Prison Nation [long] [image heavy]

[loomer]

I think that as a contrast we should consider some of the Scandinavian prisons where basically - and this is in maximum security facilities - you get a small apartment with a television, proper bed, a couch, and all sorts of shit. You even get a door that locks from the inside (though to my recollection they do have a control to allow remote opening in case of trouble. It's more of a 'bad mood, don't fucking bother me' thing.) and the ability to have family in there. The only exceptions are inmates who are violent towards the staff or guests, or who are self harming.

The reasoning behind this was, as I recall, that the focus should be on rehabilitation and that the punishment factor was served best by deprivation of liberty, rather than austere conditions and total loss of control.

[Serafina]

Which reminds me that in some German states, mothers are allowed to take their kids (young ones) with them if they go to prison.
Of course not for live- or very long sentences, but for shorter sentences and where the crime does not indicate that she is unfit to be a mother.

The question is basically: What's the greater harm, separating a young child from his mother, or it being with her in prison for some time.
That's a good question, and there are obviously mothers in prison where the harm of separation to their young child would be greater.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I think that as a contrast we should consider some of the Scandinavian prisons where basically - and this is in maximum security facilities - you get a small apartment with a television, proper bed, a couch, and all sorts of shit.
The reasoning behind this was, as I recall, that the focus should be on rehabilitation and that the punishment factor was served best by deprivation of liberty, rather than austere conditions and total loss of control.

This is a fairly standard cell in a modern Finnish prison:



No couch, though, and it's still just a small room rather than an 'apartment'. However, there are still some old facilities in use, which have much worse cells. In Helsinki Prison (originally built in 1881) some cells lacked their own toilet facilities until recently and the inmates had to use buckets during the night.

[Jeremy]

I've done maintenance work in low income housing twice the size of this prison cell and comparably furnished.

[Simon_Jester]

Wait - they don't even have people who can deal with basic DSH?
Wow...it's not like it's that hard to deal with it, anyone with a bit of social or psychological training can do it.

Someone who is doing something like this has serious mental health issues - essentially, they are denying him health care. And before you cry that he is a filthy prisoner and doesn't deserve treatment - it's better than locking down an entire cell block, don't you think?

Does the US have adequate mental health care facilities for mentally ill prisoners? That requires a slightly different approach than the average mental hospital, I suspect.

And that may be a valid question- do we have the facilities to deal with that kind of thing?

I've done maintenance work in low income housing twice the size of this prison cell and comparably furnished.

Well, yes. So?

On the one hand, you can live in a room that size or not much larger; you wouldn't want to but you can. On the other, why should criminals get really shitty living conditions? Does this actually make them less dangerous to society or anything?

[MKSheppard]

Does the US have adequate mental health care facilities for mentally ill prisoners? That requires a slightly different approach than the average mental hospital, I suspect.

I hate to break it to you....but there really aren't that many mental institutions left in the US following several waves of deinstutionalization by do-gooders beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. So basically the only place left to shove fucked up people now is the correctional system, or shove them onto the streets (ahoy homeless people).

Case in point, in my wing (where people who were healthy enough to be put in a normal situation, but required some special needs); there was this homeless guy who was all fucked up -- he would show up in our wing for a couple months, disappear for a few weeks, then show up again. Turns out he kept getting released, then re-arrested.

The top point was when he used window cleaner as a deoderant on his genitals and under arms. THAT sent him to the medical wing; since lets just say...things got real swollen.

Now obviously, the way to save on costs is to reopen state mental institutions -- they can be run at much less cost than a prison -- since the people we're keeping in them are not as dangerous, so we can cut down on the masses of guards. But that would be bad and evil according to the same people who led the drive to shut down the SMIs.

[K. A. Pital]

On the other, why should criminals get really shitty living conditions? Does this actually make them less dangerous to society or anything?

No, it makes incarceration less expensive for the society relative to the housing of it's ordinary members, creating stimuli that indicate getting into prison is a bad thing. In a normal society with low levels of violence it should work pretty well.

