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People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our priso

People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our prison system is probably near the top of that list, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the sheer size of the prison population these days due to the war on drugs. Even more significant is the widespread societal belief that prison experience should be brutal punishment and torture, with no concern for justice, fairness, or humaneness. Prison rape is a punch-line, it's not even on the radar as a political issue. The public acknowledges, accepts, and approves of prison experiences as not merely pragmatic methods of keeping some folks separate from public society, and especially not as rehabilitory, but as retributive, vengeful, and arbitrary. These are the basest and most despicable sentiments when it comes to issues of criminal justice, but they rule the day in the 21st century as much as they ever did in the middle ages or even in the stone age. This is easily one of the most significant issues of our time, as significant and important as the Cold War in the 20th century or the struggle over the abolition of slavery in the 19th.

jabbernotty 13y ago
Some of what you mentioned here, if not most, seems specific to the USA, from my western European point of view. Do you know of any explanation for that?
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  Visibility for one. The French prison system is horrible, the British prison system is also pretty bad. Beyond that I'd have to blame the war on drugs and general societal attitudes. The general attitude seems to be that once you have been adjudicated a "bad guy" and are put into the prison population anything that happens to you is fair game.
  - AFrench 13y ago
    The French prison system is severely underfunded leading to very poor living conditions, but there is none of this attitude that it's OK for people to be raped if they're criminals. The statistics for rape in US prisons are absolutely appalling; I have never seen such data for French prisons, but I would guess, or at least hope, that it is much less common.
    - bdunbar 13y ago
      > none of this attitude This is not an actual prevailing attitude in the US.
      - Camillo 13y ago
        Yes it is.
        cobrausn 13y ago
        If you are going to level an accusation like 'the majority of Americans think prisoner-on-prisoner rape is a-ok', then the burden of proof is on you. I won't even say that nobody thinks that way, I just want proof that this is the prevailing mindset.
        ericd 13y ago
        It's pretty easy to see that if there's not acceptance, there's at least almost complete apathy. There hasn't exactly been many widespread calls for better conditions in our prisons, and in day to day life, I've never heard anyone suggest it.
        vacri 13y ago
        I would say that the majority don't care, and depending on how you phrase the question, you could get them to swing either way. The problem is that in public discourse, prison rape is seen as a punchline, not a blight.
        eropple 13y ago
        The topic of prison rape is a joke that people as a whole feel comfortable laughing about in public. It is undeniably normative.
        ams6110 13y ago
        Joking about things that are in despicable in reality is commonplace. The TV show "Family Guy" features a pedophile as a main character. Do you think this means the audience or producers feel this is normal and acceptable?
scrapcode 13y ago
I'm kind of glad that this is your perception. This should be everyone's perception of prison. You should have an extreme necessity to keep your ass out of prison. You should be scared absolutely shitless of prison, so much that you play exactly by the rules to keep yourself from ever going there. Our prison system does a pretty good job at driving this perception home. Prison is not a rehabilitation center. If it were just a means of keeping folks separate from society, I know plenty of unmotivated individuals that would love to sit around with a bunch of other lazy-asses and be fed 3 meals a day. For free. Don't you? Prison has to be scary. It has to strike one as the number one place that you do not want to go. It's the other ultimate consequence, along side of death. I can't imagine this world if it wasn't.
- cynicalkane 13y ago
  I don't think anyone thinks the deterrent effect of prisons are ineffective. However, the at-risk populations who most often end up in prison are bad at weighing these deterrents, especially before they go there. Another factor is the quality of deterrence: the point is not to arbitrarily and randomly ruin peoples' lives. You want a high ratio of crime reduction to damage. A good penal system does this and bad penal system works the other way around. A lot of science suggests that the life-ruining factor is a significant counter-effect to the original goal of reducing crime and increasing quality of life in our democracy. That's me being polite. If I was less polite, I would say how much I hate your ignorant, lazy self-righteousness and how this despicable and inhuman attitude is a major factor in how our system destroys people with little to no scientific justification.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  A very Hobbesian view of society, I see. Not one I subscribe to, nor one that, from my experience, is reflective of reality. Prison experiences in the US are pretty horrific in the norm, and yet there are more people in prison than ever (as a percentage of the population), and many of them are there due to fairly minor or victimless crimes. There is some sort of dissonance there, and I think it comes down to the fact that fear is not the sole or even necessarily the primary motivator for behavior on the boundary of the law. Also, there are countries where prison is not scary, where the criminal justice system raises rehabilitation above other concerns, and such places (such as Canada and the scandinavian countries) are not the lawless hellholes your theory of human behavior would have them be.
maeon3 13y ago
