Million Dollar Blocks
December 28, 2010 8:30 AM Subscribe
"In many places the concentration [of convicted residents] is so dense that states are spending in excess of a million dollars a year to incarcerate the residents of single city blocks."
Using rarely accessible data from the criminal justice system, the Spatial Information Design Lab and the Justice Mapping Center have created maps of these “million dollar blocks” and of the city-prison-city-prison migration flow for five of the nation’s cities. The maps suggest that the criminal justice system has become the predominant government institution in these communities and that public investment in this system has resulted in significant costs to other elements of our civic infrastructure — education, housing, health, and family. Prisons and jails form the distant exostructure of many American cities today.See the several linked pdfs.
Why does this have the feel of the precursor document for some new incarceration program of simply walling-off entire city blocks.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:45 AM on December 28, 2010 [5 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 8:45 AM on December 28, 2010 [5 favorites]
The prison-industrial complex is looking at Escape from New York as a documentary.
posted by adipocere at 8:53 AM on December 28, 2010 [14 favorites]
posted by adipocere at 8:53 AM on December 28, 2010 [14 favorites]
For the law-abiding people who live in those blocks, they might as well be in prison. If their kids can't play outside, if they're in danger when ever they take out the trash, or if the gunfire drowns out their music--they're incarcerated in their own homes.
The project continues to present ongoing work on criminal justice statistics to make visible the geography of incarceration and return in New York, Phoenix, New Orleans, and Wichita, prompting new ways of understanding the spatial dimension of an area of public policy with profound implications for American cities.
I think the people who live in those neighborhoods understand just fine the "spatial dimension".
posted by Ideefixe at 8:59 AM on December 28, 2010
The project continues to present ongoing work on criminal justice statistics to make visible the geography of incarceration and return in New York, Phoenix, New Orleans, and Wichita, prompting new ways of understanding the spatial dimension of an area of public policy with profound implications for American cities.
I think the people who live in those neighborhoods understand just fine the "spatial dimension".
posted by Ideefixe at 8:59 AM on December 28, 2010
They don't sleep anymore on the beach
posted by atrazine at 9:03 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by atrazine at 9:03 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
That's quite appalling. It always bothered me when TV shows portray prison life that the prisoners often know one another from the outside. I guess there's more truth to it than I was willing to give credit.
posted by sswiller at 9:03 AM on December 28, 2010
posted by sswiller at 9:03 AM on December 28, 2010
of simply walling-off entire city blocks.
I saw that movie! Everyone spoke French and there was lots of parkour.
Seriously though, I thought the same thing. I'm guessing the only thing keeping this from a viable solution in someone's mind is that there isn't any good way to make money off it yet.
posted by quin at 9:04 AM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
I saw that movie! Everyone spoke French and there was lots of parkour.
Seriously though, I thought the same thing. I'm guessing the only thing keeping this from a viable solution in someone's mind is that there isn't any good way to make money off it yet.
posted by quin at 9:04 AM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
I'm guessing the only thing keeping this from a viable solution in someone's mind is that there isn't any good way to make money off it yet.
Sure there is. You make all the inmates perform factory work without paying them any wages at all.
This is probably America's economic future, because it's the only way to get American workers to accept working for wages comparable to those paid in developing countries like China.
In fact, it gives American industry an advantage to use prison labor, assuming prison safety and health standards are kept slack and these private prisons don't have to spend much money on actual rehabilitation or work training programs.
Given those conditions, it's the next best thing to slave labor as a manufacturing base: Prison labor, in a nation where as many as 1 in 4 adults in some communities serve time.
It's a left-handed slavery system that promotes the criminalization of virtually everything in order to create a never-ending supply of competitively cheap, domestic industrial labor.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:17 AM on December 28, 2010 [21 favorites]
Sure there is. You make all the inmates perform factory work without paying them any wages at all.
This is probably America's economic future, because it's the only way to get American workers to accept working for wages comparable to those paid in developing countries like China.
In fact, it gives American industry an advantage to use prison labor, assuming prison safety and health standards are kept slack and these private prisons don't have to spend much money on actual rehabilitation or work training programs.
Given those conditions, it's the next best thing to slave labor as a manufacturing base: Prison labor, in a nation where as many as 1 in 4 adults in some communities serve time.
It's a left-handed slavery system that promotes the criminalization of virtually everything in order to create a never-ending supply of competitively cheap, domestic industrial labor.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:17 AM on December 28, 2010 [21 favorites]
i'm a penpal, writing to a dozen federal inmates, most are in the slammer for white crimes and drug offences, after over a hundred letters and three years writing, i send printed interesting material from the internet, (zero internet allowed in any federal prison in the country, mostly on sports as their favorite teams are not near the prison, their in. i can tell you that their minds create grand ideas for taking the straight road, when they are released. none of the inmates are even thinking of the heavy burden they will carry as former felons. just an idea of picking their lives as if they were on vacation or a many-year world cruise. all will be on some sort of parole for several years after release.
posted by tustinrick at 9:26 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by tustinrick at 9:26 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
This is probably America's economic future
It's already here. See about 2.30 in this (but it's worth watching it all)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:28 AM on December 28, 2010 [6 favorites]
It's already here. See about 2.30 in this (but it's worth watching it all)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:28 AM on December 28, 2010 [6 favorites]
Sure there is. You make all the inmates perform factory work without paying them any wages at all.
Your overall point remains intact, but many (most? all?) prison laborers are paid a wage, albeit an extremely nominal one (often well under a dollar an hour).
posted by jedicus at 9:28 AM on December 28, 2010
Your overall point remains intact, but many (most? all?) prison laborers are paid a wage, albeit an extremely nominal one (often well under a dollar an hour).
posted by jedicus at 9:28 AM on December 28, 2010
Fair point, jedicus. I'm not sure this is true in all states. But anything paid under the minimum wage isn't a wage, in my book. It doesn't meet the qualifications for one.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:32 AM on December 28, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by saulgoodman at 9:32 AM on December 28, 2010 [3 favorites]
I think the people who live in those neighborhoods understand just fine the "spatial dimension".
You don't seem to have understood the point of the project.
posted by OmieWise at 9:35 AM on December 28, 2010
You don't seem to have understood the point of the project.
posted by OmieWise at 9:35 AM on December 28, 2010
update on comment by Saulgoodman, a prison inmate just related that he completed a portait and watercoloring class, the classes were taught by Volunteers and students bring their own supplies sent to them from relatives. Another inmate told me he works 5 days a week, 8 to 5 making window coverings for the armed services of united states and gets 15 cents an hour. Money in prison is only U.S. Postage Stamps, no actural cash currency allowed. the working inmates get paid once a month, in books of stamps, then they can go to the prison exchange to buy soap to do their own Laundry and buy personal hygiene supplies. Prisoners exchange books of stamps as money to bet on football games between them, also boxing matches on t.v. and bumming cigs off an inmate who has extra. has any Me Fi ever tried to pay the I.R.S. with stamps, instead of money checks?
posted by tustinrick at 9:44 AM on December 28, 2010 [8 favorites]
posted by tustinrick at 9:44 AM on December 28, 2010 [8 favorites]
I doubt this analysis is as telling as the authors think it is. I don't see any adjustment for the population density of the blocks, so we readers can't tell if the prison spending per person is high or low for the people in those blocks.
