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Epstein wasn't a normal prisoner. None of this is particularly relevant.

by 1000units 7y ago

iudqnolq 7y ago
Ken White addresses this. Even with high profile prisoners, guards face minimal accountability in the US prison system.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Did the "malfunctioning" cameras also just not fear accountability?
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    No, the people who were supposed to maintain them didn't bother because they knew they didn't have to fear accountability and they were extremely understaffed and overworked. > A New York Times investigation published last year detailed this practice, under which federal prisons are so strapped for correctional officers that they regularly compel teachers, nurses, secretaries and other support staff members to step in. The practice has grown at some prisons as the Trump administration has curtailed the hiring of correctional officers. > Many of these staff members only receive a few weeks’ training in correctional work, and, while required by contract to serve as substitutes, are often uncomfortable in the roles. > Union officials said that for more than a year officials in Washington had been made aware of a severe staffing shortage at the facility in the wake of a federal hiring freeze. One of the guards on the unit where Mr. Epstein died had been working overtime for five straight days, while the other had been forced to work overtime that day, a union official said. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/nyregion/epstein-barr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/nyregion/epstein-barr.htm... Here's another quote from Ken White, the criminal defense attorney I quoted above > Jeffrey Epstein’s name and face are everywhere following his death. Even as an investigation reveals that the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he died, was terminally short-staffed and relied on untrained guards who failed to monitor him, conspiracy theories persist. Americans who believe in their justice system assert that it is obvious that he was murdered, and that jailers could not possibly be so incompetent, cruel, or indifferent as to let such a high-profile prisoner commit suicide. > Here, to help you evaluate that claim, are 32 short stories about in-custody deaths or near-deaths in America. > These stories don’t mention Jeffrey Epstein, but they are about him. Epstein was incarcerated in the United States of America, and this is how the United States of America, the mightiest and richest nation there is or ever has been, treats incarcerated people. When you say, “There is no way that guards could be so reckless, so indifferent, so malicious as to just let someone as important as Epstein die,” this is how 32 Americans respond. Many, many more could respond in kind.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      Those are legitimate observations, but so is CamperBob's. I have first hand experience of how bad the carceral system can be, but the fact of that awfulness doesn't mitigate the oddness of a very high profile prisoner just falling through the cracks. The whole thesis here is that what happened to Epstein could happen to anyone, but that's not true. Most people are not billionaires with 24-7 access to the best lawyers in the world and extraordinary leverage over some of the most powerful people in the world. The implicit subtext here is that Epstein is just another human that got chewed up in a system that's generally indifferent if not outright hostile to human life. But people in jail are not mindless components in a dysfunctional system. They still have agency and respond to incentives and are mostly intensely interested in each other, not least because of the inhospitality of the system. They have newspapers and TV in jail, and I very sure that everyone in there was very aware of who their new neighbor was.
      - iudqnolq 7y ago