I do not understand why criminals should be supplied on the same level as the average law-abiding worker.

[Alphawolf55]

I don't see how that can be argued when it cost around 23,000 a year to jail someone and it would only cost around 10,000-12,000 per year to take care of the average needs of citizens.

[open_sketchbook]

There's a point where making conditions shitty for the prisoners and keeping them locked down is actually more expensive then providing them a decent standard of living; I think it could be argued the US prison system has long passed that point. Some figures on, say, the number of violent incidents rates per inmate incarcerated on violent crimes in the United States against one in a more progressive country might be useful at this point, though it fails to take into account other factors (like the above mentioned incarceration of the mentally ill or disturbed due to lack of proper treatment options and the prison gangs.)

[Instant Sunrise]

I hate to break it to you....but there really aren't that many mental institutions left in the US following several waves of deinstutionalization by do-gooders beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. So basically the only place left to shove fucked up people now is the correctional system, or shove them onto the streets (ahoy homeless people).

Case in point, in my wing (where people who were healthy enough to be put in a normal situation, but required some special needs); there was this homeless guy who was all fucked up -- he would show up in our wing for a couple months, disappear for a few weeks, then show up again. Turns out he kept getting released, then re-arrested.

The top point was when he used window cleaner as a deoderant on his genitals and under arms. THAT sent him to the medical wing; since lets just say...things got real swollen.

Now obviously, the way to save on costs is to reopen state mental institutions -- they can be run at much less cost than a prison -- since the people we're keeping in them are not as dangerous, so we can cut down on the masses of guards. But that would be bad and evil according to the same people who led the drive to shut down the SMIs.

You're partially right that the mental hospitals were closed and the people being treated there were sent out onto the street and eventually prisons. HOWEVER, it happened in the 1980's under President Ronald Reagan.

@Stas. That argument sounds fine in theory. However, the problem with substandard living conditions like in the OP is that it creates an environment that is entirely unique, and the skills to survive in there are entirely inapplicable to the outside world. Somebody spends several years living in a place like then, and they try to live like they did in prison on the outside, it usually ends up with them back in prison.

The US has a recidivism rate of about 67%. Two thirds of the people who serve their time in prison end up back there. People have difficult adjusting to society after prison, and often are made into social pariah's by the surrounding community. However, when you look at the data prisoners who go for vocational training and other forms of rehabilitative programs have a lower recidivism rate than people who do not. Suggesting that temporarily removing people from society and training them how to properly become a part of it is a much better method of preventing repeat crime than simply locking people up in substandard conditions.

[Serafina]

On the other, why should criminals get really shitty living conditions? Does this actually make them less dangerous to society or anything?

No, it makes incarceration less expensive for the society relative to the housing of it's ordinary members, creating stimuli that indicate getting into prison is a bad thing. In a normal society with low levels of violence it should work pretty well.

I do not understand why criminals should be supplied on the same level as the average law-abiding worker.

Simple question: Looking at this cell, would you want to go to prison:



Keep in mind that you will have next-to no social life, are not allowed to go outside etc.
I live in a room that is not that much bigger right now - but it's not a prison. I can do whatever i want - going to prison is still something that i want to avoid at all cost.


Why do you think fear of prison has to be coupled to horrible conditions in prison?

Either way, that way of thinking seems to be focused on punishing the prisoner.
However, rehabilitation works and is definitely preferable to prisons that produce long-term criminals. Overall, that is better for society, given that it does not actually profit from the punishment - at most, prison appears scarier.

Keep in mind that there are more than just life-sentences. Suppose a 25-year old man gets send to prison for 10 years.
If that prison is a shithole like the ones described in the OP - do you think the odds are good that after he is out of prison, he is capable of getting a job and living a crime-free live?
Good prisons make sure that they do not produce people that are incapable of living a normal life. That not only includes humane standards of living, but also programs to prepare people for a normal life outside of prison.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Does the US have adequate mental health care facilities for mentally ill prisoners? That requires a slightly different approach than the average mental hospital, I suspect.