If you've got 20,000 residents of one block and 200 residents of another block, you're not going to shock me when you show that the first block was associated with 100x the prison spending of the second block.
posted by NortonDC at 9:50 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
If you've got 20,000 residents of one block and 200 residents of another block, you're not going to shock me when you show that the first block was associated with 100x the prison spending of the second block.
posted by NortonDC at 9:50 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
the working inmates get paid once a month, in books of stamps, then they can go to the prison exchange to buy soap to do their own Laundry and buy personal hygiene supplies. Prisoners exchange books of stamps as money to bet on football games between them, also boxing matches on t.v. and bumming cigs off an inmate who has extra.
So this new oppressive labor system also borrows a few tricks from the discredited and exploitative Truck (or "Company Store") System (for that matter, America's shift to a credit-based retail economy also to my mind represents a sort of return to the Company Store model of labor exploitation).
posted by saulgoodman at 9:51 AM on December 28, 2010 [4 favorites]
So this new oppressive labor system also borrows a few tricks from the discredited and exploitative Truck (or "Company Store") System (for that matter, America's shift to a credit-based retail economy also to my mind represents a sort of return to the Company Store model of labor exploitation).
posted by saulgoodman at 9:51 AM on December 28, 2010 [4 favorites]
In order to enforce the observation of justice, therefore, Nature has implanted in the human breast that consciousness of ill-desert, those terrors of merited punishment which attend upon its violation, as the great safe-guards of the association of mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty. Men, though naturally sympathetic, feel so little for another, with whom they have no particular connexion, in comparison of what they feel for themselves; the misery of one, who is merely their fellow-creature, is of so little importance to them in comparison even of a small conveniency of their own; they have it so much in their power to hurt him, and may have so many temptations to do so, that if this principle did not stand up within them in his defence, and overawe them into a respect for his innocence, they would, like wild beasts, be at all times ready to fly upon him; and a man would enter an assembly of men as he enters a den of lions.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
posted by notion at 10:00 AM on December 28, 2010
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
posted by notion at 10:00 AM on December 28, 2010
See also The New Jim Crow as to the people living in these million dollar blocks.
posted by R343L at 10:07 AM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by R343L at 10:07 AM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
Why is the Spatial Information Design Lab of Columbia incapable of building a decent website? .pdfs? Images that are too small to see any detail? busted link to the Justice Mapping Center? WTF, designers?
In case anyone cares, the other five maps are at the previous link. They are slightly more usable, in that you can zoom in at choose differnt data to view. Still kludgy though.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:16 AM on December 28, 2010
In case anyone cares, the other five maps are at the previous link. They are slightly more usable, in that you can zoom in at choose differnt data to view. Still kludgy though.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:16 AM on December 28, 2010
My husband is currently doing time in the Texas prison system. To say that it has been a stark wake up to the fact that there is less interest in justice on the part of TDCJ than in revenge is to make an understatement of stunning proportions.
Obviously, I can only comment on my own experience, and what my husband has relayed to me. Food purchased at the commissary (at monstrously inflated prices) is a form of currency to the prisoners as are stamps and envelopes. The food served to the prisoners frequently arrives at the prison in containers marked "not for human consumption." Rarely is fresh fruit seen. On one of the rare occasions that fruit did come to the prison, it was in the form of pre sliced apples, which had arrived from China. No, I am not making this up. Purchasing food from the commissary is a health related necessity, in that it is packaged outside the purview of the Department of Corrections and is thus relatively safe, albeit cost prohibitive to many.
There is no air conditioning and no heat in most Texas prisons. The dorms and cells can reach temperatures in excess of 115 degrees. People die from the heat regularly.
The work that the prisoners do is unpaid. They receive no wages for their work, even those poor souls who are on the "hoe squads" and who work in the Texas heat in the fields, chained together. They receive "good time" for their work, which is of course the most valuable thing they can receive. Being as how their good time can be stripped for the smallest infraction (from serious infractions to completely bogus ones), and that the ultimate factor in their release is less their behavior and more the whim of the Parole Board, it is safe to say that the prisoners are essentially slaves.
The buckets of money that are spent on the prison system in this country are largely wasted, because the intent is wrong. If drug abuse and alcohol abuse is the thing that brings the largest number of people to prison, then doesn't it stand to reason that treatment for those problems would be the key to breaking the cycle of recidivism? It does to me. Unfortunately, even the most basic of treatment - AA, NA, SA - is rare, and attendance requires that the prisoner work constantly to make sure he is on the list to be allowed to take part.
Obviously, if the prisoners hadn't committed their crimes, they wouldn't be there. Don't commit the crime, and you won't have to go to jail, right? True, every word of it. However, addiction is not something that presents one with a myriad of options, or the clarity of mind to even see that fact.
posted by hallwaywalker at 10:18 AM on December 28, 2010 [41 favorites]
Obviously, I can only comment on my own experience, and what my husband has relayed to me. Food purchased at the commissary (at monstrously inflated prices) is a form of currency to the prisoners as are stamps and envelopes. The food served to the prisoners frequently arrives at the prison in containers marked "not for human consumption." Rarely is fresh fruit seen. On one of the rare occasions that fruit did come to the prison, it was in the form of pre sliced apples, which had arrived from China. No, I am not making this up. Purchasing food from the commissary is a health related necessity, in that it is packaged outside the purview of the Department of Corrections and is thus relatively safe, albeit cost prohibitive to many.
There is no air conditioning and no heat in most Texas prisons. The dorms and cells can reach temperatures in excess of 115 degrees. People die from the heat regularly.
The work that the prisoners do is unpaid. They receive no wages for their work, even those poor souls who are on the "hoe squads" and who work in the Texas heat in the fields, chained together. They receive "good time" for their work, which is of course the most valuable thing they can receive. Being as how their good time can be stripped for the smallest infraction (from serious infractions to completely bogus ones), and that the ultimate factor in their release is less their behavior and more the whim of the Parole Board, it is safe to say that the prisoners are essentially slaves.
The buckets of money that are spent on the prison system in this country are largely wasted, because the intent is wrong. If drug abuse and alcohol abuse is the thing that brings the largest number of people to prison, then doesn't it stand to reason that treatment for those problems would be the key to breaking the cycle of recidivism? It does to me. Unfortunately, even the most basic of treatment - AA, NA, SA - is rare, and attendance requires that the prisoner work constantly to make sure he is on the list to be allowed to take part.
Obviously, if the prisoners hadn't committed their crimes, they wouldn't be there. Don't commit the crime, and you won't have to go to jail, right? True, every word of it. However, addiction is not something that presents one with a myriad of options, or the clarity of mind to even see that fact.
posted by hallwaywalker at 10:18 AM on December 28, 2010 [41 favorites]
In the USA, there are more people in prison than there are farmers.
posted by stbalbach at 10:27 AM on December 28, 2010 [4 favorites]
posted by stbalbach at 10:27 AM on December 28, 2010 [4 favorites]
I've linked to this in the past, but it seems pertinent here as well. The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?
posted by malocchio at 10:31 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by malocchio at 10:31 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
Don't commit the crime, and you won't have to go to jail, right? True, every word of it.
