[HN Gopher] The underground economy of solitary confinement
___________________________________________________________________
The underground economy of solitary confinement
Author : meanie
Score : 144 points
Date : 2022-02-24 23:20 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.themarshallproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.themarshallproject.org)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| What is the alternative to solitary confinement?
|
| There are some people who are a persistent threat and menace to
| others. There are 3 ways that society has dealt with them:
|
| Execution
|
| Banishment
|
| Imprisonment
|
| We are trying to do away with execution, so that is not a real
| alternative. Banishment really doesn't work in the modern,
| connected world. That leaves imprisonment. However, within
| prison, you also have a society, and then the question becomes,
| how do you deal with people who are a threat and menace to other
| prisoners and guards. Again you end up with the 3 options.
| Following through, you eventually end up with either solitary
| confinement or execution as the solution to people who are a
| persistent threat and menace to others.
|
| Is solitary confinement over used? Yes. But I have not heard a
| really good alternative.
| FpUser wrote:
| >" But I have not heard a really good alternative."
|
| The solution is to enforce your own fucking laws when those are
| broken by prison stuff and higher ups
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| FWIW, I am not against the death penalty. It makes much more
| economic sense than life in prison (it costs ludicrous amounts
| of money to house prisoners per-annua) and as someone who has
| done prison time my personal opinion is I'd rather be killed
| than face the mental agony of living the rest of my days in
| there.
|
| I'm not sure why so many people are against it or think it's
| inhumane. I think it's a bit silly considering most people who
| hold that opinion have never been to prison.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| > I'm not sure why so many people are against it or think
| it's inhumane.
|
| 1) There are endless cases of it being implemented on
| innocent people:
|
| https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/technical-errors-can-
| ki... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution
|
| 2) Ethical reasons believing its wrong to kill people
|
| 3) Its well documented the process of death penalty has
| regular mistakes causing slow and incredibly painful deaths.
|
| E.g. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-
| executions
| gwd wrote:
| I'm not against the death penalty _in principle_ ; but _in
| practice_ , at least the way our current system is set up, it
| just seems to lead to perverse problems. Since prosecutors
| are generally a political office, there's a strong incentive
| to be seen as "tough on crime" by getting lots of death
| penalty convictions. The result is innocent people convicted.
| If you're alive, there's always a chance your conviction will
| be overturned, even if 20 years down the road. But if you're
| dead, there's nothing you can do.
|
| The argument, "Life in prison is a fate worse than death" is
| an argument to make prison more humane, not an argument to
| kill people instead.
| btdmaster wrote:
| Side note: the death penalty is more expensive than prison in
| the way it is currently being used (because of the legal
| expenses + prison time before the execution takes place), so
| unless it is done faster (more prone to errors) it does not
| make financial sense: https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Is_t
| he_death_penalty_more...
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| One huge problem is it isn't applied fairly. Money and race
| shouldn't factor into sentencing, but they absolutely do.
|
| "Economic sense" is a non-argument. Think how much money
| society would save if we tore down all the prisons and simply
| shot everyone found guilty of a crime.
|
| Another argument in support of the death penalty is that is
| "brings closure" to the victims or the family of the victims.
| That is appalling to me. I completely understand why the
| victim('s family) would want to see the criminal die, but why
| stop there? What if the father of a rape/murder victim asked
| the court to allow him to strap down the criminal and let the
| father torture him for an afternoon. It would bring a lot of
| closure to the father, perhaps, but it doesn't mean society
| should allow it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The problems with the death penalty is the trade off between
| cost and accuracy in applying the death penalty.
|
| Currently, the death penalty costs more than life in prison
| due to legal costs. We still have a significant non-zero
| number of innocent people who are executed.
|
| If you want to make the death penalty cost effective, you
| will have to lower the appeal costs and this means more
| innocent people will be executed.
|
| So the question really becomes: "how many innocent people are
| we willing to murder to reduce our costs?
|
| Many people accept the number of innocent people we murder as
| justified to save other innocents via disincentive. It seems
| much harder to justify killing purely on the basis of cost
| reduction.
|
| You are correct that we don't seem nearly as bothered by all
| of the innocent people who are serving life sentences rather
| than death penalties and don't have the same appeal rights as
| those on death row.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's not a dichotomy between life in prison and death penalty
| though. Wouldn't you have preferred a better alternative to a
| prison sentence? I don't know what you did to end up there,
| but what if the societal circumstances were different and you
| never ended up in touch with the legal system in the first
| place?
| kstenerud wrote:
| Oddly enough, Western European countries don't have this
| problem, and have a significantly lower recidivism rate.
| Perhaps ask them how they do it?
|
| I believe there are even documentaries now that explore justice
| systems in various countries.
|
| This is not to attack you or anything, but rather to highlight
| a cultural divide. To European ears this kind of question feels
| like it's right up there with "What else can you do but behead
| a man who runs off with your daughter?" It's really jarring to
| hear, and makes one think that such a culture is incredibly
| backwards and barbaric...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > But I have not heard a really good alternative.
|
| Have not heard, or haven't given the issue a bit more thought?
| Why do people end up in prison and solitary confinement? And
| how can that be prevented?
|
| The US has the highest incarceration rate of any country. Why
| is that? Are the people that bad? If so, why are they so bad?
| If not, why are they thrown into jail so much?
|
| The issue I have with your comment is that you're tunnel
| visioned at the punishment part, without thinking of prevention
| and rehabilitation, or the systems in place (political,
| financial) that make it so that so many people end up in prison
| in the first place.