If the prisons were focused on fixing the root problem in the criminals, as if they were some sort of refuge for edification, conditioning and correction then a large body of the homeless would commit a strategic crime in order to get there so they can at least get three meals and an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom. Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil to punish people who do not deserve rehabilitation, correction or edification. Conditions have to be bad enough so that a large segment of the rock-bottom citizens don't commit crime just to get some hope. Therefore the conditions of prison have to be a few steps less desirable than being homeless, penniless, cloth less, hungry and with no hope of getting out of it. It's my belief that jails are full of criminals because we don't understand the mental illnesses that brought them there. If we can do whole-brain simulation, emulation, and detection in a client, I think studying the body of brains in jail vs the body of brains outside jail will reveal some remarkable findings. It could be their ethical systems were coaxed into the off position, and we may be able to detect this before a person commits crime. Saying: "You better get your ethical centers back on-line, or we'll have to put you under increased surveillance".
- Djehngo 13y ago
  I am hoping this is satire and you aren't seriously arguing that "prisons have to be barbaric otherwise the homeless and the destitute would use them to avoid starvation".
  - jazzyb 13y ago
    The clue is "Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil..." It is a very good piece of satire.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  Let me take a different tack on this response. If what you say is true, then why is this not an explicit part of our criminal justice system? Why are there no laws and regulations which spell out the brutalities that prisoners should be exposed to? Why is the process not formalized, institutionalized, documented, and routine? Why has there been no public campaign to repeal or modify the 8th amendment to the US constitution (banning cruel and unusual punishments)? Or to set new legal precedent in the UK to invalidate the equivalent protections in the English/British constitutions? If it is such a foundationally important part of a well-functioning society then why is it not being talked about and debated above board?
roc 13y ago
> "Our prison system is probably near the top of that list," If by "our" you mean "the US" then I'm already of the mind that it's bizarre and barbaric and I doubt I'm alone. In many ways it strikes me as suffering from problems similar to those in our older (now largely dismantled) system of insane asylums. Both sought to address a very serious problem, for which we only have flawed solutions to choose from. And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise [1], it -- as a whole -- is progressing to a place where the system has been corrupted into a larger problem than the one it's trying to address. [1] Though when we have for-profit industry lobbying legislators based purely on their profit motive, it's foolish not to say there are proven-better alternatives to many of the problems. To say nothing of the prison-rape culture and our societal response to it.
- lars 13y ago
  > And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise Oh please. The US has a recidivism rate within 3 years of 67.5%. Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% within 2 years. There are proven-better alternatives, but your society has decided not to implement them.
  - roc 13y ago
    > "There are proven-better alternatives" Some of them, yes. Which is what I said.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    You can't compare recidivism rates between a 300M nation of immigrants a 5M nation with an extremely homogenous culture. The US has social problems that are worse than Norway's worst nightmares. Prisons are just the tip of the iceberg.
    - vacri 13y ago
      You can, however, compare to other anglo-centric melting-pot countries, and the US experience is still vastly worse. And no matter which way you carve it, with the rest of the western world having an incarceration rate between 70 and 150/100k, the US is clearly out of order with a rate of 750. In any case, your handwaving away of "we have bad social problems" is missing the point. Norway tries to fix them, using rehabilitation in its prisons as one example. The US tries to ignore them, and uses prisons as punishment. It's a point of philosophy. No-one expects that the US recidivism rate would drop to Norway's levels should the focus shift to a Norway-style penal system, but they do expect it would still drop markedly.
xenophanes 13y ago
> People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our prison system is probably near the top of that list, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the sheer size of the prison population these days due to the war on drugs. I agree except that I don't consider our prison and drug policies "normal" or acceptable. And a significant amount of people don't consider them normal. I think, for more in the spirit of that question, it's interesting to consider what 95+% consider normal that in the future 95+% will consider barbaric. Something like that.
conanbatt 13y ago
I agree completely. I believe that this is a cultural and political problem. I cant imagine a politician saying that he will fund prisons get any votes whatsoever. It would be suicide. And whatever fruits would come from such measure , he would never see, and the population as a whole is likely to ignore. This is the kind of problem that comes from Democracy, unfortunately. Not prisons, but the inherent inhability to address a real, provable issue that falls flat on public opinion. I also believe this is an economic policy issue as well. The problem is exacerbated by increasingly unequal living conditions. Its no secret that crime and socio-economic status is highly correlated. The above statements really make the problem a lot larger, however i believe this wont be fixed until something changes in the above, because convicts are the most politically and economically weak part of society.

jabbernotty 13y ago

Some of what you mentioned here, if not most, seems specific to the USA, from my western European point of view. Do you know of any explanation for that?

