15 ms·

How Gangs Took Over Prisons

171 points by dodders 12y ago

angersock 12y ago
One wonders what sort of prison and judicial reform could ever happen in a system like the US has? The entire thing is so deeply entrenched at so many levels I doubt it could be done cleanly if at all.
- joe_the_user 12y ago
  I agree that prison reform seems unlikely but I would put this in terms of the entrenched interest of guards, law enforcement and all the beneficiaries of the War On Drugs. Prison gangs are subordinate players in this game but certainly they are the monsters that the Drug War overall has successfully conjured up.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- rayiner 12y ago
  It's also illustrative to ask what reforms are possible in a society like the U.S. has: http://www.explainingprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homicide-rates-in-the-united-states-and-england-1900-2000-pinker-2011-jpg.jpg http://www.explainingprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03.... The U.S. homicide rate has been 5-7x higher than in England for more than a century. You can't blame it on the drug war or on Prohibition: it was 7x higher in 1900-1920, before Prohibition, before the expansion of federal criminal law, before for-profit prisons and before prison guard lobbies. For some reason, the U.S. is just an incredibly violent society. Our justice system has evolved in light of that.
  - bronbron 12y ago
    > Our justice system has evolved in light of that. I don't know that I'd say 'evolved'. You said it yourself: the homicide rate has been 5-7x higher than in England for more than a century. We're not really doing anything different than what we used to do - a punitive justice system, sometimes morally dubious punishment, and total 'othering' of convicted criminals. I don't know that we can really be shocked when nothing changes.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      That's not true at all. There was a real effort in the 1950's and 1960's to turn the justice system into one more oriented toward rehabilitation. In the face of crime skyrocketing in the 1960's and 1970's, voters went the other way, instituting our present system. Take for example things like three strikes laws, which are mostly responsible for the "he went to jail for life for stealing $200" horror stories. Those were pioneered in 1993-94, by referendum in progressive states like Washington and California, by overwhelming margins (80-90% voting in favor).
      - bronbron 12y ago
        > There was a real effort in the 1950's and 1960's to turn the justice system into one more oriented toward rehabilitation Err, so there was an erroneous decade where we tried to do better? The mid 50s-60s were a discrepancy in american history in a multitude of ways, so I'm not sure that I'd consider prison reform any different in that regard. I also wouldn't consider a decade as representative of the american justice system when we have plenty of evidence that it's not representative of either the past (where we used to just hang people after three strikes) or the present (where, as you noted, we have three strikes laws). In fact, it seems as though once a century we'll have a decade where they half-heartedly try to implement rehabilitative reforms, keep at it for maybe the better half of a decade, and then act shocked that it hasn't decimated incarceration rates yet. Shockingly, it takes longer than a few years to reform a society.
        rayiner 12y ago
        The comparison was against the U.K. I'm not an expert in turn of the century British criminal law, but I don't imagine you'll find that it was particularly oriented toward rehabilitation. Yet, their homicide rate has always been dramatically lower.
        bronbron 12y ago
        > I don't imagine you'll find that it was particularly oriented toward rehabilitation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_League_for_Penal_Reform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_League_for_Penal_Reform
  - joesmo 12y ago
    Homicide is a very small percentage of all crimes. I think it's obvious that our justice and penal systems have evolved to incarcerate the "unwanted," mainly people of color. They are both racist institutions that, especially in the last 60-70 years have been trying to "make up" for the advancements in the civil rights of minorities. As far as what reforms are possible, how about releasing everyone who has committed victimless crimes (drugs, prostitution, etc.)? The "justice" system in this country has lost all credibility because such crimes are mainly used to target minorities and the poor. Treating inmates humanely would also help. Removing the profit incentives of prisons would go a long way towards this as well. Not sending people to jail because they can't pay $100 fine would also be a huge step. There are many things society can do to keep a lot of the "low-level" offenders from ever getting into prison and becoming hardened criminals. For most people, once they're in prison, it's too late.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      I use homicide because good records have been kept of such crimes over a long period of time. More recently, homicides have tracked the overall violent crime rate pretty well: http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.jpg http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.j...
    - tptacek 12y ago
      No, it's not. Murder is ~12% of all state incarcerations (state prisons being where the majority of all US inmates are housed). For context, all drug offenses put together make up just 17% of 2011 state incarcerations. If you include manslaughter, which you should, because (a) it's a form of homicide and (b) many murder prosecutions plead down to it, you get to just about 14%. Homicide is a significant component of all US crime. There's no way to look at the numbers and characterize them as "very small". If you released everyone currently imprisoned for drug crimes, you'd set free about 250,000 people, which is great, but you'd be leaving 1.1 million people incarcerated. Drugs aren't the big problem. Something else is. (Prostitution, a "public order" offense, is a rounding error --- women represent 5% of all public order offenses, meaning that the category captures not just prostitution but is a whole myriad of offenses mostly committed by men. Very few women are actually imprisoned for prostitution; Texas is newsworthy for having around 300 of them, against a 5-figure female prison population).