|
| Have a closer look at subjects like the War on Drugs, the
| private prison system, and different ideologies behind
| punishment - rehabilitation vs retaliation. Look at other
| countries as well; how many people are in solitary confinement
| in Europe? How much violence is there between inmates there?
|
| The problem is not solitary confinement.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| In the Feds, stamps are the unit of money. On our yard a book of
| 'compound' stamps was worth $8 of 'value' but it took a lot of
| work to keep them at that price. For a book you could get one dip
| of chew. I think is was two books for a 'square' of spice, a tiny
| sliver of paper enough to get you high. You would also need to
| include the price of an AA battery to use as your lighter to get
| high. Don't do drugs, but especially don't do spice, I saw it
| make guys crazy and guys just dropped dead from it. A jalepeno
| pepper was 3 stamps if things were good. A five pound bag of
| cheese was 2 books to the store guy. The price fluctuated daily
| depending on how many people were getting them out of the
| kitchen. Dirty pictures were 3 stamps(no porn allowed in the
| Feds). Decent tattoes were three books. A haircut at the free
| prison barber shop was 5 stamps, or free if you wanted a poorly
| done buzz. For a book a month someone would clean your cell for
| you every day. Or someone would drop off and pick up your
| laundry. For 10% of your commissary bill you could get bumped to
| the front of the commissary line. A brand new uniform from
| laundry for visiting (you were issues used clothes) was a book,
| but then you needed to pay to have it tailored and pay to get
| inmate tags printed and sown on. New prison issue boots were a
| book to the laundry guys. A prison cheese cake (made from coffee
| creamer and lemon juice) was a book, or four stamps a slice.
| Minimum bet on a sports gambling ticket was 3 stamps. A book a
| month to the kitchen to get extra portions on your tray (say 2
| slices of roast beef on roast beef day). I don't know alcohol
| prices but it was a lot and normally all sold before it was made,
| and if it got busted I think you were just out. Every section had
| a couple of store guys. You could the things from the commisary
| for their price + 1 stamp if you replaced them next time you
| shopped, or a couple stamp premium if paying in just stamps. A
| cold soda was 2 stamps. A candy bar 3 stamps. Home made taffy
| made from coffee creamer was 2 for a stamp.
| jrumbut wrote:
| This is a fascinating post, thank you for sharing your
| experiences!
|
| That coffee creamer and lemon juice cheesecake sounds
| interesting.
|
| Do you still crave and/or make at home any of the weird food
| items you described?
|
| Where did you store 5 pounds of cheese?
| kingcharles wrote:
| I did three stints in solitary. First for writing to my wife and
| explaining how I traded coffee for stamped envelopes, which got
| me an extortion charge. On the last day of my "sentence" in
| solitary I had my trial and was found "not guilty" of the charge.
| Of course, it was like Alice in Wonderland, I did my time then
| got my trial.
|
| (during this time in solitary though they went through all my
| property and figured out I'd hacked the commissary system to send
| emails through the jail and were mad about that)
|
| Second time I was framed by a guard. It was an internal thing
| called "Operation Cleansweep". The idea was to frame all the
| jailhouse lawyers on false charges and send them to solitary and
| then get access to all the legal work in their cells to go
| through. They came and threw contraband in my cell in front of
| everyone, then cuffed me up and off to solitary again. [I found
| out about the operation because I fought for the details through
| FOIA and got all the "Intelligence Unit" reports. Idiots wrote
| this shit down. Usually the government isn't that dumb. For
| instance, this is a response I got to a request for documents
| concerning a big investigation in the prosecutor's office here in
| Chicago recently: "After speaking with SAO personnel most
| knowledgeable about your request including those active in the
| internal investigation, there is no written or electronic report
| of the internal investigation into the Adam Toledo bond proffer
| incident." LOL]
|
| Third time in solitary was because I took two seconds too long
| trading some rice for a chicken nugget at lunch. Disobeying the
| guard who told me to "hurry up". Another stint in solitary!
|
| You start with ZERO in solitary in most jails, and work your way
| up. I sued to get the rules changed, because on the first day you
| also spent it naked. They would strip search you on arrival and
| then leave you until you could persuade a guard the next day to
| get you clothes. [they remotely popped my cell on my first day
| once for a visit, so I ran out, sans clothing, all the way to the
| visit until the guards freaked out and were forced to get me
| clothes]
|
| As the article says, even toilet paper can be a bitch to get. My
| first time I didn't know anything. My second time through I
| managed to snatch a book up off a table as I was being dragged to
| my cell, so I had something to read. Then I learned to "finesse"
| the guards into getting me things: toilet paper, soap, pencil.
|
| You're not allowed commissary in most solitary. The first time I
| was in I requested my bin of legal work, which they have to
| provide. But dum-dums gave me my commissary bin instead. So I
| spent three days eating the whole lot before they realized their
| mistake and ran in and took my (now empty) bin and swapped it
| out.
|
| You get lots of reading done in solitary. I read 800 books in
| jail.
|
| AMA
| lupire wrote:
| After such ongoing illegal torture, why don't former prisoners
| or their loved ones get together and execute serious reprisals?
| omegaworks wrote:
| The system is designed to isolate prisoners from their loved
| ones, if they have any to begin with. Once free it requires
| significant resources to execute legal reprisals.
|
| https://www.occupy.com/article/jpay-scam-prison-bankers-
| cash...
| TameAntelope wrote:
| He didn't say "legal reprisals".
| symlinkk wrote:
| How were the other prisoners? Did you feel physically
| threatened by them?
| mywittyname wrote:
| > jailhouse lawyers
|
| What does this mean? Were you a regular lawyer before becoming
| a jailhouse lawyer? Are you a regular lawyer after being a
| jailhouse lawyer?