I hate to break it to you....but there really aren't that many mental institutions left in the US following several waves of deinstutionalization by do-gooders beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. So basically the only place left to shove fucked up people now is the correctional system, or shove them onto the streets (ahoy homeless people).

Oh you mean RONALDUS MAGNUS?

[The Yosemite Bear]

well it was also Nurse Rachet and the movie of "One Flew over the cookoo's nest", hte suggestion being that folks will try to get off by being insane.

[loomer]

On the other, why should criminals get really shitty living conditions? Does this actually make them less dangerous to society or anything?

No, it makes incarceration less expensive for the society relative to the housing of it's ordinary members, creating stimuli that indicate getting into prison is a bad thing. In a normal society with low levels of violence it should work pretty well.

I do not understand why criminals should be supplied on the same level as the average law-abiding worker.

Well, a big part of it ties into preventing recurring crime. The US (and maybe Russia? I'm guessing your prisons aren't too good either.) has a huge recidivism issue, which is partly due to underlying social issues and partly due to trauma and stigma attached to jail time.

The theory goes that if you make prison safer and more comfortable, you'll cut down on the crime inside the prison itself and be better able to focus on rehabilitation - and since getting a GED cuts your chance of returning by half or so, that's not a bad goal to shoot for, since it'd quite possibly save money in the long run (except of course for in the prison industry itself.)

[MKSheppard]

You're partially right that the mental hospitals were closed and the people being treated there were sent out onto the street and eventually prisons. HOWEVER, it happened in the 1980's under President Ronald Reagan.

I find it funny that both you and IP used the same cite.

As usual, you [Instant Sunrise] are full of shit.

But so am I to a partial degree. Turns out that State Mental Hospitals haven't been closed, other than some really high profile cases over the last 30~ years.

What has happened is that their inpatient capacity was cut severely, to the point where we have a huge industrial plant (buildings etc) set up to house several thousand dealing with only a hundred or two inmates.

Data Sources
Better but not well: mental health policy in the United States since 1950 (book)
SMA04-3938 Chapter 18 Table 1
SMA04-3938 Chapter 18 Table 2

Synthesis of Data
Huge Graph Link created by me off the data in the above

We went from 524,878 inpatient beds in all types of mental institutions in 1970 to 338,963 by 1976, and 274,713 by 1980.

It's important to note that Reagan became president on January 20, 1981; so that reduction in hospital beds had occured before he had had any chance to make a difference.

Also that article you linked, when it goes into the "Reagan wanted to push off the costs of dealing with the mentally ill to the states as part of federalism"; completely missed the point -- that the majority of mentally ill patients were already being dealt with by the states! -- just look at the number of inpatient beds in state and county institutions!

It's also important to look at the altering effects of Medicaid on the system from the sixties onwards.

Under medicaid, states have to pay nearly 100% the costs of treating an old person for dementia in a State Hospital for the Insane, but if you shove them into a nursing home, you can then get Federal matching funds through medicaid for their treatment.

Another thing to note is the article you posted also talks briefly about the 1960s "reforms" which led us to this point.

1963 Community Mental Health Act

This pile of crap was the last major policy action taken by JFK before he got his head blown off in Dallas; and it provided a large amount of the impetus towards de-institutionalization in the 1970s.

Is there nothing that that retrograde moron didn't fuck up, from national defense, nuclear strategy, space, etc?

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

That's a prison cell? It looks like a dorm room, I've lived in shittier conditions as a free man.

I'd have never been homeless in Finland, that's for sure. Fuck sleeping under a porch, just deck a nun or something and get a nice cozy room, with a tv and everything.

[Zixinus]

I'd have never been homeless in Finland, that's for sure. Fuck sleeping under a porch, just deck a nun or something and get a nice cozy room, with a tv and everything.