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    I'd suggest that murder rates are correlated mostly with a nation's experience of colonization. That's why they're uniformly higher in Africa and the Americas than in other parts of the world. Actually in that subset the USA does better than all but a few nations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
joe_the_user 12y ago
"The inmates interact like volatile chemicals..." Language like this seems to me to dehumanize the inmates. Given that the author fails in getting into a conversation with the inmates, I find it irksome he feels called to pontificate on the situation, especially when other author have succeeded in having discussions with both gang members and alleged-but-not-actual gang members. I suspect the inmates were wise in not talking to him. Since gang membership is a means that the California Prison System can use to discipline an inmate with little evidence, it's in the system's interest to describe everyone as a gang member (with Pelican Bay being the punishment zone for anyone so accused). Naturally, extreme insecurity makes banding logical as well - however the questionable part of the discussion is whether the prison is trying to control gang membership (in the same fashion that its questionable whether the war drugs is an honest effort to control drug use).
- bglazer 12y ago
  The article was interesting for its history of prison gangs. However, if you're going to write about anything, then you owe it to both the readers and the subjects to interview the people involved. You're not going to get an interview by walking once down a cell block asking to talk about gangs. No shit. The people who create shows like "Jail" or "Lockup" manage to get hundreds of hours of interviews with gang members. However, they establish mutual respect and rapport. I suppose I can't judge too harshly as it's certainly a difficult assignment, but it seems like the author put a very minimal amount of effort into interviewing, and instead pontificated from on high about gang members.
cwyers 12y ago
It seems like there's a lot that could be done to curtail the use of cell phones in prisons that wouldn't require invasive body-cavity searches. Couldn't you just jam common cell phone transmission frequencies? That'd curtail guard use of cell phones, too, but that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.
- r00fus 12y ago
  No need to jam - simply put in fake cell towers. I think that idea isn't new and is already proposed [1]. [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/17/local/la-me-0417-prison-cellphones-20120417 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/17/local/la-me-0417-pri...
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  Prison personnel are already prohibited from having two-way communication devices except their radios. The problem with jammers is the FCC. They are paranoid about allowing the operation of any devices intended to screw up communications, and rightfully so.
  - qq66 12y ago
    It might be expensive, but you could make the entire prison a Faraday cage (although not sure how that would work if people are allowed to go outdoors).
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
      Yeah, you could basically TEMPEST-harden the whole building. That would significantly increase the cost of building prisons, though.
      - pan69 12y ago
        Indeed. This doesn't leave an awful lot of room for profit. A prison is supposed to be a profitable business, what do people think this is? A service to society?
      - 12y ago
fillskills 12y ago
Correct me if I am wrong, I am no expert on this matter, but it seems like prisoners get stuck in a loop - Make one mistake, you are in prison. Once you are tagged a prisoner, you rarely get any jobs outside. When you are in prison you get caught up in the whole gang thing and your best friends are now other criminals/gang members. What is being done to help prisoners rehabilitate and break out of this loop?
- nacs 12y ago
  With the privatized prison system in the US, it's more commercially viable to have people stay in that loop than not. I'm not sure that there is any incentive to help people out of that loop with so much profit for everyone in the chain (police departments, lawyers, judges and most of all, the private company that runs the prison). The only net loss in this loop are the taxpayers who pay for all of it.
  - swartkrans 12y ago
    Everything you have said is false. Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay. There is no evidence for anything you have claimed, you simply use "privatized" as if it were a dirty word and we should knowingly nod our heads in assent. > I'm not sure The way to resolve an information need is to engage in an objective search of facts, not speculate endlessly and make unsubstantiated claims of criminal behavior of others without some kind of evidence to base it on. If you want people to spend less time in prison, you'll want the laws changed because that's where all this come from. Some of the laws in California are the result of ballots.
    - knieveltech 12y ago
      "Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay." You sure about that? http://www.dailypaul.com/312217/pennsylvania-judge-sentenced-to-28-years-in-prison-for-selling-teens-to-prisons http://www.dailypaul.com/312217/pennsylvania-judge-sentenced...
tedks 12y ago
The solitary confinement practiced in Pelican Bay is a gross affront to humanity. In a hundred years and change, it will be considered the great moral blemish on the early 21st century, and our children's children's children will be disgusted by our complicity in it. Solitary confinement is literally torture, and can drive people permanently insane. People can be placed into solitary confinement after being "validated" as gang members just for having political writing in their cells: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confine... This article discusses this only casually, which ultimately makes its author complicit in these crimes against humanity.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Writing a news article makes one complicit in crimes against humanity?! Wow. The standards and actions required for being designated an utter bastard have slipped a long way in my short time in this world..
  - IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    Journalists have a public responsibility, for sure. It'd surely lack moral sense to casually report on the mistreatment of Armenians, or not bother to really mention it at all, during the Armenian genocide when covering the plight of the Armenians. This has been recognized in history by many, to leave you with two quotes from Einstein and King respectively: "If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity." "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people." I certainly don't want to get sentimental and I'm not one to favor hyperbole, being complicit in these crimes is too strong for my taste. But I agree with the sentiment of his post, which urges journalists to recognize their power and seize the opportunity to report on gross inhumane mistreatment of people, especially when these people are the subject of his writing. Again, I understand his wording was strong, but I wish we'd focus more on the intent of his post than on the semantics.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
yzzxy 12y ago
I really enjoyed reading Papillon, as well as seeing the film. Does anyone have recommendations for good fiction / memoirs about modern prisons?
- rbcgerard 12y ago
  A Prophet http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235166/?ref_=nv_sr_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235166/?ref_=nv_sr_1
- wglb 12y ago
  In the belly of the beast: Jack Henry Abbot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Belly_of_the_Beast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Belly_of_the_Beast
- j1o1h1n 12y ago
  Ghosts Of The Civil Dead (movie)
spindritf 12y ago
“Before prison gangs showed up,” he says, “you survived in prison by following something called ‘the convict code.’ ” There is a great book by a Polish-American sociologist Marek Kamiński[1] describing the convict code in Polish prisons, Games Prisoners Play[2]. It's based on his personal experience (he ended up in prison as an anticommunist dissident in the 80s) and tries to explain the prison culture from game theory perspective. Which is a fine premise but what makes it a great read is the long, intricate process of initiation he went through as a fresh prisoner. It's also not nearly as brutal. There are no gangs, there's only this one inner culture. Actually, some of the initiation games were kind of clever. In one they threw him under the bunk and two of his cell mates where kicking him (or poking with a broom, something like that) while the third was yelling "gear up" or "gear down". He broke a comb he had in his pocket and screamed like it was a bone at which point they stopped but what they were looking for was for him to say "put it in neutral". [1] http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4931 http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4931 [2] http://www.amazon.com/Games-Prisoners-Play-Tragicomic-Worlds/dp/0691149321 http://www.amazon.com/Games-Prisoners-Play-Tragicomic-Worlds...
- jahmed 12y ago
  I took Kaminski's Game Theory And Politics class and he lends the material an absolutely fascinating perspective. One of my favorite undergraduate courses and I got an A..
  - tedks 12y ago
    >and I got an A.. Congrats!
- eru 12y ago
  That book is worth a read.
- gohrt 12y ago
  Whoa, this bit is actually based on real prison culture: Key & Peele - Fronthand Backhand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGAMbNKcN1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGAMbNKcN1U
jonnyscholes 12y ago
Is that first photo [1] "normal" for an cell setup? I'd have thought computer access was similar to phone access (by appointment only). [1] http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/08/1014_WEL_WoodRoomSearch_V1/cab3a4cd5.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/08/1014_W...
- comrh 12y ago
  Looks like a TV to me. I don't see a mouse or keyboard.
  - jonnyscholes 12y ago
    Ah good point - I thought it was an iMac and the peripherals were somewhere else in that surprisingly organised shelf.
- bane 12y ago
  That looks more like a small tv maybe? Or perhaps it's just a monitor and they have designated hours to use a monitored laptop or something.
Fjolsvith 12y ago
The author fails to mention one significant factor to the self-segregation of prison populations in the federal prison system. The federal hate crime law makes an assault upon a person of a different color punishable by a mandatory 25 year sentence. So, if a white had a problem with a hispanic, he had to take it to the white shot-callers (gang bosses) who then went to the hispanic shot-callers. The hispanic bosses would then discipline their member (which could entail forcing him to repay a debt, or assaulting or even murdering him). As long as the violence didn't cross racial bounds, the hate crime doesn't apply.
- rattray 12y ago
  That's fascinating. Can you link to more information / data / anecdotes?
  - Fjolsvith 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime_laws_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime_laws_in_the_United_S... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_and_James_Byrd,_Jr._Hate_Crimes_Prevention_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_and_James_Byrd,... http://www.alternet.org/story/27726/hate_crimes_in_prison http://www.alternet.org/story/27726/hate_crimes_in_prison On one of my con-air flights, I sat by a guy who was being transferred to court for a new charge from the U.S. Supermax at Florence, Colorado. He was, of course, doing life. He joked with me that the only way he got to travel and see the sights and eat some good food was to kill a guard every now and then.
- steanne 12y ago
  hate crime laws don't apply to every attack upon someone of a different color. they only apply if the attack is BECAUSE of the victim's color. if you're attacking the other guy because he goosed your sister, it's not a hate crime no matter what color he is.
  - eru 12y ago
    Tell that to the judge.
ChuckFrank 12y ago