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Jailhouse lawyers are normally self taught in prison and will
| help others out for a fee as their hustle. They help with
| things like stopping child support payments, filing for
| divorce, clearing up any outstanding tickets and detainers so
| guys can go to halfway house, all the way to challenging
| people's convictions.
| alexpotato wrote:
| This article reminded me of this economics paper from a former
| World Ware 2 prisoner of war describing the "market economy" that
| formed in the POW camps.
|
| http://icm.clsbe.lisboa.ucp.pt/docentes/url/jcn/ie2/0POWCamp...
|
| It's fascinating because it describes:
|
| - Open outcry markets
|
| - Exchange rates
|
| - N dimensional preference spaces
|
| - Collapsing money supplies
|
| - Market shocks
|
| All in plain English and using specific examples from the camps.
|
| Highly recommend it especially if you (like me on both counts)
| have an Econ degree and/or work in finance.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Also interesting the Sarajevo Survival Guide [1]. Similar, but
| with a more tongue in cheek and modern bent. Made me want to
| stockpile cigarettes and pornography.
|
| [1]: http://www.friends-partners.org/bosnia/surintro.html
| alexpotato wrote:
| This was excellent, thanks!
| Bradlinc wrote:
| Three things occur to me as I read this article: 1) Toilet paper
| seems like a necessity. 2) In America, we treat our prisoners
| horribly. We are going to look back on this in a 100 years with
| the same disdain we look back on slavery. 3) Though I have a hard
| day a head of me, my life could be far, far worse.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > We are going to look back on this in a 100 years with the
| same disdain we look back on slavery.
|
| We can only hope, but why only in 100 years when 'we' - the
| people in this thread and a lot of others - already look at it
| with disdain.
|
| But there's others - lawmakers, the private prison industry,
| etc - who think this is just fine and dandy, because it fills
| their pockets and is a legal avenue into a slave labor force
| (prison labor). It's in their interest to get people in jail.
| dls2016 wrote:
| > slave labor force
|
| Remember kids, slavery is _still_ constitutionally enshrined
| in the US as a form of punishment. No need to "look back" at
| slavery!
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Slavery is allowed in prison as an exception in the US
| Constitution. https://www.history.com/news/13th-amendment-
| slavery-loophole... Do not support UNICOR or UNICOR products if
| you are not into slave labor. You can not have a fair working
| environment when your prison guard is your boss.
| https://www.unicor.gov/
| bannedbybros wrote:
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > about 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the United States.
| On average, close to 4% of them are held in solitary confinement.
|
| Almost 100K people in solitary confinement is _insane_. These are
| dehumanizing psychologically destabilizing conditions, with
| permanent psychological effects, that are among the worst thing
| you can do to someone.
|
| I find it incredible that it has become so standardize and
| ordinary in the USA, instead of a rare last resort thing for
| extreme problems.
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| I spent 3 years in US prisons for drug charges picked up when I
| was an addict and did a 90-day stint in solitary for breaking up
| a fight between two acquaintances.
|
| AMA.
|
| I'll start with: Yes, "fishing" is one of the first things you
| learn. It's not just for solitary, you use it to get stuff under
| other people doors when you're not out of your cells on a regular
| unit too, or when you don't want guards to suspect something.
|
| Another interesting thing fact -- where I was at, in solitary you
| could trade your 1-hour of your cell a day for an extra tray of
| food at either lunch or dinner. Because the guards had to let
| each person in the solitary block out, one-at-a-time, for an
| hour, they were lazy and would let you forfeit your one hour out
| to shower/make a paid phone call/walk around the cell block for
| extra food. Most people took the extra tray.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: While this is on the front page, want to raise a bit of
| awareness about US criminal "justice system" and prisons:
|
| I saw things like this regularly:
|
| https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/c567d688cc89f084...
|
| Guards would beat the shit out of you, strip you mostly naked,
| strap you to a restraint chair and cover your head with a hood,
| and then wheel you into a back room somewhere and "accidentally
| forget" about you for +8 hours until you pissed yourself, and
| then they'd come and laugh at you.
|
| Lots of things I can't unsee from being in there.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Holy shit I didn't know that. Those guards belong in jail
| themselves, what they did is torture. Prison exists to remove
| from society people who are incompatible with it, nothing more
| and even that must be constantly questioned and re-evaluated.
| Nobody deserves to have their dignity stripped away like that.
| kindatrue wrote:
| Once you fall into Prison Conditions Twitters, it's pretty
| eye opening.
|
| Like the guy who was boiled to death with hot water for
| funsies:
|
| https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-wont-charge-
| priso...
|
| Or where rat poison is regularly fed:
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Health/22-rikers-island-prisoners-
| sic...
| jopsen wrote:
| > Those guards belong in jail themselves...
|
| The guards are just the product of a system/culture.
| pc86 wrote:
| As are most of the prisoners, but many of them belong there
| as well.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Don't make apologies for people who choose torture and who
| chose to participate in said system / culture. It's a job;
| if they had morals they would quit, whistleblow, or punish
| colleagues for this behaviour. I can't believe the pay
| would be THAT good. There's clearly no adequate chain of
| command or repercussions for this crime.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| So we gonna apply this logic to all the other government
| workers working for toxic systems that hurt more than
| they help?
|
| There are plenty of people who go into these jobs with
| the intention of being decent. The existing systems and
| culture suck that right out of them.