This is a very strong meme here in the US, and it's completely blinkered. We could make speeding a capital crime punishable by instant summary execution and there will be millions of Americans, who often speed themselves, saying "Well, it's too bad Uncle Bob got capped by the cops, but he should have known better than doing 71 in a 65."
We look at North Korea as being some kind of bizarre science-fiction nightmare where all the citizens are programmed into subservience to the State, but honestly some days I feel like we aren't far off. Oh sure, we have McDonalds and nice houses and plenty of food, but when the men in sunglasses come to take away our family members we just sort of sigh and say "Well, I suppose they did deserve it somehow." and go on with our lives.
We are living in a police state. A comfortable, wealthy, quasi-democratic police state, but a police state none the less.
posted by Avenger at 11:39 AM on December 28, 2010 [14 favorites]
This is a very strong meme here in the US, and it's completely blinkered. We could make speeding a capital crime punishable by instant summary execution and there will be millions of Americans, who often speed themselves, saying "Well, it's too bad Uncle Bob got capped by the cops, but he should have known better than doing 71 in a 65."
We look at North Korea as being some kind of bizarre science-fiction nightmare where all the citizens are programmed into subservience to the State, but honestly some days I feel like we aren't far off. Oh sure, we have McDonalds and nice houses and plenty of food, but when the men in sunglasses come to take away our family members we just sort of sigh and say "Well, I suppose they did deserve it somehow." and go on with our lives.
We are living in a police state. A comfortable, wealthy, quasi-democratic police state, but a police state none the less.
posted by Avenger at 11:39 AM on December 28, 2010 [14 favorites]
I saw that movie! Everyone spoke French and there was lots of parkour.
Banlieue 13.
posted by preparat at 11:53 AM on December 28, 2010
Banlieue 13.
posted by preparat at 11:53 AM on December 28, 2010
We are living in a police state. A comfortable, wealthy, quasi-democratic police state, but a police state none the less.
No we aren't. Not even close. There are plenty of things wrong with the way we handle issues of law and order, principle among them the intersection between socio-economic disenfranchisement and disproportionate representation in the penal system (as this project seeks to make clear), but the US doesn't resemble a police state. Indeed, it's arguably our relative distance from such a system that enables the confusion that has some people to mistake how far we are from it. Calling the US a police state shows that one is not serious about the issues involved, just as claiming that Obama is a socialist shows that one does not care enough about the truth to develop a reasoned argument against a specific set of policies.
posted by OmieWise at 12:41 PM on December 28, 2010 [15 favorites]
No we aren't. Not even close. There are plenty of things wrong with the way we handle issues of law and order, principle among them the intersection between socio-economic disenfranchisement and disproportionate representation in the penal system (as this project seeks to make clear), but the US doesn't resemble a police state. Indeed, it's arguably our relative distance from such a system that enables the confusion that has some people to mistake how far we are from it. Calling the US a police state shows that one is not serious about the issues involved, just as claiming that Obama is a socialist shows that one does not care enough about the truth to develop a reasoned argument against a specific set of policies.
posted by OmieWise at 12:41 PM on December 28, 2010 [15 favorites]
Some context behind Million Dollar Blocks from a 2004 Village Voice article on Eric Cadora, the person who did the original data mapping and helped direct this new Columbia one. Cadora is the director of the Justice Mapping Center, where, as oneirodynia points out, you can find similar maps for Arizona, NYC, Louisiana, New Haven, Texas, England, Wichita, and New Jersey.
posted by jng at 12:42 PM on December 28, 2010
posted by jng at 12:42 PM on December 28, 2010
No we aren't. Not even close.
1% of our population are behind bars. There are more black men in prison than college. We imprison more people in real numbers than the rest of the planet combined.
But were not a police state because -- well, because why, exactly? Because we can shop at Best Buy? Because we can say what we want on the internet?
I honestly think that the powers-that-be in this country are uninterested in having a North Korean-style dictatorship. They've realized long ago that they don't need to stifle all dissent, just manipulate the culture so that large-scale dissent becomes unthinkable.
posted by Avenger at 2:11 PM on December 28, 2010 [6 favorites]
1% of our population are behind bars. There are more black men in prison than college. We imprison more people in real numbers than the rest of the planet combined.
But were not a police state because -- well, because why, exactly? Because we can shop at Best Buy? Because we can say what we want on the internet?
I honestly think that the powers-that-be in this country are uninterested in having a North Korean-style dictatorship. They've realized long ago that they don't need to stifle all dissent, just manipulate the culture so that large-scale dissent becomes unthinkable.
posted by Avenger at 2:11 PM on December 28, 2010 [6 favorites]
Hallwayworker: I used to visit inmates in a Thai jail. The only appreciable difference from your description is that the Westerners in that jail couldn't work and were dependent on gifts from outside. Otherwise it was all the same - no A/C, prisoners reliant on purchased food to stay healthy, food and essentials bought from the prison commissary at inflated prices.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:36 PM on December 28, 2010
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:36 PM on December 28, 2010
I'm pretty sure that's the ugliest web site I've ever seen. It's physically painful to try to read the text on that background.
posted by Corvid at 3:47 PM on December 28, 2010
posted by Corvid at 3:47 PM on December 28, 2010
I honestly think that the powers-that-be in this country are uninterested in having a North Korean-style dictatorship. They've realized long ago that they don't need to stifle all dissent, just manipulate the culture so that large-scale dissent becomes unthinkable.
I honestly think the powers-that-be make it up as they go along. And often strongly believe in the Constitution; every few days or so.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:45 PM on December 28, 2010
I honestly think the powers-that-be make it up as they go along. And often strongly believe in the Constitution; every few days or so.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:45 PM on December 28, 2010
But were not a police state because -- well, because why, exactly? Because we can shop at Best Buy? Because we can say what we want on the internet?
Well, in part because of the latter. The former has nothing to do with anything, and is your own concern. We aren't a police state because the apparatus of control that is widely recognized as belonging to a police state is not present in this country. Totalitarian rule is not present. Now, if you want to change the definition of police state to include country's where 1% of the population is in prison, even though the other 99% can shop at Best Buy, then you're free to do so. But, as I said, insisting on your own meanings for widely accepted terms of political science description makes you appear unserious.
posted by OmieWise at 7:21 PM on December 28, 2010
Well, in part because of the latter. The former has nothing to do with anything, and is your own concern. We aren't a police state because the apparatus of control that is widely recognized as belonging to a police state is not present in this country. Totalitarian rule is not present. Now, if you want to change the definition of police state to include country's where 1% of the population is in prison, even though the other 99% can shop at Best Buy, then you're free to do so. But, as I said, insisting on your own meanings for widely accepted terms of political science description makes you appear unserious.
posted by OmieWise at 7:21 PM on December 28, 2010
@OmieWise
There is a fundamental and important difference between what you have termed "totalitarian rule" and totalitarian control. This is not mere semantics: one is not conditionally dependent upon the other. The former is a static condition; the latter is a process. However, both can lead to the same existential outcome entirely independent of one another.