"“How can you tell what type of cellphone an inmate uses,” he asked, “based on what’s in his cell?” He let me think for about two seconds before cheerily giving me the answer: you examine the bar of soap on the prisoner’s sink. The safest place for an inmate to store anything is in his rectum, and to keep the orifice supple and sized for the (contraband) phone, inmates have been known to whittle their bars of soap and tuck them away as a placeholder while their phones are in use. So a short and stubby bar means a durable old dumbphone; broad and flat means a BlackBerry or an iPhone. Pity the poor guy whose bar of soap is the size and shape of a Samsung Galaxy Note." This stinks of the standard urban legend trope structure, and with that in mind, I don't think it's true. There's absolutely not reason to keep an ass pocket supple and sized for contraband. And it's absolutely not true that you need a place holder for the contraband, when the contraband in not being hidden there. Lastly, regularly putting a bar of soap in one's anus would be incredibly uncomfortable, and inmates would quickly stop that process, replacing it - if it was really needed in the first place - with something plastic and chemically inert. http://drbenkim.com/dont-use-soap-private-parts.htm http://drbenkim.com/dont-use-soap-private-parts.htm How do I know? I live in the Bay Area. Healthy sexuality is discussed over wine by people of all sexual persuasions.
- joe_the_user 12y ago
  This article might be summarized as "guards told me outrageous things about inmates and I uncritically repeated them 'cause it seemed like a good story"
  - twelve40 12y ago
    Well, strictly speaking the dude who shared that particular insight is portrayed to have a bit more cred than the guards' stories, but i guess that's beside the point
  - vonnik 12y ago
    that's bullshit. graeme wood has been covering prisons for years, and he's one of the best journalists in america.
- 12y ago
vishnugupta 12y ago
A picture caption says thus: "An inmate doing push-ups in the SHU’s exercise yard, a small concrete room with an overhead skylight where inmates are allowed to spend an hour and a half a day and receive their only exposure to sunlight" What's the rationale behind curtailing exposure to sunlight? A prisoner is already under stress, presumably, especially first timers. Won't denying them natural light only worsen their psychological makeup and pull them into negative spiral?
- eru 12y ago
  Yes. And why only such a limited number of books? Why no (unconnected) computers? Why no exercise equipment?
  - malka 12y ago
    I guess the logic is "they are criminal. They do not deserve any of it"
    - Fjolsvith 12y ago
      Actually, the Alaska prison system allowed personal computers to inmates up until about 18 years ago. As of 2003, I knew you could have a playstation or nintendo handheld game system, if you were active with required programs and held a prison job. After that I do not know, as that was the last time I was there.
  - kbutler 12y ago
    Limiting hiding places and tools for violence come immediately to mind. It's easy from the outside to say this rule or that seems cruel or unreasonable, but they are created from experience trying to manage an incredibly creative and incredibly hostile population.
  - Fjolsvith 12y ago
    If an inmate could have a large number of books, searching cells would become quite time consuming. Unconnected computers can be hacked to an outside line. Again, searching the contents of them would be time consuming. Exercise equipment makes great weapons.
skrebbel 12y ago
For me, prisons are the ultimate test in civilization. Convicted felons cannot usually expect to be treated better than any other group in society, so if how they are treated sort of draws a lower bound on the "goodness" of society. If you treat your convicted felons as good as you can, it probably means that the rest of the country is treated even better. That's a very good starting point. In that respect, I'm sad and ashamed that in my country (the Netherlands), just like in the US, things are pretty crappy. For example, we have a single "maximum security prison" where all the bad and criminally insane people go. When it's time for the prisoners to go out and get some air, the guards lock themselves up on the other side of the fence, and it's each inmate for himself. What could possibly go wrong? We're a bunch of barbarians and I wish this was at all on the political agenda.
- galenko 12y ago
  The first paragraph kind of ignores the homeless and the poor and even Mr Average Joe, who's got a list of medical conditions, which he can't afford to fix, so getting himself locked up for a while, just to get access to healthcare, doesn't sound insane. Can you imagine that? Remain free and barely be able to put food on the table for your family or go to prison, just to solve a medical problem?
  - skrebbel 12y ago
    Good point. I keep forgetting how bad it really is in the USA.
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Europeans are amazingly gullible. No one in the US can be denied medical care thanks to Kennedy and unlike Germany doctors don't have to report the patient to authorities if they are here illegally.
      - techsupporter 12y ago
        > No one in the US can be denied medical care Sure they can, except for immediate emergencies and for pregnancy labor[0]. Immediate emergencies are not preventative or palliative care, nor are they a substitute for a comprehensive health care system available to everyone. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
So here we have the end of the line for people who want to control others: folks who have broken the rules and need to be isolated. The state can control literally every aspect of their lives: where they live, what they eat, who they associate with, and so on. Guess what? There's still crime, gangs, an informal government, and an economy. And you either kill them all (as one person in the article said, a bullet to the back of the head does wonders for behavior) or you allow it to happen. I know there's the usual "America is a police state!" response to this article, and sure enough, we have created a security state, but more fascinating to me was the complex self-governing structures these inmates have set up -- which is exactly why the economist was studying them. There's a huge academic and political debate that this ties into. For instance, do governments create markets and money? From the data presented in the article, no. They might dictate the terms of markets, to a small degree, but they're just a bit player. Can more laws eliminate crime? No. At some point, even when you have total control over each and every person, crime still happens. I don't know where the curve is, but there is a power curve at work, and you can reach the point of diminishing returns. It made more sense for the corrections officers to allow the gang activity that to continue to try to fight it. Fascinating stuff, and of course this article is nowhere near authoritative. Still, I'd love to hear more about research in this area.