|
| I knew an old bureaucrat. He got to make decisions that
| would or wouldn't financially screw families over. He
| said the worst part of his job was seeing all the younger
| employees in the cafeteria knowing they were being
| crushed by the system and turned into people like him and
| his other senior coworkers.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I find it interesting when folks look at themselves as
| different than others. I don't have any first hand
| knowledge of what is going on with these guards, but I do
| know that I am not better than them. I am just as human
| and have all of the same frailties so I cannot say what I
| would do in their situation. At best I can say I hope I
| would do better.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Most people fail to understand the psychological impact
| of jobs continually interfacing with some of the worst
| people in society. I say this not as an apology or
| excuse, but simply as a statement of fact and a challenge
| that needs to be overcome. It happens to prison guards,
| Police, EMTs, and many others.
|
| A portion of the people you work with want to kill you or
| each other given the chance. Over time this leads you to
| dehumanize and hate them. Over time, this view gets
| generalized to most of the people in your care.
| watwut wrote:
| It is more about power then about working with bad
| people.
|
| Political prisoners tend to be treated as badly as
| others, if not worst.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I agree that power is a factor, I just don't think it is
| a self contained explanation.
| watwut wrote:
| People in position oc control and no supervision abuse
| those outside of prisons often enough.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What's your point?
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Don't forget the thin blue line. The pressure to not
| snitch among them is huge, and comes from the top. During
| my time in I watched all of the decent COs become
| alcoholics/drug addicts and ultimately quit. We had one
| decent 'counselor' out of 5, and she was forced out for
| unauthorized use of government resources because she
| printed out a compassionate release request during COVID
| because inmates we illegally denied access to the law
| library, something she was quite clearly legally not only
| allowed to do but was supposed to do as part of her job
| (there is even a federal schedule of what they are to
| charge us per page if it is not a hardship case). If you
| complain, you will receive diesel therapy as the lightest
| of retribution from the Federal government. Your cell
| will definitely get tossed every day until your cellies
| tire of that and beat your ass.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_therapy
| ROTMetro wrote:
| It is way worse than that makes it out. Transfer times
| are designed to maximize prevention of sleep. You will be
| placed in very unsafe situations. You will go from small
| town jail to transfer station to detention center to
| small town jail via the longest route possible. You will
| be strip searched, a very invasive event, every time any
| movement is made. Your movement will happen to be right
| before/after meals are served, so you will "accidentally"
| be denied food. You will "accidentally" be placed with
| the opposite gang, the wrong custody classification, etc.
| so you will be in constant fear of your safety. You will
| be put in a single man cell with a big threaning guy, and
| they will kick him out of his bed and give in to you, and
| put him in a boat. Good luck not getting your getting you
| ass beat. You will be given no opportunity to use
| restrooms during movement. On conair you are shackled,
| hands in front, even when you use the bathroom. So no
| hygiene to clean up around back after going. Just a bit
| of the process.
| malandrew wrote:
| > they would quit
|
| Most prisons exist in places that are economically
| depressed with few if any other jobs. In some cases, the
| entire existence of a town revolves around the prison.
| Quitting is hardly an option when it's the only real
| option for putting food on your table and a shelter over
| your head.
| xapata wrote:
| They could leave town. There's always another option.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| You need to be able to save up enough for a rent deposit
| (often 2-3 months of rent), afford moving costs,
| coordinate support for kids if you're moving away from
| existing support (other family/friend/etc), and deal with
| a lot of stress of moving out of town. If you have
| something _better_ you 're moving to, but that's often
| hard for people to coordinate. Spending all that to go
| get a similar pay job, perhaps in same industry, on the
| hope/chance that you'll be around more/better
| opportunities... it's a hard call for many folks to do,
| assuming they can even think that far ahead or
| strategically. Many folks are likely more consumed with
| day to day (especially if they've got kids).
| xapata wrote:
| > ... deal with a lot of stress ... have something better
| you're moving to ...
|
| Thus the ethical argument. They'd rather keep doing what
| they're doing than pick the stress and uncertainty of
| moving.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I get the spirit of this; but if I can't say that to
| people making poverty wages and being trapped, I can't
| say they to prison guards, either.
|
| Collectively and individually, the United States must "be
| better", though.
| xapata wrote:
| > if I can't say that to people making poverty wages and
| being trapped, I can't say they to prison guards, either
|
| Indeed. I think the same for everyone. Poverty is not an
| excuse for brutality.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Agreed. I wasn't trying to excuse brutality, I don't
| think. I definitely need to spend more time on this
| series of thought about what maybe I would do in the
| circumstance - or what I should expect myself to do to
| live up to my own standard.
| goodpoint wrote:
| The parent poster is not making an apology.
|
| The unjust and cruel legal system and the behavior of
| people involved is all a product of society.
|
| It's not just a couple of "bad apples".
|
| And saying this does not give anybody a pass.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > The parent poster is not making an apology.
|
| Downvotes from creating a plausibly deniable strawman and
| then tearing it down are less than the upvotes from doing
| a good job tearing down the strawman. This kind of crap
| discourse is incentivized in a "if lawsuits are cheaper
| than recall we don't do a recall" sort of way.
| kqr wrote:
| It's not about making apologies. It's the opposite. You
| can blame the "bad apples" all you want and you will see
| no improvement whatsoever. You can instead choose to
| blame structural, systematic failures and get a lot of
| improvement out of little effort.
| Akronymus wrote:
| It also exists to make people compatible with society again.
| Or at least should be.