Formal logic, just like the prison system in this nation, is a fucking bitch to those on the wrong side of it. I will, for the sake of decency, forego the rhetorical implications of your arguments, assuming you didn't intend to defend slavery and literally jack booted thugs.
posted by digitalprimate at 8:09 PM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
There is a fundamental and important difference between what you have termed "totalitarian rule" and totalitarian control. This is not mere semantics: one is not conditionally dependent upon the other. The former is a static condition; the latter is a process. However, both can lead to the same existential outcome entirely independent of one another.
Formal logic, just like the prison system in this nation, is a fucking bitch to those on the wrong side of it. I will, for the sake of decency, forego the rhetorical implications of your arguments, assuming you didn't intend to defend slavery and literally jack booted thugs.
posted by digitalprimate at 8:09 PM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
This is probably America's economic future, because it's the only way to get American workers to accept working for wages comparable to those paid in developing countries like China.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:17 AM on December 28
Hyperbolic and simplistic. The powers that be are not going to imprison everyone to make prison wages the norm (what inflation is for).
@ hallwaywalker: It doesn't bother me that prison labor is almost unpaid. Prisoners do not own their time like free people; therefore they cannot sell their time like anyone else. Being denied the opportunity to earn money normally while incarcerated is a significant part of the hardship of the punishment. Moreover, the prison drug trade is probably already dangerous and extensive enough as it is, without currency.
If prison food is unappealing, so is prison.
If it's true that heat stroke is a big killer in Texan prisons, that is really appalling and inhumane. Prisoners must at least have sufficient access to water to prevent that, and should not be made to labor in the sun on very hot days. I understand that the state doesn't want to pay to air condition a prison, but there are cheaper ways to prevent heat stroke.
I am sorry for what the members of your family must be going through.
when the men in sunglasses come to take away our family members we just sort of sigh and say "Well, I suppose they did deserve it somehow." and go on with our lives.
We are living in a police state. A comfortable, wealthy, quasi-democratic police state, but a police state none the less.
posted by Avenger at 11:39 AM on December 28
Very gross generalization. Anecdotally, I have known several people who went to prison and none of their families had what you would call a passive attitude about it... and to be sent to prison is not exactly an accidental or effortless thing. There is a very real difference between the U.S., where there is rule of law, multiple layers of bureaucracy and due process between the citizen and prison, imperfect as they may be, and countries where incarceration is truly arbitrary, casual and opaque.
Americans generally know that the prisons they pay for are not randomly packed with blameless innocents. Even if a large proportion of the crimes involved illegal drugs. The notion that prisons are full of victims is as empty and false as demonizing the character of all prisoners would be.
1% of our population are behind bars. There are more black men in prison than college. We imprison more people in real numbers than the rest of the planet combined.
posted by Avenger at 2:11 PM on December 28
Having one percent of the population behind bars, or more black men in prison than college, does not make a police state. That does make the U.S. a comparatively punitive state (which I think is both a negative and a positive), and the rate of incarceration of black men is probably in part the result of a racial disparity among the drug users sent to prison by "the war on drugs."
I don't see how it can be true that the U.S. imprisons more people than the rest of the world combined, when our prison population is somewhere over 2 million and China and Russia have around 1.5 and 0.9 million incarcerated, respectively. That leaves the rest of world (and I suspect that many countries do not reveal this information). Incidentally, China probably executes upwards of a thousand annually who would only have been incarcerated in the U.S.
posted by knoyers at 8:46 PM on December 28, 2010
posted by saulgoodman at 9:17 AM on December 28
Hyperbolic and simplistic. The powers that be are not going to imprison everyone to make prison wages the norm (what inflation is for).
@ hallwaywalker: It doesn't bother me that prison labor is almost unpaid. Prisoners do not own their time like free people; therefore they cannot sell their time like anyone else. Being denied the opportunity to earn money normally while incarcerated is a significant part of the hardship of the punishment. Moreover, the prison drug trade is probably already dangerous and extensive enough as it is, without currency.
If prison food is unappealing, so is prison.
If it's true that heat stroke is a big killer in Texan prisons, that is really appalling and inhumane. Prisoners must at least have sufficient access to water to prevent that, and should not be made to labor in the sun on very hot days. I understand that the state doesn't want to pay to air condition a prison, but there are cheaper ways to prevent heat stroke.
I am sorry for what the members of your family must be going through.
when the men in sunglasses come to take away our family members we just sort of sigh and say "Well, I suppose they did deserve it somehow." and go on with our lives.
We are living in a police state. A comfortable, wealthy, quasi-democratic police state, but a police state none the less.
posted by Avenger at 11:39 AM on December 28
Very gross generalization. Anecdotally, I have known several people who went to prison and none of their families had what you would call a passive attitude about it... and to be sent to prison is not exactly an accidental or effortless thing. There is a very real difference between the U.S., where there is rule of law, multiple layers of bureaucracy and due process between the citizen and prison, imperfect as they may be, and countries where incarceration is truly arbitrary, casual and opaque.
Americans generally know that the prisons they pay for are not randomly packed with blameless innocents. Even if a large proportion of the crimes involved illegal drugs. The notion that prisons are full of victims is as empty and false as demonizing the character of all prisoners would be.
1% of our population are behind bars. There are more black men in prison than college. We imprison more people in real numbers than the rest of the planet combined.
posted by Avenger at 2:11 PM on December 28
Having one percent of the population behind bars, or more black men in prison than college, does not make a police state. That does make the U.S. a comparatively punitive state (which I think is both a negative and a positive), and the rate of incarceration of black men is probably in part the result of a racial disparity among the drug users sent to prison by "the war on drugs."
I don't see how it can be true that the U.S. imprisons more people than the rest of the world combined, when our prison population is somewhere over 2 million and China and Russia have around 1.5 and 0.9 million incarcerated, respectively. That leaves the rest of world (and I suspect that many countries do not reveal this information). Incidentally, China probably executes upwards of a thousand annually who would only have been incarcerated in the U.S.
posted by knoyers at 8:46 PM on December 28, 2010
If you're okay with prisoners being poorly treated, you are not a human being and I reject any notion that you are deserving of any rights whatsoever. Criminals are committing crimes against individuals, but you are, by supporting the abuse of criminals, committing treason against humanity.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:22 PM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:22 PM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
knoyers, so do you think that Americans in general are more inclined to engage in criminal behavior or only certain classes are? Do you think that America has a larger percentage of bad people? Since you seem to think that America's higher than average incarceration rate is justified.
posted by empath at 9:58 PM on December 28, 2010
posted by empath at 9:58 PM on December 28, 2010
The powers that be are not going to imprison everyone to make prison wages the norm (what inflation is for).
Because, of course, history has already demonstrated the infallible beneficence of fundamental market forces. Or those fundamental market forces just don't work the same way for us as they have for other civilizations at other points in history that for one reason or another did gradually come to accept oppressive labor systems, and feudal systems are as much the stuff of fiction as unicorns and dragons, and the institutions of slavery never actually formed while free markets were allowed to run their course, etc. Right-o.