171 points by dodders 12y ago

One wonders what sort of prison and judicial reform could ever happen in a system like the US has? The entire thing is so deeply entrenched at so many levels I doubt it could be done cleanly if at all.

joe_the_user 12y ago
I agree that prison reform seems unlikely but I would put this in terms of the entrenched interest of guards, law enforcement and all the beneficiaries of the War On Drugs. Prison gangs are subordinate players in this game but certainly they are the monsters that the Drug War overall has successfully conjured up.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
rayiner 12y ago
It's also illustrative to ask what reforms are possible in a society like the U.S. has: http://www.explainingprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homicide-rates-in-the-united-states-and-england-1900-2000-pinker-2011-jpg.jpg http://www.explainingprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03.... The U.S. homicide rate has been 5-7x higher than in England for more than a century. You can't blame it on the drug war or on Prohibition: it was 7x higher in 1900-1920, before Prohibition, before the expansion of federal criminal law, before for-profit prisons and before prison guard lobbies. For some reason, the U.S. is just an incredibly violent society. Our justice system has evolved in light of that.
- bronbron 12y ago
  > Our justice system has evolved in light of that. I don't know that I'd say 'evolved'. You said it yourself: the homicide rate has been 5-7x higher than in England for more than a century. We're not really doing anything different than what we used to do - a punitive justice system, sometimes morally dubious punishment, and total 'othering' of convicted criminals. I don't know that we can really be shocked when nothing changes.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    That's not true at all. There was a real effort in the 1950's and 1960's to turn the justice system into one more oriented toward rehabilitation. In the face of crime skyrocketing in the 1960's and 1970's, voters went the other way, instituting our present system. Take for example things like three strikes laws, which are mostly responsible for the "he went to jail for life for stealing $200" horror stories. Those were pioneered in 1993-94, by referendum in progressive states like Washington and California, by overwhelming margins (80-90% voting in favor).
    - bronbron 12y ago
      > There was a real effort in the 1950's and 1960's to turn the justice system into one more oriented toward rehabilitation Err, so there was an erroneous decade where we tried to do better? The mid 50s-60s were a discrepancy in american history in a multitude of ways, so I'm not sure that I'd consider prison reform any different in that regard. I also wouldn't consider a decade as representative of the american justice system when we have plenty of evidence that it's not representative of either the past (where we used to just hang people after three strikes) or the present (where, as you noted, we have three strikes laws). In fact, it seems as though once a century we'll have a decade where they half-heartedly try to implement rehabilitative reforms, keep at it for maybe the better half of a decade, and then act shocked that it hasn't decimated incarceration rates yet. Shockingly, it takes longer than a few years to reform a society.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        The comparison was against the U.K. I'm not an expert in turn of the century British criminal law, but I don't imagine you'll find that it was particularly oriented toward rehabilitation. Yet, their homicide rate has always been dramatically lower.
        bronbron 12y ago
        > I don't imagine you'll find that it was particularly oriented toward rehabilitation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_League_for_Penal_Reform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_League_for_Penal_Reform
- joesmo 12y ago
  Homicide is a very small percentage of all crimes. I think it's obvious that our justice and penal systems have evolved to incarcerate the "unwanted," mainly people of color. They are both racist institutions that, especially in the last 60-70 years have been trying to "make up" for the advancements in the civil rights of minorities. As far as what reforms are possible, how about releasing everyone who has committed victimless crimes (drugs, prostitution, etc.)? The "justice" system in this country has lost all credibility because such crimes are mainly used to target minorities and the poor. Treating inmates humanely would also help. Removing the profit incentives of prisons would go a long way towards this as well. Not sending people to jail because they can't pay $100 fine would also be a huge step. There are many things society can do to keep a lot of the "low-level" offenders from ever getting into prison and becoming hardened criminals. For most people, once they're in prison, it's too late.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I use homicide because good records have been kept of such crimes over a long period of time. More recently, homicides have tracked the overall violent crime rate pretty well: http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.jpg http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.j...
  - tptacek 12y ago
    No, it's not. Murder is ~12% of all state incarcerations (state prisons being where the majority of all US inmates are housed). For context, all drug offenses put together make up just 17% of 2011 state incarcerations. If you include manslaughter, which you should, because (a) it's a form of homicide and (b) many murder prosecutions plead down to it, you get to just about 14%. Homicide is a significant component of all US crime. There's no way to look at the numbers and characterize them as "very small". If you released everyone currently imprisoned for drug crimes, you'd set free about 250,000 people, which is great, but you'd be leaving 1.1 million people incarcerated. Drugs aren't the big problem. Something else is. (Prostitution, a "public order" offense, is a rounding error --- women represent 5% of all public order offenses, meaning that the category captures not just prostitution but is a whole myriad of offenses mostly committed by men. Very few women are actually imprisoned for prostitution; Texas is newsworthy for having around 300 of them, against a 5-figure female prison population).
- jessaustin 12y ago
  I'd suggest that murder rates are correlated mostly with a nation's experience of colonization. That's why they're uniformly higher in Africa and the Americas than in other parts of the world. Actually in that subset the USA does better than all but a few nations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