| wolfgangK wrote:
| I'm sure most people would want that, but I don't think
| that we know how to "make people" change. Much in the same
| way that we don't know how to have school "make children"
| more academic, we don't know how to make inmates less
| violent / impulsive / thrill-seeking (except by the
| inexorable passing of time). I'd be very happy to be
| corrected, tho.
|
| OTOH, giving proper (i.e. often involuntary) treatment for
| violent mental illnesses would for sure improve the
| situation.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Not in the US. The US prison system is for punishment
| first. A system that focuses on rehabilitation does not
| treat people this poorly, in general.
| t-writescode wrote:
| With what we do in the US, it's not "punishment", it's
| sadism. Justice ends when excessive punishment begins and
| is deep into sadism when torture begins.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| this has never been the case in US prisons
| ROTMetro wrote:
| No, no it does not.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You're assuming the accounting in the article is correct.
| Maybe it isn't:
|
| > "Nobody can condone someone being thrown into a hot shower
| and killed," Rundle said. "We read the same thing everyone
| else did, but it wasn't until we really investigated that we
| learned that is not what happened."
|
| https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/katherine-fernandez-
| rundl...
| bag_boy wrote:
| Can you summarize the experience in thirds? For example, what
| was the first 30 days like versus the last 30?
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| The first two weeks were very difficult. You have to sort of
| mentally come to peace with the fact that you're shut in this
| tiny room and you can't leave. It feels very claustrophobic
| and if you're the type that has anxiety disorders you will
| probably have to ward off panic attacks.
|
| After the first two weeks, time started to slowly speed up,
| and the days all sort of blurred together. Thankfully I was
| able to get a newspaper every day, and a book every now and
| then, and so I just read every word of the newspaper (even
| the ads) for something to do, and slept a lot.
|
| I think I handled it better than a lot of people would have,
| as I'm sort of introverted by nature. There's research on
| solitary confinement permanently harming mental health, but I
| think I got lucky on that one.
| [deleted]
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Also, at least where I was, this was EVERYONE's life (no
| just solitary) for a year due to COVID. Only with no legal
| protections, all constitutional requirements waived,
| because, you know, emergency, and totally not just because
| the staff were lazy and this allowed them to do zero work.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| Are you describing conditions in a prison in the USA
| outside of solitary confinement? (That's the only way I
| can make sense of the reply).
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Yes.
| mastazi wrote:
| the mention of "staff" in the last sentence of the post
| suggests that it's about a prison
| vkou wrote:
| Edit: My reading comprehension is very, very poor.
| mastazi wrote:
| I think that parent was describing life inside a prison,
| but out of solitary confinement, not life in general,
| this sentence of their post suggests it: "and totally not
| just because the staff were lazy and this allowed them to
| do zero work."
| shuntress wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you cannot just "go walking outside for
| as long as you wanted" when you are in jail.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > you live an incredibly sheltered, out-of-touch life
|
| This describes solitary confinement, in a sadly ironic
| way.
| [deleted]
| tokai wrote:
| Do solitary confinement help in correcting illegal/bad/wrong
| behaviour among prisoners in your opinion?
|
| Seems to me that it can only breed resentment and detachment.
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| No, not at all.
|
| The thing I think most law-abiding/normal people don't
| understand about the types of people in prisons is that they
| are almost exclusively habitual offenders.
|
| Even in the US, which is heavily punitive instead of
| rehabilitative, you have to have run-ins with the law a
| number of times before you are sentenced to serve time,
| rather than probation or a halfway-house etc.
|
| From my experiences, ~90% of people I saw during my time in
| jail and prison were coming in and out, constantly being
| arrested. There's no desire on their part to change, they're
| a lost cause.
|
| For the tiny handful of people that genuinely do want to have
| a normal life and not go back to prison, our justice system
| is awful. No, solitary is not good for that.
|
| You need supportive + rehabilitative programs. They won't
| solve everything, but for the small number of people who want
| to get out of the system, they need an honest-to-god out and
| chance at living.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _The thing I think most law-abiding /normal people don't
| understand about the types of people in prisons is that
| they are almost exclusively habitual offenders._
|
| While that is true, there are classes of crime that are
| automatic felonies with mandatory prison time. Things like
| assaulting a police officer. Which doesn't have to be
| throwing a punch - simply resisting handcuffs is sufficient
| for the felony assault charge if the officer is mad enough
| and friendly with the prosecutor.
| ericmcer wrote:
| How do you balance punitive with rehabilitative? I have
| little experience in this but it seems like for a non-
| violent offender or a victimless crime the experience
| should be almost entirely rehabilitative, whereas for
| violent offenders there should be some kind of punishment.
| Both to discourage the behavior and as therapy for the
| victims.
|
| The justice system doesn't really offer me any protection
| other than vengeance on someone who hurts or kills me or a
| loved one. There is some comfort knowing that someone might
| at least hesitate due to fear of consequences.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I don't think that's as true anymore with the fentanyl
| stuff. I saw a lot of ex-marines that got hooked on pain
| pills because their bodies were beat up, moved on to
| fentanyl, started dealing to support habit, and hatch a 17
| year bit because someone ODd. Lots of first time in trouble
| people caught up in fentanyl.
| kingcharles wrote:
| LOL. No. I did time in solitary. It literally makes everyone
| worse.
|
| Most people are in solitary for fighting or disobeying
| instructions. Putting them in solitary does not change their
| behavior.
|
| One thing - I was scared of solitary before I went there the
| first time. After the first time you realize there is nothing
| more (legally) the authorities can do to you once you're in
| solitary. You're in jail, in jail. Jail is boring as fuck.
| Solitary is super boring. But it's still jail. When you go
| there the second time you are prepared for everything and
| know how to run the system.
|
| A lot of people also end up doing a long time in there
| because they misbehave in solitary, which is expected. You do
| it because (i) you're pissed off; (ii) there is nothing more
| they can do to you; (iii) it's fun to be finally be able to
| tell a certain guard that he is a piece of shit and his wife
| is ugly.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| What did/do you do for a living, tech related? How did it
| affect your career to have a felony drug charge?