Look, I'm not arguing we're there yet, but in the absence of significant external (i.e., non-economic) mechanisms to constrain them (like social values, laws, etc.), the markets will ultimately lead wherever the greatest potential profits are. There is potentially a lot of profit in forced labor schemes of various kinds. Just ask Abramoff about those business friendly Mariana Islands. You'd have to have a hole in your head not to see the inherent potential risks that for-profit prison models pose to the integrity of our basic civil rights.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:27 PM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
Because, of course, history has already demonstrated the infallible beneficence of fundamental market forces. Or those fundamental market forces just don't work the same way for us as they have for other civilizations at other points in history that for one reason or another did gradually come to accept oppressive labor systems, and feudal systems are as much the stuff of fiction as unicorns and dragons, and the institutions of slavery never actually formed while free markets were allowed to run their course, etc. Right-o.
Look, I'm not arguing we're there yet, but in the absence of significant external (i.e., non-economic) mechanisms to constrain them (like social values, laws, etc.), the markets will ultimately lead wherever the greatest potential profits are. There is potentially a lot of profit in forced labor schemes of various kinds. Just ask Abramoff about those business friendly Mariana Islands. You'd have to have a hole in your head not to see the inherent potential risks that for-profit prison models pose to the integrity of our basic civil rights.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:27 PM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]
Incidentally, China probably executes upwards of a thousand annually who would only have been incarcerated in the U.S.
That's a mighty shiny rhetorical bauble you've got there, but unfortunately, it's made of pyrite. It's not even close to a real counterpoint.
As noted here, China executes a lot of prisoners per year, true, but only to the tune of about 1,000 per year. Not nearly enough to account for the gross overall discrepancies in our incarceration levels. No credible accounts exist anywhere of China executing the hundreds of thousands of prisoners a year it would take for them to top us in the raw numbers of individuals penalized criminally in this country.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:37 PM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
That's a mighty shiny rhetorical bauble you've got there, but unfortunately, it's made of pyrite. It's not even close to a real counterpoint.
As noted here, China executes a lot of prisoners per year, true, but only to the tune of about 1,000 per year. Not nearly enough to account for the gross overall discrepancies in our incarceration levels. No credible accounts exist anywhere of China executing the hundreds of thousands of prisoners a year it would take for them to top us in the raw numbers of individuals penalized criminally in this country.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:37 PM on December 28, 2010 [2 favorites]
I wish so hard saulgoodman wasn't correct about this but I suspect he has nailed it.
posted by Neofelis at 10:50 PM on December 28, 2010
posted by Neofelis at 10:50 PM on December 28, 2010
I will, for the sake of decency, forego the rhetorical implications of your arguments, assuming you didn't intend to defend slavery and literally jack booted thugs.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I've reread your comment several times, and mine as well, and I can't see where you think (according to formal logic or otherwise) I've inadvertently defended slavery or jack booted thuggery. Could you spell it out for me so that I can respond? Otherwise, for the sake of decency, I'll assume that you do not mean to use an unsupported implication in place of the argument that you cannot make.
To revisit this:
1% of our population are behind bars. There are more black men in prison than college. We imprison more people in real numbers than the rest of the planet combined.
But were not a police state because -- well, because why, exactly? Because we can shop at Best Buy? Because we can say what we want on the internet?
Obviously these are huge problems, but they do not add up to a police state. I'm not sure, exactly, what they do add up to, but people living in police states do not enjoy the freedoms that the population of the US does. Those freedoms, which are not limited to easy shopping, include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, freedom of education, freedom to read, write and say what we want, freedom to run for office, freedom to vote for who we want, freedom to live where we want, freedom to travel where, when and how we want, etc. These are not abstract freedoms, but rather freedoms enjoyed in the real world by ordinary Americans. There are imperfections in all of them, but even those imperfections and limitations do not vitiate the general level of freedom which is inconsistent with a police state.
The hyperbolic implication that any law would be, or could be, passed and implemented in this country is without evidence. There are obvious and well-documented problems with our drug laws, for instance, but there is no evidence that because of that Americans are ready to send Grandpa to the chair for speeding. There is no transitive property at work here. Drug laws are hard because people are very emotional about drugs. That sucks, but it doesn't turn everyone's shirts brown.
The very real problem with using hysterical formulations to talk about these real social problems is that people who otherwise might be sympathetic to your arguments end up thinking you're not a credible interlocutor about these issues. I've spent my career working, both individually and at the macro level, with some of the US's most disenfranchised groups, and I discount people who cannot draw useful distinctions between police states and the United States. Partly this is a personal and philosophical reaction (I also won't send my child to be taught science by a Creationist), but partly it's because the strategies for promoting change in the system are radically different depending on how one understands the politics of the country.
posted by OmieWise at 5:22 AM on December 29, 2010
I have no idea what you're talking about. I've reread your comment several times, and mine as well, and I can't see where you think (according to formal logic or otherwise) I've inadvertently defended slavery or jack booted thuggery. Could you spell it out for me so that I can respond? Otherwise, for the sake of decency, I'll assume that you do not mean to use an unsupported implication in place of the argument that you cannot make.
To revisit this:
1% of our population are behind bars. There are more black men in prison than college. We imprison more people in real numbers than the rest of the planet combined.
But were not a police state because -- well, because why, exactly? Because we can shop at Best Buy? Because we can say what we want on the internet?
Obviously these are huge problems, but they do not add up to a police state. I'm not sure, exactly, what they do add up to, but people living in police states do not enjoy the freedoms that the population of the US does. Those freedoms, which are not limited to easy shopping, include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, freedom of education, freedom to read, write and say what we want, freedom to run for office, freedom to vote for who we want, freedom to live where we want, freedom to travel where, when and how we want, etc. These are not abstract freedoms, but rather freedoms enjoyed in the real world by ordinary Americans. There are imperfections in all of them, but even those imperfections and limitations do not vitiate the general level of freedom which is inconsistent with a police state.
The hyperbolic implication that any law would be, or could be, passed and implemented in this country is without evidence. There are obvious and well-documented problems with our drug laws, for instance, but there is no evidence that because of that Americans are ready to send Grandpa to the chair for speeding. There is no transitive property at work here. Drug laws are hard because people are very emotional about drugs. That sucks, but it doesn't turn everyone's shirts brown.
The very real problem with using hysterical formulations to talk about these real social problems is that people who otherwise might be sympathetic to your arguments end up thinking you're not a credible interlocutor about these issues. I've spent my career working, both individually and at the macro level, with some of the US's most disenfranchised groups, and I discount people who cannot draw useful distinctions between police states and the United States. Partly this is a personal and philosophical reaction (I also won't send my child to be taught science by a Creationist), but partly it's because the strategies for promoting change in the system are radically different depending on how one understands the politics of the country.
posted by OmieWise at 5:22 AM on December 29, 2010
As noted here, China executes a lot of prisoners per year, true, but only to the tune of about 1,000 per year. Not nearly enough to account for the gross overall discrepancies in our incarceration levels.