InclinedPlane 13y ago
Visibility for one. The French prison system is horrible, the British prison system is also pretty bad. Beyond that I'd have to blame the war on drugs and general societal attitudes. The general attitude seems to be that once you have been adjudicated a "bad guy" and are put into the prison population anything that happens to you is fair game.
- AFrench 13y ago
  The French prison system is severely underfunded leading to very poor living conditions, but there is none of this attitude that it's OK for people to be raped if they're criminals. The statistics for rape in US prisons are absolutely appalling; I have never seen such data for French prisons, but I would guess, or at least hope, that it is much less common.
  - bdunbar 13y ago
    > none of this attitude This is not an actual prevailing attitude in the US.
    - Camillo 13y ago
      Yes it is.
      - cobrausn 13y ago
        If you are going to level an accusation like 'the majority of Americans think prisoner-on-prisoner rape is a-ok', then the burden of proof is on you. I won't even say that nobody thinks that way, I just want proof that this is the prevailing mindset.
        ericd 13y ago
        It's pretty easy to see that if there's not acceptance, there's at least almost complete apathy. There hasn't exactly been many widespread calls for better conditions in our prisons, and in day to day life, I've never heard anyone suggest it.
        vacri 13y ago
        I would say that the majority don't care, and depending on how you phrase the question, you could get them to swing either way. The problem is that in public discourse, prison rape is seen as a punchline, not a blight.
        eropple 13y ago
        The topic of prison rape is a joke that people as a whole feel comfortable laughing about in public. It is undeniably normative.
        ams6110 13y ago
        Joking about things that are in despicable in reality is commonplace. The TV show "Family Guy" features a pedophile as a main character. Do you think this means the audience or producers feel this is normal and acceptable?

scrapcode 13y ago

I'm kind of glad that this is your perception. This should be everyone's perception of prison. You should have an extreme necessity to keep your ass out of prison. You should be scared absolutely shitless of prison, so much that you play exactly by the rules to keep yourself from ever going there. Our prison system does a pretty good job at driving this perception home. Prison is not a rehabilitation center. If it were just a means of keeping folks separate from society, I know plenty of unmotivated individuals that would love to sit around with a bunch of other lazy-asses and be fed 3 meals a day. For free. Don't you? Prison has to be scary. It has to strike one as the number one place that you do not want to go. It's the other ultimate consequence, along side of death. I can't imagine this world if it wasn't.

cynicalkane 13y ago
I don't think anyone thinks the deterrent effect of prisons are ineffective. However, the at-risk populations who most often end up in prison are bad at weighing these deterrents, especially before they go there. Another factor is the quality of deterrence: the point is not to arbitrarily and randomly ruin peoples' lives. You want a high ratio of crime reduction to damage. A good penal system does this and bad penal system works the other way around. A lot of science suggests that the life-ruining factor is a significant counter-effect to the original goal of reducing crime and increasing quality of life in our democracy. That's me being polite. If I was less polite, I would say how much I hate your ignorant, lazy self-righteousness and how this despicable and inhuman attitude is a major factor in how our system destroys people with little to no scientific justification.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
A very Hobbesian view of society, I see. Not one I subscribe to, nor one that, from my experience, is reflective of reality. Prison experiences in the US are pretty horrific in the norm, and yet there are more people in prison than ever (as a percentage of the population), and many of them are there due to fairly minor or victimless crimes. There is some sort of dissonance there, and I think it comes down to the fact that fear is not the sole or even necessarily the primary motivator for behavior on the boundary of the law. Also, there are countries where prison is not scary, where the criminal justice system raises rehabilitation above other concerns, and such places (such as Canada and the scandinavian countries) are not the lawless hellholes your theory of human behavior would have them be.