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| I was on computers a lot as a kid and sort of taught myself
| programming (very poorly) in my early years.
|
| When I caught this charge, I had just turned 18. It really
| ruined my life.
|
| Currently, I work in tech. For a very long time I was barely
| making ends meet, working in a fast food restaurant for
| minimum wage while trying to interview to get a developer
| job.
|
| I went through 8 interview processes, and received offers
| from all but one. Each one of them was rescinded when HR
| learned that I had a felony, as a matter of company policy.
|
| It was really heartbreaking and a lot of times, it made me
| want to give up on life and just stop trying. I kept
| interviewing and going to events/networking, and eventually
| found a very low-paying job at a local place and sort of
| slowly worked my way back up from there.
|
| If anyone here has some degree of power at a company and
| wants to make a difference in the world, convince your
| company to hire felons with non-violent/non-finance related
| offenses.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I never understood the whole felon thing, if that is
| allowed discrimination outside certain roles how can those
| people ever be expected back to society? Ofc, they are
| going to do more crime if it is their only realistic option
| for reasonable income.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| That's the point. It gives the state a cudgel with which
| to keep people in line.
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| > "if that is allowed discrimination outside certain
| roles how can those people ever be expected back to
| society? Ofc, they are going to do more crime if it is
| their only realistic option for reasonable income."
|
| And you've found the answer to why the American
| judicial/prison-complex is a revolving door system.
|
| _" Welcome to the Hotel California. You can check-out
| any time you like, But you can never leave!"_
| buran77 wrote:
| It's a method to exercise control over a large slice of
| the population and rob them of the means to challenge
| their position. I don't think too may see it necessarily
| as a fair measure that must be imposed on those people
| for the protection of them or others.
|
| On the other hand you have egregious cases where such a
| measure would completely make sense but is ignored
| because of larger interests. One of them is how EU public
| institutions screen all their employees and filter out
| felons. And then a public institution like the European
| Central Bank names Christine Lagarde president, just 3
| years after she received a criminal conviction of
| negligence in allowing the misuse of public funds.
|
| A freshly minted criminal can be named president of an
| institution in more or less the same general area as
| where she committed her crime. But a someone with a minor
| drug charge can't take a dev job... Both are a stain on
| modern society.
| laurent92 wrote:
| But, are felons discriminated from most jobs in Europe?
| As an employer I've never checked the backgrounds, and I
| would be actually happy of giving someone a path upwards.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not in any single employer's interest to take on
| the risks of hiring a felon, as long as the supply of
| labor remains plentiful.
| lupire wrote:
| It seems fair for felons to work minimum wage last resort
| jobs, because non-felons surely deserve the same or
| better. But why are minimum wage last resort jobs so bad
| in this country?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Why "outside certain roles"?
|
| If the argument is that serving your time in jail
| rehabilitates you, then you shouldn't be limited in what
| roles you can take after you've served your time.
|
| I assume the "certain roles" you are talking about is
| something like banking with someone with a history of
| felony fraud. I guess the argument is that maybe prison
| isn't 100% rehabilitative. But if that's the case, why
| should I, as a non-banker, hire a felon who, say
| assaulted a stranger with a baseball bat. Isn't there a
| similar chance that prison wasn't 100% rehabilitative?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Had to go search for it, but YC funded a company -
| https://www.70millionjobs.com - that focuses on felon-
| friendly companies hiring.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| FElon friendly normally ends up meaning they know you
| have no other options and treat you about as good as you
| would imagine a company with complete knowledge that if
| you loose your job your PO could send you back to prison.
| Hello mandatory overtime, horrible pay, every shit task
| no one wants. It's way better to try and convince
| somewhere that isn't felon friendly to try and hire you.
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| I won't sling mud, but the jobs are the same you can
| already get as a felon (construction, kitchen,
| hospitality, factory, etc) and I had a negative
| experience with my interaction there
|
| Thank you for looking though. I think it's important to
| offer felons the chance to get a decent job in a proper
| career field too.
|
| There's one organization doing this called "Underdog
| Devs":
|
| https://www.underdogdevs.org
|
| https://twitter.com/underdogdevs
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I did see 'tech' jobs there, but... perhaps they're just
| 'general recruiter' posts that are mixed in? I search for
| 'php' and found a bunch of job links come back...
| ROTMetro wrote:
| So I just signed up for this site. It has Home Depot who
| won't hire you if you are on paper (supervised release)
| and other companies that will bring you on 'temp to hire'
| when they have need, but will seldom convert a felon to
| permanent. Shows a lack of understanding or communication
| with the people they are trying to 'help'. I got better
| support from the other guys my first 15 minutes in the
| half way house than this site gives. And that is in
| general how society is toward felons. A lot of half assed
| stuff to feel like, no look at all these services, they
| have a chance. But in reality not so much.
| syki wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your experience and bringing these things
| to light. As Dostoevsky said, you can judge a society by how
| well it treats its prisoners. We are not a free people when we
| live under the threat of being out into a prison system as
| barbaric as the one we have.
