have to understand the fact that people who go to prison are generally very bad, violent people, ... No. The vast majority are in for drug offenses and are not, generally, considered violent or bad. Edit: I was wrong. Federal prison have way more drug offenders than violent offenders. State has more violent offenders than drug offenders. The way they're classified too is that the worst offense is the one on record. So if you are on drugs and hit someone, stats will tick up one more violent offense but not a drug offense.
    - marcinzm 7y ago
      No they're not. According this this[1] article drug crimes account for only 16% of inmates in state prisons. Violent crimes account for 54% of inmates. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-better-approach-to-violent-crime-1485536313 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-better-approach-to-violent-cr...
      - baud147258 7y ago
        The difference is coming from the fact that convictions for drug crimes are shorter than conviction for violent crimes, which could explain why there's more drug-related convictions but less drug-related inmates
- unixhero 7y ago
  Watch any of the Louis Theroux documentaries with the topic of US prisons. It's pretty harrowing.
- matz1 7y ago
  Because that's the reality of live, everyone want different thing.
  - cblades 7y ago
    How does that address the comment you replied to, in any way? Other people might want prisoners to be raped and smeared with feces, but that doesn't at all make it acceptable. Some people would be all-aboard genocides against certain religious, ethnic, etc. groups. I think we can agree that they're wrong.
    - matz1 7y ago
      Acceptable to who? Its acceptable to the rapers. Its acceptable to the genociders. You might thing they are wrong but I'm sure they don't. That's the reality of life.
Fjolsvith 7y ago
Having done time in state and federal prisons, I chuckle at this. A prisoner who befriended me when I first went to federal prison told me, "The only guys who get hurt in prison are the ones who deserve it." It boils down to a simple set of rules for surviving prison: 1. Be very respectful of everyone. You don't have to be friends, but you need to be courteous when it is required and practice avoidance when that is required, also. 2. Don't associate with the wrong crowd. In the federal pen, a new convict started hanging out with the AB's (a white supremacist gang). About 7 months later, someone in the law library stumbled across the new guy's case during some research. The new guy was in for running a child prostitution ring. The AB's murdered the new guy. They really didn't have a choice in the matter, as they would be seen as weak to the other gangs if they didn't. 3. Take care of your own problems. If someone disrespects you, you sometimes have to man up (after trying to resolve the issue with the gang bosses) and fight the guy. Typically in this situation it is a fist fight. Even if you get your ass beat, the whole population will respect you better because you don't take crap. 4. Don't ever, ever, ever (did I emphasize this enough?) go into debt to any other convict. Not for drugs. Not for alcohol. Not for cigarettes. Not for anything. This always ends bad, with either a knife in your kidney or you exposing your family on the outside to extortion. It is hard to get out of debt on prison income, and very easy to borrow from a friendly loan shark. 5. Get your routine and stick to it. It makes the time go faster. It helps you stay clear of the chaotic elements of prison population. 6. Hear nothing, see nothing. Don't spread rumors. If you get pegged as a "rat"/"snitch", you will never shake it, and your life will become pure hell during your entire prison stay. Those are the main ones for avoiding 97% of trouble in prison.

sschueller 7y ago

The fact that this is considered a possibility is abhorrent and should be addressed immediately. As a society how can one accept such realities as normal but at the same time condemn other countries that have gulags and prison work camps?