maeon3 13y ago

If the prisons were focused on fixing the root problem in the criminals, as if they were some sort of refuge for edification, conditioning and correction then a large body of the homeless would commit a strategic crime in order to get there so they can at least get three meals and an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom. Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil to punish people who do not deserve rehabilitation, correction or edification. Conditions have to be bad enough so that a large segment of the rock-bottom citizens don't commit crime just to get some hope. Therefore the conditions of prison have to be a few steps less desirable than being homeless, penniless, cloth less, hungry and with no hope of getting out of it. It's my belief that jails are full of criminals because we don't understand the mental illnesses that brought them there. If we can do whole-brain simulation, emulation, and detection in a client, I think studying the body of brains in jail vs the body of brains outside jail will reveal some remarkable findings. It could be their ethical systems were coaxed into the off position, and we may be able to detect this before a person commits crime. Saying: "You better get your ethical centers back on-line, or we'll have to put you under increased surveillance".

Djehngo 13y ago
I am hoping this is satire and you aren't seriously arguing that "prisons have to be barbaric otherwise the homeless and the destitute would use them to avoid starvation".
- jazzyb 13y ago
  The clue is "Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil..." It is a very good piece of satire.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Let me take a different tack on this response. If what you say is true, then why is this not an explicit part of our criminal justice system? Why are there no laws and regulations which spell out the brutalities that prisoners should be exposed to? Why is the process not formalized, institutionalized, documented, and routine? Why has there been no public campaign to repeal or modify the 8th amendment to the US constitution (banning cruel and unusual punishments)? Or to set new legal precedent in the UK to invalidate the equivalent protections in the English/British constitutions? If it is such a foundationally important part of a well-functioning society then why is it not being talked about and debated above board?

roc 13y ago

> "Our prison system is probably near the top of that list," If by "our" you mean "the US" then I'm already of the mind that it's bizarre and barbaric and I doubt I'm alone. In many ways it strikes me as suffering from problems similar to those in our older (now largely dismantled) system of insane asylums. Both sought to address a very serious problem, for which we only have flawed solutions to choose from. And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise [1], it -- as a whole -- is progressing to a place where the system has been corrupted into a larger problem than the one it's trying to address. [1] Though when we have for-profit industry lobbying legislators based purely on their profit motive, it's foolish not to say there are proven-better alternatives to many of the problems. To say nothing of the prison-rape culture and our societal response to it.

lars 13y ago
> And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise Oh please. The US has a recidivism rate within 3 years of 67.5%. Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% within 2 years. There are proven-better alternatives, but your society has decided not to implement them.
- roc 13y ago
  > "There are proven-better alternatives" Some of them, yes. Which is what I said.
- dasil003 13y ago
  You can't compare recidivism rates between a 300M nation of immigrants a 5M nation with an extremely homogenous culture. The US has social problems that are worse than Norway's worst nightmares. Prisons are just the tip of the iceberg.
  - vacri 13y ago
    You can, however, compare to other anglo-centric melting-pot countries, and the US experience is still vastly worse. And no matter which way you carve it, with the rest of the western world having an incarceration rate between 70 and 150/100k, the US is clearly out of order with a rate of 750. In any case, your handwaving away of "we have bad social problems" is missing the point. Norway tries to fix them, using rehabilitation in its prisons as one example. The US tries to ignore them, and uses prisons as punishment. It's a point of philosophy. No-one expects that the US recidivism rate would drop to Norway's levels should the focus shift to a Norway-style penal system, but they do expect it would still drop markedly.

xenophanes 13y ago

> People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our prison system is probably near the top of that list, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the sheer size of the prison population these days due to the war on drugs. I agree except that I don't consider our prison and drug policies "normal" or acceptable. And a significant amount of people don't consider them normal. I think, for more in the spirit of that question, it's interesting to consider what 95+% consider normal that in the future 95+% will consider barbaric. Something like that.

conanbatt 13y ago

I agree completely. I believe that this is a cultural and political problem. I cant imagine a politician saying that he will fund prisons get any votes whatsoever. It would be suicide. And whatever fruits would come from such measure , he would never see, and the population as a whole is likely to ignore. This is the kind of problem that comes from Democracy, unfortunately. Not prisons, but the inherent inhability to address a real, provable issue that falls flat on public opinion. I also believe this is an economic policy issue as well. The problem is exacerbated by increasingly unequal living conditions. Its no secret that crime and socio-economic status is highly correlated. The above statements really make the problem a lot larger, however i believe this wont be fixed until something changes in the above, because convicts are the most politically and economically weak part of society.