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| I did have one positive interaction with a guard that stood
| out to me from my time in there
|
| I was being transported to a hospital for a medical
| procedure, and I was talking to the guard who taking me, to
| pass the time. I asked him why on earth he would want to be a
| prison guard -- after all, they are in there with us for 10
| hour shifts, and prisons are some of the most
| bleak/depressing places on earth. That has to take a toll on
| their mental wellbeing too.
|
| He said that he originally was a regular police officer, but
| after seeing how much corruption there was in the police
| force and the things that happened, he felt like a hypocrite,
| so he said the better alternative was for him to be a guard.
|
| That conversation has stuck with me for a long time now.
| muzani wrote:
| I had a conversation with a police sergeant because of a
| car accident we had. He said that we seemed to be right,
| but some lawyers will likely try to sue us because it's in
| the gray area that they usually "farm". The thing I
| remember was he said something along the lines of, "These
| lawyers are even worse than police."
|
| I didn't think police were bad, but that made me reconsider
| it.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I put myself through community college working overnight
| shifts cleaning restrooms in a theme park and was briefly
| homeless a few times. Several of those times happened to
| coincide with finals week and resulted in missing exams and
| failing a few classes. It ended up that, by the time I
| graduated, the only major I could successfully complete was
| in Philosophy, with a minor in Biology. I was the first
| person in my family to ever go to college and didn't
| exactly have much in the way of advice or help to go on. It
| turns out those aren't particularly lucrative fields and
| don't really point you in any specific direction when it
| comes time to look for jobs.
|
| Well, back then, the state of California guaranteed a
| minimum starting salary of $79,000, and paid overtime, to
| prison guards, which was roughly double what I was looking
| at making from doing anything else. So I applied. The only
| reason I didn't end up ever actually working in the prison
| system is that the background check and psych eval process
| took over a year to complete, and by the time they gave me
| an offer, I'd already joined the Army.
|
| Almost 18 years later, after going back to school again
| while in the Army for Applied Math and Computer Science,
| here I am, but in another timeline, I'm a prison guard.
| syki wrote:
| I taught a semester in a max security prison. It was
| described to me as a controlled movement facility. It was
| an interesting experience and one that stuck with me. That
| prison was a bad place. Thanks for your anecdote about the
| former police officer.
| randomacct8162 wrote:
| Thank you for doing that, it's an important job. I
| learned spanish by taking an hour-long spanish class
| every weekday while I was in there.
|
| If your class wasn't mandatory, then I'm sure you know
| that most people were just there probably to get extra
| time out of their cell or to break the monotony. And I
| assume most of them were complete assholes to you.
|
| After I am financially independent, I want to try to get
| state/federal funding so that I can go back to prisons
| and teach programming AND partner with companies to have
| jobs/interviews lined up for release dates.
|
| The worst part about being incarcerated isn't even always
| the time you serve, it's that our justice system means
| that you usually can never get a good job again,
| regardless of what your charge was (in my case it was one
| of the lowest class of felonies). It's like a ghost that
| haunts you forever.
| syki wrote:
| I quickly figured out they were mostly there to break the
| monotony. I threw out the curriculum and did basic graph
| theory and some logic stuff. I only had one run in with
| someone. The prisoners treated me decently. I gave them
| all passing grades and just wanted them to get out of the
| experience whatever they wanted to get out of it.
| pc86 wrote:
| How did you get into that? It's something I would love to
| do but I never knew how or if you could volunteer to just
| do a single course, if you'd have any sort of support,
| etc.
| syki wrote:
| The college I worked at had a few classes at the prison.
| I was an adjunct and agreed to do it. None of the tenured
| faculty would do it. Didn't really have any support. Did
| wear a body alarm. One way the body alarm would be
| activated was if it was horizontal for more than 3
| seconds.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Not the poster, but I taught a computer science class in
| prison. I did it through a college which operates a
| degree granting program in the state prisons (in addition
| to normal college operations).
|
| Most of the professors were paid, I did it as volunteer
| work.
| [deleted]
| jmyeet wrote:
| The US prison-industrial complex is really disgusting and before
| anyone brings it up: private prisons aren't why. Those are still
| the minority of prison populations (but yes they're still bad).
|
| Price gouging (ie commisary, cost of phone calls, charging for
| video vists in prison, copays to see a doctor, institutionalized
| rape as a form of punishment and control and yes, solitary
| confinement).
|
| Prosecturos, legislators and juries seek extended prison
| sentences as a form of vengeance and being able to appear "tough
| on crime" yet the outcomes are very racially-based. You can see
| this in the lengths of sentences for similar circumstances that
| only vary on race, the likelihood of the death penalty and the
| fact that cases that are ultimately exonerated (eg by DNA
| evidence) are heavily slanted towards minorities (meaning they
| were wrongfully convicted to begin with).
|
| Our current president was one of the key architects of the 1994
| crime bill (signed into law by Bill Clinton) that was a massive
| contributor to mass incarceration for low-level drug possession
| crimes in particular.
|
| And when people do get out we give them a scarlet letter for life
| in the form of the "are you a felon?" question that should be
| illegal. We throw people in prison who were out on probation or
| parole for merely being _charged_ with a felony (note: _CHARGED_
| not _CONVICTED_ ).
|
| It's really depressing how comfortable so many Americans are with
| this level of cruelty.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The US prison system is so brutal and things like solitary
| confinement, which is torture, totally normalised. We need to
| call attention to these things.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Call attention? It's already known and public information;
| clearly, awareness alone does nothing. No, this needs sweeping
| political reform. Elect better leaders. Make the police, prison
| guards, military, politicians and rich people accountable.
| lupire wrote:
| Which politician campaigns on prison reform?