joe_the_user 12y ago

"The inmates interact like volatile chemicals..." Language like this seems to me to dehumanize the inmates. Given that the author fails in getting into a conversation with the inmates, I find it irksome he feels called to pontificate on the situation, especially when other author have succeeded in having discussions with both gang members and alleged-but-not-actual gang members. I suspect the inmates were wise in not talking to him. Since gang membership is a means that the California Prison System can use to discipline an inmate with little evidence, it's in the system's interest to describe everyone as a gang member (with Pelican Bay being the punishment zone for anyone so accused). Naturally, extreme insecurity makes banding logical as well - however the questionable part of the discussion is whether the prison is trying to control gang membership (in the same fashion that its questionable whether the war drugs is an honest effort to control drug use).

bglazer 12y ago
The article was interesting for its history of prison gangs. However, if you're going to write about anything, then you owe it to both the readers and the subjects to interview the people involved. You're not going to get an interview by walking once down a cell block asking to talk about gangs. No shit. The people who create shows like "Jail" or "Lockup" manage to get hundreds of hours of interviews with gang members. However, they establish mutual respect and rapport. I suppose I can't judge too harshly as it's certainly a difficult assignment, but it seems like the author put a very minimal amount of effort into interviewing, and instead pontificated from on high about gang members.

cwyers 12y ago

It seems like there's a lot that could be done to curtail the use of cell phones in prisons that wouldn't require invasive body-cavity searches. Couldn't you just jam common cell phone transmission frequencies? That'd curtail guard use of cell phones, too, but that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.

r00fus 12y ago
No need to jam - simply put in fake cell towers. I think that idea isn't new and is already proposed [1]. [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/17/local/la-me-0417-prison-cellphones-20120417 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/17/local/la-me-0417-pri...
vonmoltke 12y ago
Prison personnel are already prohibited from having two-way communication devices except their radios. The problem with jammers is the FCC. They are paranoid about allowing the operation of any devices intended to screw up communications, and rightfully so.
- qq66 12y ago
  It might be expensive, but you could make the entire prison a Faraday cage (although not sure how that would work if people are allowed to go outdoors).
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    Yeah, you could basically TEMPEST-harden the whole building. That would significantly increase the cost of building prisons, though.
    - pan69 12y ago
      Indeed. This doesn't leave an awful lot of room for profit. A prison is supposed to be a profitable business, what do people think this is? A service to society?
    - 12y ago

fillskills 12y ago

Correct me if I am wrong, I am no expert on this matter, but it seems like prisoners get stuck in a loop - Make one mistake, you are in prison. Once you are tagged a prisoner, you rarely get any jobs outside. When you are in prison you get caught up in the whole gang thing and your best friends are now other criminals/gang members. What is being done to help prisoners rehabilitate and break out of this loop?

nacs 12y ago
With the privatized prison system in the US, it's more commercially viable to have people stay in that loop than not. I'm not sure that there is any incentive to help people out of that loop with so much profit for everyone in the chain (police departments, lawyers, judges and most of all, the private company that runs the prison). The only net loss in this loop are the taxpayers who pay for all of it.
- swartkrans 12y ago
  Everything you have said is false. Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay. There is no evidence for anything you have claimed, you simply use "privatized" as if it were a dirty word and we should knowingly nod our heads in assent. > I'm not sure The way to resolve an information need is to engage in an objective search of facts, not speculate endlessly and make unsubstantiated claims of criminal behavior of others without some kind of evidence to base it on. If you want people to spend less time in prison, you'll want the laws changed because that's where all this come from. Some of the laws in California are the result of ballots.
  - knieveltech 12y ago
    "Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay." You sure about that? http://www.dailypaul.com/312217/pennsylvania-judge-sentenced-to-28-years-in-prison-for-selling-teens-to-prisons http://www.dailypaul.com/312217/pennsylvania-judge-sentenced...

tedks 12y ago

The solitary confinement practiced in Pelican Bay is a gross affront to humanity. In a hundred years and change, it will be considered the great moral blemish on the early 21st century, and our children's children's children will be disgusted by our complicity in it. Solitary confinement is literally torture, and can drive people permanently insane. People can be placed into solitary confinement after being "validated" as gang members just for having political writing in their cells: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confine... This article discusses this only casually, which ultimately makes its author complicit in these crimes against humanity.

