prison rape

i mean., you aren't in prison or anything.

Particularly if you factor in (or out) that a portion of the remainder would be the perpretrators.

the only way to do this is to ban him.

i think this implication is what is given the least thought. how can society reasonably expect anybody to be 'rehabilitated' in prison after traversing such horrendous circumstances? prison culture leads to a more violent, criminal society. EVERYBODY loses, and for some reason it's still a funny seinfeld joke.

Good Frontline shows about US prisons: The New Asylums and Angel on Death Row. Their whole criminal justice series is pretty eye opening.

An Atlantic Article about the US Prison Industrial Complex

It's terrifying.

Or, you know, if they won't let them vote after they get out?

i think prison rape needs to be addressed and radically changed in popular culture before it even has a possibility of being addressed in the political sphere.

But we can all at least agree that it's a terrible thing. And probably that the first step in any solution is awareness of it as an actual problem. I agree w/ Mickey that moving it to the "not okay to make jokes about" list is a good start.

Well, Jeffrey Archer was all against prison reform until he was an inmate, and then he was all for it.

Well, that's the question. Because I could ask where the impetus for cultural change will come from if the people who are responsible for the actual care of prisoners don't take that responsibility seriously. The two things go hand in hand.

I read a journal article recently that suggested that international pressure could be the answer, but the U.S. doesn't listen to international pressure, so all that can be hoped for is that some politician will make a crusade of it and start the ball rolling.

This is pretty OTM. Most voters would bring back flogging; the future is certainly not in the proles.

-- Mr. Que (pelagi...), February 14th, 2007. (Party with me Punker)

that's kind of like taking the position "and how do we successfully end the iraq war? if you can't figure it out, i guess we have no choice but to stay and do the exact same thing!" as citizens, i don't think it is our position to figure out the solution. that is what our government is for. we need to recognize the urgency and monstrosity of the situation and give them impetus for change.

but here's a few suggestions. first, address prison overcrowding. they're simply too few. there's two parts of that. first, we need more and larger prisons, and second, we need to not be throwing people in prison who have no business being there. american society at large truly doesn't understand the extant of that second part. and then, why not have a lot more oversight of prison administration? from what it sounds like to me, the guards and what they do is largely up to their own doing. there's very little accountability.

as it stands right now, i believe that prison culture perpetuates criminal culture. somebody who is imprisoned is much more likely to be a repeat, and worse, offender, than had they not gone through the prison system of institutionalized rape. so, we've created a giant snowball rolling down a mountain. how we stop the rapid growth will be a huge problem, but the first step is addressing that it must be done. right now, even that is miles away.

owl.jpg

DRUG WAR ETC

-- Mr. Que (pelagi...), February 14th, 2007. (Party with me Punker)

this is exactly what i'm thinking about.

to draw a parallel with my daily experience, i don't send unruly students to the principal's office to "rehabilitate" them, i do it to protect the rest of the class from the consequences of their behavior.

for a lot of students, honestly, it's easier (and less humiliating) to be getting beat up by the headmaster than getting beat up by math or science lessons.

is my parallel clear?

I also disagree with the idea that "the proles" wouldn't support prison reform aimed at eliminating rape. I suspect that the majority of voters would support such reform, so long as the issue was framed properly. I admit that the distance between here and there is vast. Still, if the citizen activists who pushed for civil rights reform in the 40s and 50s had been deterred by the seeming impossibility of the task, or if they had waited for altruistic politicians to do the heavy lifting, then we might still have colored drinking fountains in Selma.

American prisons will continue to be a sickening national shame only as long as "we the people" continue to stand for it.

***

"there are things about going to prison that are WAY WORSE than being raped."
-- bell labs

??? Please to explain.

these things would be way worse than rape.

Frequent, brutal, AIDS-loaded anal rape + getting to do what you want + getting to see friends & fam = bad.

No rape + imprisonment + no friends & fam = bad.

I think any attempt to portray one of these as "WAY WORSE" than the other is kinda silly. Bad = bad.

but, it's not at the top of the list of things that worry me, my family, or my father, who is going to jail. maybe this is because he will most likely end up in a medium or min security federal prison where it's not much of a problem, but, i don't know, he's much sadder about the fact that he will probably be in his 70s when he gets out and have missed a big chunk of his life.

-- bell labs (lindsay...), February 14th, 2007. (bell_labs)

maybe you and i are talking about different things, but the supreme court just recently deemed unconstitutional the mandatory sentencing guidelines. it happened about 6 months before my date. had it not, i was pretty much surely destined for prison. i don't want to make this thread about me, but damn, that fact still astounds me.

a proposed bill in washington state to basically test for HIV in prisons.

here's some wa state conservative blog that is outraged by these "felon friendly" bills by democrats:
http://soundpolitics.com/archives/007997.html

Baldock says he faces an uphill battle in trying to win a conviction against Francis. He's certain many jurors seated before him this week will wonder why they should even care what happens to prison inmates.