        Epstein had a lot of advantages, but they weren't enough to buy him a luxurious prison experience. He paid off other prisoners and exploited loopholes, but was still in a spartan cell. The luxurious pay-for-play prisons in the news occasionally are generally municipal prisons; Eppstein was in federal pretrial detention which is much harder to game. When he died Epstein was in a cell in the Special Housing Unit for uncooperative prisoners. He clearly wasn't able to buy better treatment from the government. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/real-scandal-mcc/596257/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/real-scand...) > Jeffrey Epstein, inmate 76318-054, hated his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. It was cramped, dank and infested with vermin, so Mr. Epstein, long accustomed to using his wealth to play by his own rules, devised a way out. > He paid numerous lawyers to visit the jail for as many as 12 hours a day, giving him the right to see them in a private meeting room ... he and his entourage regularly emptied the two vending machines of drinks and snacks. > “It was shift work, all designed by someone who had infinite resources to try and get as much comfort as possible,” said a lawyer who was often in the jail visiting clients. > Outside the meeting room, Mr. Epstein mounted a strategy to avoid being preyed upon by other inmates: He deposited money in their commissary accounts, according to a consultant who is often in the jail and speaks regularly with inmates there. > But in his final days, Mr. Epstein’s efforts to lessen the misery of incarceration seemed to be faltering. > He was seldom bathing, his hair and beard were unkempt and he was sleeping on the floor of his cell instead of on his bunk bed, according to people at the jail. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/nyregion/epstein-suicide-death.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/nyregion/epstein-suicide-...
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  Once again, that's a general statement that doesn't apply here. Rest assured that heads will roll/have already rolled over this.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    You are completely right I made a general argument. I didn't say that Epstein must have committed suicide. I said that an argument based in the idea that Epstein was treated in a shockingly irregular manner ignores the state of the US justice system. As to heads rolling, the low-level guards in charge of watching Epstein are on unpaid leave and under investigation. The head of the Bureau of Prisons has been demoted to his previous job as the head of a department in the bureau of prisons. I wouldn't call that accountability.
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      Speaking of heads rolling: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/us/jeffrey-epstein-guard-charge/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/us/jeffrey-epstein-guard-char... Not defending these people, mind you, or anyone involved. Just saying that either some shenanigans were afoot, or Epstein found himself at the center of an astonishing vortex of stupidity and carelessness, the likes of which is seldom seen in government or anywhere else. It's easier to imagine Barney Fife at Nuremberg. Whether the people responsible were designated patsies or garden-variety lazy dumbasses, they are not in for a good time.
      - iudqnolq 7y ago
        My argument is that the federal prison system outrageously mistreats detainees as a matter of course. Limited evidence suggests employees in the prison he was in habitually falsified reporting to get out of work. I'm done with this thread now, but I'd encourage you to read the Slate article I linked to. One of the articles that I linked to earlier in this thread is an interview with an academic who said she'd been trying to draw attention to the outrageous mistreatment of the detainees in that prison for years and thought it was really a shame that it took something happening to someone as famous as Epstein for it to be covered in the news. All my point was was that you can't use the fact that he was treated outrageously badly by the guards to prove that it was a conspiracy. What happened to Epstein should be taken as a wake-up call for us to reform our judicial system.