Karunamon 12y ago
Writing a news article makes one complicit in crimes against humanity?! Wow. The standards and actions required for being designated an utter bastard have slipped a long way in my short time in this world..
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  Journalists have a public responsibility, for sure. It'd surely lack moral sense to casually report on the mistreatment of Armenians, or not bother to really mention it at all, during the Armenian genocide when covering the plight of the Armenians. This has been recognized in history by many, to leave you with two quotes from Einstein and King respectively: "If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity." "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people." I certainly don't want to get sentimental and I'm not one to favor hyperbole, being complicit in these crimes is too strong for my taste. But I agree with the sentiment of his post, which urges journalists to recognize their power and seize the opportunity to report on gross inhumane mistreatment of people, especially when these people are the subject of his writing. Again, I understand his wording was strong, but I wish we'd focus more on the intent of his post than on the semantics.
  - Karunamon 12y ago

yzzxy 12y ago

I really enjoyed reading Papillon, as well as seeing the film. Does anyone have recommendations for good fiction / memoirs about modern prisons?

rbcgerard 12y ago
A Prophet http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235166/?ref_=nv_sr_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235166/?ref_=nv_sr_1
wglb 12y ago
In the belly of the beast: Jack Henry Abbot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Belly_of_the_Beast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Belly_of_the_Beast
j1o1h1n 12y ago
Ghosts Of The Civil Dead (movie)

spindritf 12y ago

“Before prison gangs showed up,” he says, “you survived in prison by following something called ‘the convict code.’ ” There is a great book by a Polish-American sociologist Marek Kamiński[1] describing the convict code in Polish prisons, Games Prisoners Play[2]. It's based on his personal experience (he ended up in prison as an anticommunist dissident in the 80s) and tries to explain the prison culture from game theory perspective. Which is a fine premise but what makes it a great read is the long, intricate process of initiation he went through as a fresh prisoner. It's also not nearly as brutal. There are no gangs, there's only this one inner culture. Actually, some of the initiation games were kind of clever. In one they threw him under the bunk and two of his cell mates where kicking him (or poking with a broom, something like that) while the third was yelling "gear up" or "gear down". He broke a comb he had in his pocket and screamed like it was a bone at which point they stopped but what they were looking for was for him to say "put it in neutral". [1] http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4931 http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4931 [2] http://www.amazon.com/Games-Prisoners-Play-Tragicomic-Worlds/dp/0691149321 http://www.amazon.com/Games-Prisoners-Play-Tragicomic-Worlds...

jahmed 12y ago
I took Kaminski's Game Theory And Politics class and he lends the material an absolutely fascinating perspective. One of my favorite undergraduate courses and I got an A..
- tedks 12y ago
  >and I got an A.. Congrats!
eru 12y ago
That book is worth a read.
gohrt 12y ago
Whoa, this bit is actually based on real prison culture: Key & Peele - Fronthand Backhand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGAMbNKcN1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGAMbNKcN1U

jonnyscholes 12y ago

Is that first photo [1] "normal" for an cell setup? I'd have thought computer access was similar to phone access (by appointment only). [1] http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/08/1014_WEL_WoodRoomSearch_V1/cab3a4cd5.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/08/1014_W...

comrh 12y ago
Looks like a TV to me. I don't see a mouse or keyboard.
- jonnyscholes 12y ago
  Ah good point - I thought it was an iMac and the peripherals were somewhere else in that surprisingly organised shelf.
bane 12y ago
That looks more like a small tv maybe? Or perhaps it's just a monitor and they have designated hours to use a monitored laptop or something.

Fjolsvith 12y ago

The author fails to mention one significant factor to the self-segregation of prison populations in the federal prison system. The federal hate crime law makes an assault upon a person of a different color punishable by a mandatory 25 year sentence. So, if a white had a problem with a hispanic, he had to take it to the white shot-callers (gang bosses) who then went to the hispanic shot-callers. The hispanic bosses would then discipline their member (which could entail forcing him to repay a debt, or assaulting or even murdering him). As long as the violence didn't cross racial bounds, the hate crime doesn't apply.

rattray 12y ago
That's fascinating. Can you link to more information / data / anecdotes?
- Fjolsvith 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime_laws_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime_laws_in_the_United_S... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_and_James_Byrd,_Jr._Hate_Crimes_Prevention_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_and_James_Byrd,... http://www.alternet.org/story/27726/hate_crimes_in_prison http://www.alternet.org/story/27726/hate_crimes_in_prison On one of my con-air flights, I sat by a guy who was being transferred to court for a new charge from the U.S. Supermax at Florence, Colorado. He was, of course, doing life. He joked with me that the only way he got to travel and see the sights and eat some good food was to kill a guard every now and then.
steanne 12y ago
hate crime laws don't apply to every attack upon someone of a different color. they only apply if the attack is BECAUSE of the victim's color. if you're attacking the other guy because he goosed your sister, it's not a hate crime no matter what color he is.
- eru 12y ago
  Tell that to the judge.