I think you should reread the original comment. I'm not defending it, but it doesn't claim that China's execution level accounts for the gross discrepancies, it just points out the high execution level and says that those people would mostly just be incarcerated in the US. In other words, as is made clear by the "incidentally" that starts the sentence, it is not doing the work of argument you seem to think it is.
posted by OmieWise at 5:26 AM on December 29, 2010 [1 favorite]
I think you should reread the original comment. I'm not defending it, but it doesn't claim that China's execution level accounts for the gross discrepancies, it just points out the high execution level and says that those people would mostly just be incarcerated in the US. In other words, as is made clear by the "incidentally" that starts the sentence, it is not doing the work of argument you seem to think it is.
posted by OmieWise at 5:26 AM on December 29, 2010 [1 favorite]
Then it is irrelevant to knoyers' disgusting attempt at a point.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:49 AM on December 29, 2010
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:49 AM on December 29, 2010
Yes, it is, but it also should not be used to suggest that knoyers was making an argument he wasn't.
posted by OmieWise at 6:00 AM on December 29, 2010
posted by OmieWise at 6:00 AM on December 29, 2010
If you're okay with prisoners being poorly treated, you are not a human being and I reject any notion that you are deserving of any rights whatsoever. Criminals are committing crimes against individuals, but you are, by supporting the abuse of criminals, committing treason against humanity.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:22 PM on December 28
I think that prisoners are entitled to serve their time in safe conditions, a minimum standard that the state should be able to meet.
knoyers, so do you think that Americans in general are more inclined to engage in criminal behavior or only certain classes are? Do you think that America has a larger percentage of bad people? Since you seem to think that America's higher than average incarceration rate is justified.
posted by empath at 9:58 PM on December 28
America is over three hundred million with access to drugs and guns, great poverty and wealth, and produces quite a bit of crime. There are obviously classes and subcultures in America that engage more freqently in criminal behavior, as is the case anywhere.
I agree with "hallwaywalker" that public efforts to treat drug addiction are insufficient and that there should be some system of better, more accessible treatment options for addicts, especially those without resources, both before they get to the point of being incarcerated and during incarceration. That would be a good investment for society.
As noted here, China executes a lot of prisoners per year, true, but only to the tune of about 1,000 per year. Not nearly enough to account for the gross overall discrepancies in our incarceration levels. No credible accounts exist anywhere of China executing the hundreds of thousands of prisoners a year it would take for them to top us in the raw numbers of individuals penalized criminally in this country.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:37 PM on December 28
That is about what I said. I said nothing about capital punishment accounting for the discrepancy in incarceration rates between China and the U.S.
However, my point is that many of those executed Chinese prisoners paid with their lives for such crimes as drug trafficking, which is a capital offense there.
Then it is irrelevant to knoyers' disgusting attempt at a point.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:49 AM on December 29
If you are so disgusted by what I said, that suggests a weak stomach.
Crime isn't imaginary; those who commit the crime have to be punished; prison, a term of denial of freedom, has long since replaced capital and corporal punishments as a standard; and incarceration cannot be designed as an easy or a pleasant experience.
posted by knoyers at 6:08 AM on December 29, 2010
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:22 PM on December 28
I think that prisoners are entitled to serve their time in safe conditions, a minimum standard that the state should be able to meet.
knoyers, so do you think that Americans in general are more inclined to engage in criminal behavior or only certain classes are? Do you think that America has a larger percentage of bad people? Since you seem to think that America's higher than average incarceration rate is justified.
posted by empath at 9:58 PM on December 28
America is over three hundred million with access to drugs and guns, great poverty and wealth, and produces quite a bit of crime. There are obviously classes and subcultures in America that engage more freqently in criminal behavior, as is the case anywhere.
I agree with "hallwaywalker" that public efforts to treat drug addiction are insufficient and that there should be some system of better, more accessible treatment options for addicts, especially those without resources, both before they get to the point of being incarcerated and during incarceration. That would be a good investment for society.
As noted here, China executes a lot of prisoners per year, true, but only to the tune of about 1,000 per year. Not nearly enough to account for the gross overall discrepancies in our incarceration levels. No credible accounts exist anywhere of China executing the hundreds of thousands of prisoners a year it would take for them to top us in the raw numbers of individuals penalized criminally in this country.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:37 PM on December 28
That is about what I said. I said nothing about capital punishment accounting for the discrepancy in incarceration rates between China and the U.S.
However, my point is that many of those executed Chinese prisoners paid with their lives for such crimes as drug trafficking, which is a capital offense there.
Then it is irrelevant to knoyers' disgusting attempt at a point.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:49 AM on December 29
If you are so disgusted by what I said, that suggests a weak stomach.
Crime isn't imaginary; those who commit the crime have to be punished; prison, a term of denial of freedom, has long since replaced capital and corporal punishments as a standard; and incarceration cannot be designed as an easy or a pleasant experience.
posted by knoyers at 6:08 AM on December 29, 2010
However, my point is that many of those executed Chinese prisoners paid with their lives for such crimes as drug trafficking, which is a capital offense there.
So why even bring it up when this thread is about the treatment of prisoners and not about the dead?
Crime isn't imaginary; those who commit the crime have to be punished; prison, a term of denial of freedom, has long since replaced capital and corporal punishments as a standard; and incarceration cannot be designed as an easy or a pleasant experience.
That you think incarceration is in any sense easy or pleasant indicates either a radical, irresponsible ignorance about the conditions in prisons or a willing and abominable approval of abuse of prisoners. Which is it?
There are obviously classes and subcultures in America that engage more freqently in criminal behavior, as is the case anywhere.
Oooh, oooh, tell us which classes and subcultures these are! Please be specific.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:39 AM on December 29, 2010
So why even bring it up when this thread is about the treatment of prisoners and not about the dead?
Crime isn't imaginary; those who commit the crime have to be punished; prison, a term of denial of freedom, has long since replaced capital and corporal punishments as a standard; and incarceration cannot be designed as an easy or a pleasant experience.
That you think incarceration is in any sense easy or pleasant indicates either a radical, irresponsible ignorance about the conditions in prisons or a willing and abominable approval of abuse of prisoners. Which is it?
There are obviously classes and subcultures in America that engage more freqently in criminal behavior, as is the case anywhere.
Oooh, oooh, tell us which classes and subcultures these are! Please be specific.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:39 AM on December 29, 2010
In other words, as is made clear by the "incidentally" that starts the sentence, it is not doing the work of argument you seem to think it is.
Well, what argument on point is the comment making, then? That China executes more people than us? Not all that many more, in fact. And so? What does that have to do with the subject of prison populations?
What the comment does is to make a couple of loaded claims unrelated to the subject without any explicit argument to relate them back to the topic. Meanwhile, the reader is supposed to construct a sort of implicit argument for themselves to the effect that, while we put more of our citizens in prison relative to nations like China, that's only because real police states like China are more inclined to kill their citizens. They aren't; at least, not that much more. The gap is still too enormous. And that's one of the shadier rhetorical tricks: innuendo.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:14 AM on December 29, 2010 [3 favorites]
Well, what argument on point is the comment making, then? That China executes more people than us? Not all that many more, in fact. And so? What does that have to do with the subject of prison populations?
What the comment does is to make a couple of loaded claims unrelated to the subject without any explicit argument to relate them back to the topic. Meanwhile, the reader is supposed to construct a sort of implicit argument for themselves to the effect that, while we put more of our citizens in prison relative to nations like China, that's only because real police states like China are more inclined to kill their citizens. They aren't; at least, not that much more. The gap is still too enormous. And that's one of the shadier rhetorical tricks: innuendo.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:14 AM on December 29, 2010 [3 favorites]
Crime isn't imaginary; those who commit the crime have to be punished; prison, a term of denial of freedom, has long since replaced capital and corporal punishments as a standard; and incarceration cannot be designed as an easy or a pleasant experience.