CaptainZapp 7y ago
I totally agree. I'm appalled about about the lightness with which prison rape jokes are thrown around. The punishment doled out by a judge is the removal of freedom. It shouldn't include additional abuse or even rape.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  How is it even constitutional to send someone to a place where rape is a strong likelihood? I hope some of the political energy we have for sexual freedoms could be spent in this area, which clearly needs public discussion.
  - jopsen 7y ago
    > How is it even constitutional to send someone to a place where rape is a strong likelihood? If the state controls the environment how is even a "weak possibility" acceptable?
    - pintxo 7y ago
      Does the state control the environment [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_comp...
      - jopsen 7y ago
        Yes, it holds the contract.
  - tropo 7y ago
    I think we decided that it wasn't constitutional, in most cases, to keep prisoners safely isolated from each other. Somehow, having the safety of a private cell is considered cruel, while having to sleep in a cell with a convicted criminal is not.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  > I'm appalled about about the lightness with which prison rape jokes are thrown around. That often happen in US and not in many other societies. I'm even more appalled that in some states the family of a murder victim is allowed to witness the execution of the perpetrator. They even cheer. It's all connected to the "just world" fallacy and the idea that people that cause suffering "deserve" to be punished and made to suffer.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I think there is some reversal of cause and effect. The fact is that the US has always been much more violent and less stable than Western Europe. The murder rate in the US was 5-10x higher than in the UK over the entire 20th century. That includes during the period before prohibition and between prohibition and the drug war, and before there was meaningful gun control in either country. So it may be that US attitudes are the result of a more violent and less stable society. Good evidence for that is the fact that there was a trend toward increased focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment in the 1960s. Capital punishment was illegal in the US from 1967-1977. But crime started to skyrocket at the end of the 1960s. Following about a decade behind that, particularly in the 1980s, you saw a “war on crime” that led to longer sentences, increased incarceration, etc. But all that was a lagging indicator—it was a response to increasing crime rates. The increase in incarceration rates followed behind the increase in crime rates, and incarceration rates didn’t actually catch up until violent crime peaked in the 1990s. That all suggests that harsh attitudes towards punishment are a reaction to high crime rates.
    - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      You are not providing any evidence that links desire for punishment with high crime rates. You are talking about "longer sentences, increased incarceration" and that's not the point. Ironically, large part of modern psychology and neurology has developed in the US.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Stuff like that really doesn't happen as often as internet comments would make you think. Most people in prison are just there do do their time and GTFO. Unless you choose to hang out with the crowd that's responsible for most of the physical violence odds are you will never be a victim of physical violence... just like in the normal world.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >It really doesn't happen as often as internet comments would make you think. How about the US Justice Department? >"After asking around, and performing some calculations, the Justice Department came up with a new number: 216,000. That’s 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year. The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008" https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/politics/raise-the-crime-rate/ https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/politics/raise-the-crime-ra...
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    There are over 2.2 million people in US correction facilities and probably more if you count over a whole year. That gives a rate of under 10% which is high but supports the previous comment of the vast majority of prisoners not being assaulted.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Exactly. If you assume the population in general is "people caught up in violent crime", "people unlucky enough to be caught for petty crime" and "everyone else" then take a sampling of the first two groups (i.e. prison) and then re-check your crime stats of course it's going to look bad compared to the overall population stats. That doesn't mean the risk of becoming a victim of violence for the "people unlucky enough to be caught for petty crime" group goes up anymore than it would if they suddenly found themselves in equal contact with the "people caught up in violent crime" group outside of prison.
rayiner 7y ago
At some level, you have to understand the fact that people who go to prison are generally very bad, violent people, and putting them together in the same place is bound to cause problems. Some things about prison conditions you can definitely control and those should be fixed. For example, the treatment of pregnant prisoners in US prisons is often horrible. (You hear stories of women going into labor and being forced to delivery in their cell.) But other things you can’t fully control because they emerge from interactions between the prisoners. Look at schools. We live in a school district that’s extremely proactive about addressing bullying. Yet, our friend’s kid recently had water poured over her head on the bus. If you can’t banish physical violence in schools, among normal children, is there any prospect of doing the same in prisons?
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  > At some level, you have to understand the fact that people who go to prison are generally very bad, violent people, ... No. The vast majority are in for drug offenses and are not, generally, considered violent or bad. Edit: I was wrong. Federal prison have way more drug offenders than violent offenders. State has more violent offenders than drug offenders. The way they're classified too is that the worst offense is the one on record. So if you are on drugs and hit someone, stats will tick up one more violent offense but not a drug offense.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    No they're not. According this this[1] article drug crimes account for only 16% of inmates in state prisons. Violent crimes account for 54% of inmates. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-better-approach-to-violent-crime-1485536313 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-better-approach-to-violent-cr...
    - baud147258 7y ago
      The difference is coming from the fact that convictions for drug crimes are shorter than conviction for violent crimes, which could explain why there's more drug-related convictions but less drug-related inmates
unixhero 7y ago
Watch any of the Louis Theroux documentaries with the topic of US prisons. It's pretty harrowing.
matz1 7y ago
Because that's the reality of live, everyone want different thing.
- cblades 7y ago
  How does that address the comment you replied to, in any way? Other people might want prisoners to be raped and smeared with feces, but that doesn't at all make it acceptable. Some people would be all-aboard genocides against certain religious, ethnic, etc. groups. I think we can agree that they're wrong.
  - matz1 7y ago
    Acceptable to who? Its acceptable to the rapers. Its acceptable to the genociders. You might thing they are wrong but I'm sure they don't. That's the reality of life.

Fjolsvith 7y ago

Having done time in state and federal prisons, I chuckle at this. A prisoner who befriended me when I first went to federal prison told me, "The only guys who get hurt in prison are the ones who deserve it." It boils down to a simple set of rules for surviving prison: 1. Be very respectful of everyone. You don't have to be friends, but you need to be courteous when it is required and practice avoidance when that is required, also. 2. Don't associate with the wrong crowd. In the federal pen, a new convict started hanging out with the AB's (a white supremacist gang). About 7 months later, someone in the law library stumbled across the new guy's case during some research. The new guy was in for running a child prostitution ring. The AB's murdered the new guy. They really didn't have a choice in the matter, as they would be seen as weak to the other gangs if they didn't. 3. Take care of your own problems. If someone disrespects you, you sometimes have to man up (after trying to resolve the issue with the gang bosses) and fight the guy. Typically in this situation it is a fist fight. Even if you get your ass beat, the whole population will respect you better because you don't take crap. 4. Don't ever, ever, ever (did I emphasize this enough?) go into debt to any other convict. Not for drugs. Not for alcohol. Not for cigarettes. Not for anything. This always ends bad, with either a knife in your kidney or you exposing your family on the outside to extortion. It is hard to get out of debt on prison income, and very easy to borrow from a friendly loan shark. 5. Get your routine and stick to it. It makes the time go faster. It helps you stay clear of the chaotic elements of prison population. 6. Hear nothing, see nothing. Don't spread rumors. If you get pegged as a "rat"/"snitch", you will never shake it, and your life will become pure hell during your entire prison stay. Those are the main ones for avoiding 97% of trouble in prison.