Epstein wasn't a normal prisoner. None of this is particularly relevant.

iudqnolq 7y ago

Ken White addresses this. Even with high profile prisoners, guards face minimal accountability in the US prison system.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Did the "malfunctioning" cameras also just not fear accountability?
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  No, the people who were supposed to maintain them didn't bother because they knew they didn't have to fear accountability and they were extremely understaffed and overworked. > A New York Times investigation published last year detailed this practice, under which federal prisons are so strapped for correctional officers that they regularly compel teachers, nurses, secretaries and other support staff members to step in. The practice has grown at some prisons as the Trump administration has curtailed the hiring of correctional officers. > Many of these staff members only receive a few weeks’ training in correctional work, and, while required by contract to serve as substitutes, are often uncomfortable in the roles. > Union officials said that for more than a year officials in Washington had been made aware of a severe staffing shortage at the facility in the wake of a federal hiring freeze. One of the guards on the unit where Mr. Epstein died had been working overtime for five straight days, while the other had been forced to work overtime that day, a union official said. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/nyregion/epstein-barr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/nyregion/epstein-barr.htm... Here's another quote from Ken White, the criminal defense attorney I quoted above > Jeffrey Epstein’s name and face are everywhere following his death. Even as an investigation reveals that the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he died, was terminally short-staffed and relied on untrained guards who failed to monitor him, conspiracy theories persist. Americans who believe in their justice system assert that it is obvious that he was murdered, and that jailers could not possibly be so incompetent, cruel, or indifferent as to let such a high-profile prisoner commit suicide. > Here, to help you evaluate that claim, are 32 short stories about in-custody deaths or near-deaths in America. > These stories don’t mention Jeffrey Epstein, but they are about him. Epstein was incarcerated in the United States of America, and this is how the United States of America, the mightiest and richest nation there is or ever has been, treats incarcerated people. When you say, “There is no way that guards could be so reckless, so indifferent, so malicious as to just let someone as important as Epstein die,” this is how 32 Americans respond. Many, many more could respond in kind.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    Those are legitimate observations, but so is CamperBob's. I have first hand experience of how bad the carceral system can be, but the fact of that awfulness doesn't mitigate the oddness of a very high profile prisoner just falling through the cracks. The whole thesis here is that what happened to Epstein could happen to anyone, but that's not true. Most people are not billionaires with 24-7 access to the best lawyers in the world and extraordinary leverage over some of the most powerful people in the world. The implicit subtext here is that Epstein is just another human that got chewed up in a system that's generally indifferent if not outright hostile to human life. But people in jail are not mindless components in a dysfunctional system. They still have agency and respond to incentives and are mostly intensely interested in each other, not least because of the inhospitality of the system. They have newspapers and TV in jail, and I very sure that everyone in there was very aware of who their new neighbor was.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      Epstein had a lot of advantages, but they weren't enough to buy him a luxurious prison experience. He paid off other prisoners and exploited loopholes, but was still in a spartan cell. The luxurious pay-for-play prisons in the news occasionally are generally municipal prisons; Eppstein was in federal pretrial detention which is much harder to game. When he died Epstein was in a cell in the Special Housing Unit for uncooperative prisoners. He clearly wasn't able to buy better treatment from the government. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/real-scandal-mcc/596257/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/real-scand...) > Jeffrey Epstein, inmate 76318-054, hated his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. It was cramped, dank and infested with vermin, so Mr. Epstein, long accustomed to using his wealth to play by his own rules, devised a way out. > He paid numerous lawyers to visit the jail for as many as 12 hours a day, giving him the right to see them in a private meeting room ... he and his entourage regularly emptied the two vending machines of drinks and snacks. > “It was shift work, all designed by someone who had infinite resources to try and get as much comfort as possible,” said a lawyer who was often in the jail visiting clients. > Outside the meeting room, Mr. Epstein mounted a strategy to avoid being preyed upon by other inmates: He deposited money in their commissary accounts, according to a consultant who is often in the jail and speaks regularly with inmates there. > But in his final days, Mr. Epstein’s efforts to lessen the misery of incarceration seemed to be faltering. > He was seldom bathing, his hair and beard were unkempt and he was sleeping on the floor of his cell instead of on his bunk bed, according to people at the jail. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/nyregion/epstein-suicide-death.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/nyregion/epstein-suicide-...
CamperBob2 7y ago
Once again, that's a general statement that doesn't apply here. Rest assured that heads will roll/have already rolled over this.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  You are completely right I made a general argument. I didn't say that Epstein must have committed suicide. I said that an argument based in the idea that Epstein was treated in a shockingly irregular manner ignores the state of the US justice system. As to heads rolling, the low-level guards in charge of watching Epstein are on unpaid leave and under investigation. The head of the Bureau of Prisons has been demoted to his previous job as the head of a department in the bureau of prisons. I wouldn't call that accountability.
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    Speaking of heads rolling: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/us/jeffrey-epstein-guard-charge/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/us/jeffrey-epstein-guard-char... Not defending these people, mind you, or anyone involved. Just saying that either some shenanigans were afoot, or Epstein found himself at the center of an astonishing vortex of stupidity and carelessness, the likes of which is seldom seen in government or anywhere else. It's easier to imagine Barney Fife at Nuremberg. Whether the people responsible were designated patsies or garden-variety lazy dumbasses, they are not in for a good time.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      My argument is that the federal prison system outrageously mistreats detainees as a matter of course. Limited evidence suggests employees in the prison he was in habitually falsified reporting to get out of work. I'm done with this thread now, but I'd encourage you to read the Slate article I linked to. One of the articles that I linked to earlier in this thread is an interview with an academic who said she'd been trying to draw attention to the outrageous mistreatment of the detainees in that prison for years and thought it was really a shame that it took something happening to someone as famous as Epstein for it to be covered in the news. All my point was was that you can't use the fact that he was treated outrageously badly by the guards to prove that it was a conspiracy. What happened to Epstein should be taken as a wake-up call for us to reform our judicial system.