Labor exploitation and the propensity for greed to override common decency aren't imaginary either. Nor is regulatory capture. That there is currently a fairly serious risk of the private prison industry--and prison labor systems in particular--creating perverse economic incentives that come increasingly into conflict with our civil liberties is surely as undeniable as the existence of crime (although, I'd note, we often seem to play it pretty fast and loose when it comes to reclassifying behaviors that were once viewed as acceptable as crimes on the personal level, while I'll be damned if we don't seem to keep doing the opposite on Wall Street).
posted by saulgoodman at 7:22 AM on December 29, 2010 [2 favorites]
Labor exploitation and the propensity for greed to override common decency aren't imaginary either. Nor is regulatory capture. That there is currently a fairly serious risk of the private prison industry--and prison labor systems in particular--creating perverse economic incentives that come increasingly into conflict with our civil liberties is surely as undeniable as the existence of crime (although, I'd note, we often seem to play it pretty fast and loose when it comes to reclassifying behaviors that were once viewed as acceptable as crimes on the personal level, while I'll be damned if we don't seem to keep doing the opposite on Wall Street).
posted by saulgoodman at 7:22 AM on December 29, 2010 [2 favorites]
And that's one of the shadier rhetorical tricks: innuendo.
Fine, then say that. Lay out what you've laid out here. As it was, your argument was an explicit misreading of his. I don't think you're wrong, I think you were misguided, and as it was, you seemed to me to be arguing by implication. You effectively and explicitly argued against something that knoyers never said.
posted by OmieWise at 7:42 AM on December 29, 2010
Fine, then say that. Lay out what you've laid out here. As it was, your argument was an explicit misreading of his. I don't think you're wrong, I think you were misguided, and as it was, you seemed to me to be arguing by implication. You effectively and explicitly argued against something that knoyers never said.
posted by OmieWise at 7:42 AM on December 29, 2010
Well, fine and good OmieWise, but let's go back to the original comment just one more time:
Incidentally, China probably executes upwards of a thousand annually who would only have been incarcerated in the U.S.
The original comment is false, too. China executes in the neighborhood of 1,000 prisoners annually, on the upper end of the range, according to the cite I linked earlier. The claim here is that China executes more than "a thousand annually who would only have been incarcerated in the US"; even taken only at face value, that's either a factual misrepresentation or misinterpretation because if China only executes 1,000 or so prisoners in absolute terms annually, then unless virtually none of them are murderers who would have also been subject to the death penalty in the US, it's mathematically impossible that China executes more than a thousand per year who would have only been incarcerated in the US, where for example we had 52 executions in 2009.
At the same time, yes, China bad. Very bad. But we don't exactly come up smelling roses anymore either.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:08 AM on December 29, 2010
Incidentally, China probably executes upwards of a thousand annually who would only have been incarcerated in the U.S.
The original comment is false, too. China executes in the neighborhood of 1,000 prisoners annually, on the upper end of the range, according to the cite I linked earlier. The claim here is that China executes more than "a thousand annually who would only have been incarcerated in the US"; even taken only at face value, that's either a factual misrepresentation or misinterpretation because if China only executes 1,000 or so prisoners in absolute terms annually, then unless virtually none of them are murderers who would have also been subject to the death penalty in the US, it's mathematically impossible that China executes more than a thousand per year who would have only been incarcerated in the US, where for example we had 52 executions in 2009.
At the same time, yes, China bad. Very bad. But we don't exactly come up smelling roses anymore either.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:08 AM on December 29, 2010
As prisons are turned over to corporations, there's a vested interest in incarceration. Then there will be a vested interest in using prison labor.
posted by Mom at 8:55 AM on December 29, 2010
posted by Mom at 8:55 AM on December 29, 2010
Police state? The way I look at it, is how strongly things are tending to change in that particular direction. The object of being concerned at all is preventative, and yet the problem, of its nature, can prevent you from taking action. So you have to work well ahead of the curve, or you loose.
posted by Goofyy at 12:02 PM on December 29, 2010
posted by Goofyy at 12:02 PM on December 29, 2010
That you think incarceration is in any sense easy or pleasant indicates either a radical, irresponsible ignorance about the conditions in prisons or a willing and abominable approval of abuse of prisoners. Which is it?
You shouldn't put words in someone's mouth. Never did I indicate that incarceration is either easy or pleasant, or any approval of the abuse of prisoners (although "abuse" can be a subjective concept).
Oooh, oooh, tell us which classes and subcultures these are! Please be specific.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:39 AM on December 29
I was responding to a baiting question there.
I suppose that you must maintain that criminal behavior is distributed equally and evenly throughout all the categories of society (as it should be).
Please excuse me while I hand over my wallet to the elderly lady who's mugging me very cruelly as I write. I don't want to get pistol whipped.
So why even bring it up when this thread is about the treatment of prisoners and not about the dead?
Not all that many more, in fact.
Many more, actually, though the most recent estimate I found for China is for 2009
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2010 (U.S.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/world/asia/31execute.html (China)
China executes somewhere between 1000 and 2000 people annually. Many are likely murderers but a large number are also drug traffickers. A few are corrupt officials. The Chinese government does not appear to release a lot of information (except when making an example) or complete statistics regarding executions. I did not intend to side track the discussion. However, America's high incarceration rate does not necessarily make it a more of a police state than other large societies; we have a rule of law.
As prisons are turned over to corporations, there's a vested interest in incarceration. Then there will be a vested interest in using prison labor.
posted by Mom at 8:55 AM on December 29
I agree that private prisons are a bad idea for this reason (for example see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ciavarella). However, I don't think that occupying prisoners with a farm, license plates, road work, sewing, etc., on a voluntary basis for extremely low wages and possibly for consideration at parole time, is wrong. Without an option to work there would be even less activity to divert prisoners from a devastating monotony, as they serve out their time.
posted by knoyers at 2:37 PM on December 29, 2010
You shouldn't put words in someone's mouth. Never did I indicate that incarceration is either easy or pleasant, or any approval of the abuse of prisoners (although "abuse" can be a subjective concept).
Oooh, oooh, tell us which classes and subcultures these are! Please be specific.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:39 AM on December 29
I was responding to a baiting question there.
I suppose that you must maintain that criminal behavior is distributed equally and evenly throughout all the categories of society (as it should be).
Please excuse me while I hand over my wallet to the elderly lady who's mugging me very cruelly as I write. I don't want to get pistol whipped.
So why even bring it up when this thread is about the treatment of prisoners and not about the dead?
Not all that many more, in fact.
Many more, actually, though the most recent estimate I found for China is for 2009
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2010 (U.S.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/world/asia/31execute.html (China)
China executes somewhere between 1000 and 2000 people annually. Many are likely murderers but a large number are also drug traffickers. A few are corrupt officials. The Chinese government does not appear to release a lot of information (except when making an example) or complete statistics regarding executions. I did not intend to side track the discussion. However, America's high incarceration rate does not necessarily make it a more of a police state than other large societies; we have a rule of law.
