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Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wr

by zedshaw 15y ago

Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wrong (assuming your confusing deconstructionist prose means what I think it means). In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't survive their sentences. France's prisons are so historically bad that they've spawned whole revolutions numerous times, and are a common factor in their history. The EU was supposed to improve these conditions but it remains to be seen given they have very little data on how they're run, let alone anything publicly accessible. In Asia only Japan has decent well run prisons, but their prisons are harsh while still having a high success rate. In the rest of Asia prisons are typically horrible, and even S.Korea has some awful conditions. Last thing I read said they don't feed prisoners and keep them in tiny huts, requiring their relatives to come and feed them. Burma is a massive police state with actual slaves by law. In Africa, if you remove countries that just don't even have working governments, you find the prisons are also horrible, with the exception of maybe South Africa, but even they've had a history of nasty evil and torture (read about Steve Biko). It's improved a lot, but not nearly as much as it should. The US is similar to Europe, with some of the worst and some of the best prisons in the world. Now, we're not talking about American legal policy on things like wrongful imprisonment by the LA Crash unit, idiotic "3-strikes your out" laws, or minimum sentencing laws. I'm talking the actual conditions of the prisons in the US as labeled by organizations like Amnesty International. In our case, prisons are generally alright, with a few standout offenses like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in AZ, and most prisons in the south and California. The worst state is definitely California, which makes sense given they've had more complete city wide riots than any other state in the nation and their huge gap between rich and poor. But, a significant difference between our prison system and many others around the world (even those in Europe) are our laws about open records on how they're run and our recent trend of civilian oversight groups and recitivism prevention. Starting in about 2004 there's been a huge push to increase monitoring of prisons, offenses, guard abuses, and to help parolees stay out of jail. I personally worked on systems that tracked guard abuses at Riker's Island and the NYC DOC, as well as finger print systems for prisons that do early release programs and job release programs. The biggest problem in American prisons is the advocacy by law enforcement of inmate-on-inmate rape as a sanctioned form of punishment. There's been numerous cases of countries refusing to extradite criminals based purely on our joke that a man will get ass raped in prison. If you wanted to focus your activism and hatred on any one thing to improve our system, it would definitely be eliminating rape. In general, through my research and my own need to improve prisons, I found that prisons are horrible poorly managed hell holes everywhere. They generally reflect the cultural fear of the dominant members of a region against the "unclean" citizens, outsiders, and the low class. The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world. Very few countries in the world try to hide prisons, and when they do it's considered horrible, but none of them are hiding a prison that's the size of Manhattan: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=90km+square http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=90km+square

ajkessler 15y ago
Very interesting take. I think one of the most useful things to ask, in many situations, is "compared to what?" To those who say things like "we shouldn't point fingers, look how bad we are", I ask, "compared to what?" Compared to utopia, sure, America is a shithole. But compared to just about any other real place, on just about any other metric, we're doing pretty well. To argue that we somehow don't have the right to call other nations or people out for their atrocities, because we don't compare well to utopia, is ridiculous. We have a duty to call other people out on their bullshit.
- leot 15y ago
  Saying that we're better than most but not as great as we could be is a cop out. The implication of your comment appears to be "let's be upset about N.K., but you're holding the U.S. to too high a standard. The institutions of the U.S. are not nearly as deserving of public outrage as those of N.K." It's been my experience that most of the wealthy/privileged in the U.S. are simply unaware of how horrible things are[1]; that it's nicer to believe convenient fictions than be faced with a moral/emotional imperative to "do something". For these and other[2] reasons, America's institutions are more deserving than N.K.'s of American/Western public attention and outrage, proportional to the degree that they violate American values. [1] e.g. http://bit.ly/mwO0dP http://bit.ly/mwO0dP [2] another important reason is that American outrage can actually do something useful in the U.S., but is almost completely impotent w.r.t. N.K.
  - ajkessler 15y ago
    The implication is absolutely that the institutions of the U.S. are not nearly as deserving of public outrage as those of NK. I simply don't understand how you could come to any other conclusion. Death camps and executions for those who speak out against leaders are aren't worse than three strikes laws? Come on. I thoroughly agree with the first sentence of your second point. I would go further to say that, since almost all of America is wealthy and privileged (compared to the rest of the world), and add in the fact that only ~22% of our citizens have passports, most of us have no fucking clue how horrible things are in much of the world. That's why I think exposing this kind of stuff, and shaming those responsible, is worthwhile. The gains to be had in America are, relatively, minor compared to the gains that could be achieved for hundreds of millions around the world. Look at the recent events in the middle east. How much of the was precipitated by worldwide outrage over human rights issues for the last 30 years? I don't know, but I can't imagine they didn't bolster the protestors' resolve to some degree. That's not to say we should ignore the problems here, and obviously people aren't. There's a thousand different versions of the Innocence Project run by people trying to right the perceived wrongs in all segments of American society. But there's enough outrage to spread around. To say we don't, as individuals, have the time or energy to focus a miniscule amount of attention on the worst off of those around the world is ridiculous.

by zedshaw 15y ago

ajkessler 15y ago

Very interesting take. I think one of the most useful things to ask, in many situations, is "compared to what?" To those who say things like "we shouldn't point fingers, look how bad we are", I ask, "compared to what?" Compared to utopia, sure, America is a shithole. But compared to just about any other real place, on just about any other metric, we're doing pretty well. To argue that we somehow don't have the right to call other nations or people out for their atrocities, because we don't compare well to utopia, is ridiculous. We have a duty to call other people out on their bullshit.

leot 15y ago
Saying that we're better than most but not as great as we could be is a cop out. The implication of your comment appears to be "let's be upset about N.K., but you're holding the U.S. to too high a standard. The institutions of the U.S. are not nearly as deserving of public outrage as those of N.K." It's been my experience that most of the wealthy/privileged in the U.S. are simply unaware of how horrible things are[1]; that it's nicer to believe convenient fictions than be faced with a moral/emotional imperative to "do something". For these and other[2] reasons, America's institutions are more deserving than N.K.'s of American/Western public attention and outrage, proportional to the degree that they violate American values. [1] e.g. http://bit.ly/mwO0dP http://bit.ly/mwO0dP [2] another important reason is that American outrage can actually do something useful in the U.S., but is almost completely impotent w.r.t. N.K.
- ajkessler 15y ago
  The implication is absolutely that the institutions of the U.S. are not nearly as deserving of public outrage as those of NK. I simply don't understand how you could come to any other conclusion. Death camps and executions for those who speak out against leaders are aren't worse than three strikes laws? Come on. I thoroughly agree with the first sentence of your second point. I would go further to say that, since almost all of America is wealthy and privileged (compared to the rest of the world), and add in the fact that only ~22% of our citizens have passports, most of us have no fucking clue how horrible things are in much of the world. That's why I think exposing this kind of stuff, and shaming those responsible, is worthwhile. The gains to be had in America are, relatively, minor compared to the gains that could be achieved for hundreds of millions around the world. Look at the recent events in the middle east. How much of the was precipitated by worldwide outrage over human rights issues for the last 30 years? I don't know, but I can't imagine they didn't bolster the protestors' resolve to some degree. That's not to say we should ignore the problems here, and obviously people aren't. There's a thousand different versions of the Innocence Project run by people trying to right the perceived wrongs in all segments of American society. But there's enough outrage to spread around. To say we don't, as individuals, have the time or energy to focus a miniscule amount of attention on the worst off of those around the world is ridiculous.