|
| This needs Freedom Protests in the street.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Well one issue is that people who have been in prison often
| cannot ever vote again, so the only people left to make
| decisions about the prison system are those who have never
| experienced it firsthand
| m-watson wrote:
| Just as a note, the majority of states give voting rights
| back right away or after awhile.
|
| https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-
| campaigns/felon-...
| [deleted]
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| There's a video on YouTube of a prison warden who went into
| solitary for 48 hours. He said it was painful - but that,
| considering _how violent_ some of the prisoners he had to hold
| were, he would still not rule out its use. It 's not an ideal
| option in any way, but sometimes it's just the least-bad
| option.
|
| In my opinion, we should focus on overuse and abuse of solitary
| confinement, but elimination is not possible for some
| prisoners.
| r00fus wrote:
| The overuse of solitary confinement is a symptom of a raging
| prison industrial complex that relies on political
| corruption/kickbacks and a national culture that thinks
| punishment is more valuable to society than rehabilitation.
|
| One would need to alter both in order to resolve this. Given
| their interlocking/reinforcing nature, it seems infeasible
| without some kind of revolutionary change in US politics.
| closeparen wrote:
| Solitary obviously seems very bad. Being locked in a
| congregate living setting with someone aggressive, brutal,
| much stronger than you, with all the time in the world and no
| better entertainment option than you, also seems very bad.
|
| What will you do with someone who has beaten the shit out of
| another inmate?
| ROTMetro wrote:
| The guys that can't stop getting picked on have to 'check
| in' which means they are the ones who have to voluntarily
| go to the SHU (segregated housing unit or solitary) and do
| their entire sentence their until Obama passed a law
| limiting how long someone could be kept in the SHU, so now
| they get sent back to general population :( yay for good
| intentions.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I suppose they could be housed in individual cells that are
| open, so they can interact with other prisoners without
| physical interaction.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I feel like there's probably a pretty big difference in how
| it feels between voluntarily going into solitary for 48 hours
| by your choice, only for 48 hours, and being in there for
| months (or years!!), with no known end.
|
| There's also a big difference between "ruling out it's use
| entirely", and having hundreds of thousands of people in it
| every day.
|
| It is _not_ treated as a last resort in the current US
| incarceration system.
| lupire wrote:
| Solitary confinement is far beyond physical separation of
| violent people.
|
| Being able to see sunlight and other people isn't a risk of
| violence.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| The knowledge and attention to the subject is there, the
| problem is that a large swath of the US is authoritarian and
| celebrates such brutal treatment.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| moralestapia wrote:
| This is torture. Period.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Frontline did an episode on solitary.
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/solitary-nation/ I
| agree, torture is the only word that accurately describes what
| these people go through.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I don't think anyone's arguing against that - at least not on
| here - the question is how to stop it from happening and undo
| the harm. That'll take big reforms, all the way up to the
| current political system in the US.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| It sure is. And court sanctioned at that. My favorite is still
| the Court finding that continuous lighting preventing sleep is
| torture, but somehow stops being torture if it is 'needed' (as
| designated by the keepers) for security. Sure still felt like
| torture to me.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Dieselroar88 wrote:
| Did 20 months in federal for selling cannabis. Also spent time in
| solitary. Conditions are far worse than you could imagine. Also,
| many prisons are _functionally_ solitary so the 4% number is way
| low.
|
| The economic networks in prisons are wild, and of course there
| are incentives for guards to participate.
|
| Not only are there massive number of cell phones in prisons,
| there are cell phones _in solitary_ because the guards smuggle
| them in.
|
| Capitalism, what a thing, eh?
|
| AMA
| BbzzbB wrote:
| I assume they wouldn't put electronic outlets in solitary
| cells, so how did it work for phones? You'd get to use it for
| 3-5 hours before the battery runs out and then a guard swaps it
| for a charged one?
| leetcrew wrote:
| > The economic networks in prisons are wild, and of course
| there are incentives for guards to participate.
|
| maybe a naive question, but where does all the money come from?
| I can understand that prisoners would trade favors and
| artificially scarce items (eg cigarettes) amongst themselves.
| but what's in it for the guards? I wouldn't expect a bunch of
| people that aren't allowed to have jobs to have a ton of cash
| to throw around.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Where I was a single letter covered is K2, spice, whatever
| you want to call it is worth $1500 minimum.The inmate
| distributing it got $500 of that. Who knows where that $1000
| went. And that was for K2, spice, a super crappy drug.
| lupire wrote:
| Money comes from outside family and friends.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| THIS! Almost all inmates are illegally kept in functional
| solitary and/or unconstitutional conditions. 30% of my long
| term facility was classified 'short term housing' because they
| were not constitutionally allowed to keep people in those cells
| longer than 3 months due to the long term psychological damage
| of such small spaces. Dudes had been in their cells 10 years.
| One guy almost won a case about it, but they just moved him and
| boom, he no longer had standing for his court case, everything
| dropped, and no court following saying 'hey we found that this
| guy was in unconstitutional conditions maybe we should check
| things out'. Nope, just dropped. Another fun example, the US
| Courts have ruled that lights on all night preventing sleep is
| torture. They have a more recent finding that it isn't torture
| if it is determined it is needed for safety. All the effects of
| not sleeping for 4 years were totally undone once I learned it
| was for safety and it wasn't torture.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| He never talked about the other type of fishing...in a lot of
| prisons they are in rooms with doors, not bars. Inmates will pump
| out the gas traps in their toilets and drop lines into the shared
| plumbing with things tied to help them get tangled. They can then
| pull the lines through and tie stuff to them.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-25 23:01 UTC)