ChuckFrank 12y ago

"“How can you tell what type of cellphone an inmate uses,” he asked, “based on what’s in his cell?” He let me think for about two seconds before cheerily giving me the answer: you examine the bar of soap on the prisoner’s sink. The safest place for an inmate to store anything is in his rectum, and to keep the orifice supple and sized for the (contraband) phone, inmates have been known to whittle their bars of soap and tuck them away as a placeholder while their phones are in use. So a short and stubby bar means a durable old dumbphone; broad and flat means a BlackBerry or an iPhone. Pity the poor guy whose bar of soap is the size and shape of a Samsung Galaxy Note." This stinks of the standard urban legend trope structure, and with that in mind, I don't think it's true. There's absolutely not reason to keep an ass pocket supple and sized for contraband. And it's absolutely not true that you need a place holder for the contraband, when the contraband in not being hidden there. Lastly, regularly putting a bar of soap in one's anus would be incredibly uncomfortable, and inmates would quickly stop that process, replacing it - if it was really needed in the first place - with something plastic and chemically inert. http://drbenkim.com/dont-use-soap-private-parts.htm http://drbenkim.com/dont-use-soap-private-parts.htm How do I know? I live in the Bay Area. Healthy sexuality is discussed over wine by people of all sexual persuasions.

joe_the_user 12y ago
This article might be summarized as "guards told me outrageous things about inmates and I uncritically repeated them 'cause it seemed like a good story"
- twelve40 12y ago
  Well, strictly speaking the dude who shared that particular insight is portrayed to have a bit more cred than the guards' stories, but i guess that's beside the point
- vonnik 12y ago
  that's bullshit. graeme wood has been covering prisons for years, and he's one of the best journalists in america.
12y ago

vishnugupta 12y ago

A picture caption says thus: "An inmate doing push-ups in the SHU’s exercise yard, a small concrete room with an overhead skylight where inmates are allowed to spend an hour and a half a day and receive their only exposure to sunlight" What's the rationale behind curtailing exposure to sunlight? A prisoner is already under stress, presumably, especially first timers. Won't denying them natural light only worsen their psychological makeup and pull them into negative spiral?

eru 12y ago
Yes. And why only such a limited number of books? Why no (unconnected) computers? Why no exercise equipment?
- malka 12y ago
  I guess the logic is "they are criminal. They do not deserve any of it"
  - Fjolsvith 12y ago
    Actually, the Alaska prison system allowed personal computers to inmates up until about 18 years ago. As of 2003, I knew you could have a playstation or nintendo handheld game system, if you were active with required programs and held a prison job. After that I do not know, as that was the last time I was there.
- kbutler 12y ago
  Limiting hiding places and tools for violence come immediately to mind. It's easy from the outside to say this rule or that seems cruel or unreasonable, but they are created from experience trying to manage an incredibly creative and incredibly hostile population.
- Fjolsvith 12y ago
  If an inmate could have a large number of books, searching cells would become quite time consuming. Unconnected computers can be hacked to an outside line. Again, searching the contents of them would be time consuming. Exercise equipment makes great weapons.

skrebbel 12y ago

For me, prisons are the ultimate test in civilization. Convicted felons cannot usually expect to be treated better than any other group in society, so if how they are treated sort of draws a lower bound on the "goodness" of society. If you treat your convicted felons as good as you can, it probably means that the rest of the country is treated even better. That's a very good starting point. In that respect, I'm sad and ashamed that in my country (the Netherlands), just like in the US, things are pretty crappy. For example, we have a single "maximum security prison" where all the bad and criminally insane people go. When it's time for the prisoners to go out and get some air, the guards lock themselves up on the other side of the fence, and it's each inmate for himself. What could possibly go wrong? We're a bunch of barbarians and I wish this was at all on the political agenda.

galenko 12y ago
The first paragraph kind of ignores the homeless and the poor and even Mr Average Joe, who's got a list of medical conditions, which he can't afford to fix, so getting himself locked up for a while, just to get access to healthcare, doesn't sound insane. Can you imagine that? Remain free and barely be able to put food on the table for your family or go to prison, just to solve a medical problem?
- skrebbel 12y ago
  Good point. I keep forgetting how bad it really is in the USA.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Europeans are amazingly gullible. No one in the US can be denied medical care thanks to Kennedy and unlike Germany doctors don't have to report the patient to authorities if they are here illegally.
    - techsupporter 12y ago
      > No one in the US can be denied medical care Sure they can, except for immediate emergencies and for pregnancy labor[0]. Immediate emergencies are not preventative or palliative care, nor are they a substitute for a comprehensive health care system available to everyone. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

So here we have the end of the line for people who want to control others: folks who have broken the rules and need to be isolated. The state can control literally every aspect of their lives: where they live, what they eat, who they associate with, and so on. Guess what? There's still crime, gangs, an informal government, and an economy. And you either kill them all (as one person in the article said, a bullet to the back of the head does wonders for behavior) or you allow it to happen. I know there's the usual "America is a police state!" response to this article, and sure enough, we have created a security state, but more fascinating to me was the complex self-governing structures these inmates have set up -- which is exactly why the economist was studying them. There's a huge academic and political debate that this ties into. For instance, do governments create markets and money? From the data presented in the article, no. They might dictate the terms of markets, to a small degree, but they're just a bit player. Can more laws eliminate crime? No. At some point, even when you have total control over each and every person, crime still happens. I don't know where the curve is, but there is a power curve at work, and you can reach the point of diminishing returns. It made more sense for the corrections officers to allow the gang activity that to continue to try to fight it. Fascinating stuff, and of course this article is nowhere near authoritative. Still, I'd love to hear more about research in this area.