As prisons are turned over to corporations, there's a vested interest in incarceration. Then there will be a vested interest in using prison labor.
posted by Mom at 8:55 AM on December 29
I agree that private prisons are a bad idea for this reason (for example see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ciavarella). However, I don't think that occupying prisoners with a farm, license plates, road work, sewing, etc., on a voluntary basis for extremely low wages and possibly for consideration at parole time, is wrong. Without an option to work there would be even less activity to divert prisoners from a devastating monotony, as they serve out their time.
posted by knoyers at 2:37 PM on December 29, 2010
@ OmieWise
You had just used the phrase, "totalitarian rule, " which is not, in fact, synonymous with a police state (your later phrase of choice): c.f., Bhutan until very recently for a modern and mostly benevolent example. Totalitarian rule is a form the governance of a state can take.
What I termed, "totalitarian control," on the other hand, is what our current private, for profit prison system (combined with a set of laws designed to make it as easy as possible to send people to prison) is; it is a series of processes, rather than one centrally controlled, formal structure.
Another example: Iran has totalitarian control systems, but is not totalitarian state. Yet the effect on the population is identical.
The similarity between the two is the effect they have: both totalitarian control and totalitarian systems exercise unjust and "total" control over their populations to varying and generally ever increasing degrees.
I hope that clears things up a bit, and I apologize for not explaining that better. I don't apologize at being appalled a thinking person could concoct any defense at all for our current set of totalitarian processes simply by saying we're not under totalitarian control.
posted by digitalprimate at 6:25 PM on December 29, 2010
You had just used the phrase, "totalitarian rule, " which is not, in fact, synonymous with a police state (your later phrase of choice): c.f., Bhutan until very recently for a modern and mostly benevolent example. Totalitarian rule is a form the governance of a state can take.
What I termed, "totalitarian control," on the other hand, is what our current private, for profit prison system (combined with a set of laws designed to make it as easy as possible to send people to prison) is; it is a series of processes, rather than one centrally controlled, formal structure.
Another example: Iran has totalitarian control systems, but is not totalitarian state. Yet the effect on the population is identical.
The similarity between the two is the effect they have: both totalitarian control and totalitarian systems exercise unjust and "total" control over their populations to varying and generally ever increasing degrees.
I hope that clears things up a bit, and I apologize for not explaining that better. I don't apologize at being appalled a thinking person could concoct any defense at all for our current set of totalitarian processes simply by saying we're not under totalitarian control.
posted by digitalprimate at 6:25 PM on December 29, 2010
I agree that private prisons are a bad idea for this reason (for example see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ciavarella). However, I don't think that occupying prisoners with a farm, license plates, road work, sewing, etc., on a voluntary basis for extremely low wages and possibly for consideration at parole time, is wrong. Without an option to work there would be even less activity to divert prisoners from a devastating monotony, as they serve out their time.
I don't think we should carve out any special niches whatsoever in our society that create the potential for private (or for that matter, public) interests to exploit labor at lower than fair market wages, because any such exceptional circumstances--well-intentioned or not at the outset--will inevitably create perverse incentives that encourage the abuse of the criminal justice system for economic gain. We've already seen ample evidence that private interests won't hesitate to abandon their loyalties to their home nations completely in pursuit of profits. We've also seen too many centuries dominated by exploitative labor arrangements to give any weight to the suggestion that unfettered capitalism is simply immune to such exploitative tendencies.
IMO, any prison labor programs that aren't either costly or effectively revenue neutral will tend to have a corrosive effect on the integrity of the entire criminal justice system over time.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:41 PM on December 29, 2010
I don't think we should carve out any special niches whatsoever in our society that create the potential for private (or for that matter, public) interests to exploit labor at lower than fair market wages, because any such exceptional circumstances--well-intentioned or not at the outset--will inevitably create perverse incentives that encourage the abuse of the criminal justice system for economic gain. We've already seen ample evidence that private interests won't hesitate to abandon their loyalties to their home nations completely in pursuit of profits. We've also seen too many centuries dominated by exploitative labor arrangements to give any weight to the suggestion that unfettered capitalism is simply immune to such exploitative tendencies.
IMO, any prison labor programs that aren't either costly or effectively revenue neutral will tend to have a corrosive effect on the integrity of the entire criminal justice system over time.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:41 PM on December 29, 2010
I suppose that you must maintain that criminal behavior is distributed equally and evenly throughout all the categories of society (as it should be).
Please excuse me while I hand over my wallet to the elderly lady who's mugging me very cruelly as I write. I don't want to get pistol whipped.
Oh, come on! Don't wuss out! Which subclasses and cultures are the ones full of criminals?
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:19 PM on December 29, 2010
Please excuse me while I hand over my wallet to the elderly lady who's mugging me very cruelly as I write. I don't want to get pistol whipped.
Oh, come on! Don't wuss out! Which subclasses and cultures are the ones full of criminals?
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:19 PM on December 29, 2010
I hope that clears things up a bit, and I apologize for not explaining that better. I don't apologize at being appalled a thinking person could concoct any defense at all for our current set of totalitarian processes simply by saying we're not under totalitarian control.
Thanks for the clarification. You're right to make the distinction as a logical matter, and I should have been more clear. Regardless, in either case, I don't think the US fits the bill. You assert that "'totalitarian control,' on the other hand, is what our current private, for profit prison system (combined with a set of laws designed to make it as easy as possible to send people to prison) is," but I don't see that to be true. As I alluded to when replying to Avenger, there is harder argumentative work to do that assertion accomplishes when you start talking about totalitarian control and the US. I'm ultimately flummoxed by the assertion, and I have a very hard time taking it seriously, not because I don't care about it (or agree with our current laws and policies), but because it seems so far from actually being the case. Again, the list of our freedoms in the US seems to directly counter the notion that we live in a state that exercises totalitarian control. Your example of Iran is useful in this regard, as the differences in relative freedom are quite striking.
posted by OmieWise at 9:34 AM on December 30, 2010
Thanks for the clarification. You're right to make the distinction as a logical matter, and I should have been more clear. Regardless, in either case, I don't think the US fits the bill. You assert that "'totalitarian control,' on the other hand, is what our current private, for profit prison system (combined with a set of laws designed to make it as easy as possible to send people to prison) is," but I don't see that to be true. As I alluded to when replying to Avenger, there is harder argumentative work to do that assertion accomplishes when you start talking about totalitarian control and the US. I'm ultimately flummoxed by the assertion, and I have a very hard time taking it seriously, not because I don't care about it (or agree with our current laws and policies), but because it seems so far from actually being the case. Again, the list of our freedoms in the US seems to directly counter the notion that we live in a state that exercises totalitarian control. Your example of Iran is useful in this regard, as the differences in relative freedom are quite striking.
posted by OmieWise at 9:34 AM on December 30, 2010
knoyers, I'm still waiting to hear which "subclasses and cultures" are full of criminals.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:34 PM on January 1, 2011
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:34 PM on January 1, 2011
knoyers, which "subclasses and cultures" are full of criminals?
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:28 PM on January 4, 2011
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:28 PM on January 4, 2011
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posted by rbs at 8:36 AM on December 28, 2010