Don't forget that you may be stuck with several possibly violent people, never see freedom, watch nothing but close-circuit channels and several other aspects of your life being regulated under the treat of violence.

[Coyote]

The USA has a lot of other problems to contemplate before prison.

For one, we have few real social safety nets; so to some people who are down and out, a relatively cosy "dorm room" style prison cell would actually be a damn good option.

For another, the US's hard-core strain of Puritanism that has been with us since the country's founding means that there are a lot of things criminalized in our country that may get a pass in European counties. Having possession of some marijuana, for example, was punishable by a certain mandatory minimum sentence, IIRC. I don't know if that is still the case.

Through all this, in efforts to "cut costs", any attempts to rehabilitate have pretty much been cut to bare minimums, and US prisons are more for warehousing repeat offenders than for "correcting" their behavior.

Prison reform is needed, but there are many, many, many other things that also need to be done outside of prison to make prison reform realistic. Things that --for the most part-- won't happen because we have an almost hysterical anti-government feeling in our society that borders on the pathological.

[Netko]

That's a prison cell? It looks like a dorm room, I've lived in shittier conditions as a free man.

I'd have never been homeless in Finland, that's for sure. Fuck sleeping under a porch, just deck a nun or something and get a nice cozy room, with a tv and everything.

Its pretty much a requirement under the rules set up by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (C/P of the ridiculously long name, of course). It requires that each prisoner has at least 4m^2 of cell space, at least 8 hours of "purposeful" activity outside of cells under normal circumstances (including at least an hour of exercise outside), medical supervision after use of force and during solitary confinement (which must be as short as practicable) as well as requiring various other quality of life issues (access to medical assistance, clean air, etc.). Judicial oversight is maintained by both local courts and, as the final instance (through the European Convention on Human Rights), the European Court of Human Rights which regularly deals with detention issues. As such, the prisons-as-dorms is fast becoming a standard in Europe (older facilities often being a generator of fines by the ECHR for inadequate conditions).

That this much more humane approach works much better then the warehousing punishment system present in the US is obvious from all relevant statistics.

Luckily, since there exists a much better safety net in most of Europe, its unlikely that you would have to do a criminal act to get into shelter.

[Terralthra]

So, I guess Shep isn't planning on responding to people who brought up valid critiques of his arguments and evidence earlier in the thread?

[Simon_Jester]

So, I guess Shep isn't planning on responding to people who brought up valid critiques of his arguments and evidence earlier in the thread?

Eh. He posted at 5 a.m. today, and at 5 a.m. yesterday; that may be a pattern for all I know. I'm betting he'll come back, though I don't know what he'll respond to.

On the other, why should criminals get really shitty living conditions? Does this actually make them less dangerous to society or anything?

No, it makes incarceration less expensive for the society relative to the housing of it's ordinary members, creating stimuli that indicate getting into prison is a bad thing. In a normal society with low levels of violence it should work pretty well.

I do not understand why criminals should be supplied on the same level as the average law-abiding worker.

Who said anything about the average? That room is below the average for a law-abiding worker in the US, and I can only assume that it's below the average for a law-abiding worker in Scandinavia too. I suspect it's well below the kind of room that a welfare recipient in Scandinavia could have if they're careful about their living expenses, though I can't prove that.

Also, Stas, I could equally well turn your argument around. "In a normal society with low levels of violence," the cost of housing the total number of prisoners is small regardless of whether we give them bare concrete cells with a metal cot and an open toilet, or whether we give them a cramped but reasonably well furnished dormitory room. The savings on per-prisoner costs only matter if you're incarcerating a huge number of people.

Likewise, the argument that we want to deter potential criminals by making prison conditions miserable doesn't look too good to me. Just how miserable do we have to make a prison to make it a worse choice than being a homeless person? Do the negative effects on the prison population (being more traumatized and isolated from mainstream culture, and thus more likely to commit crimes when they get out) justify the deterrent effect?

[MKSheppard]

So, I guess Shep isn't planning on responding to people who brought up valid critiques of his arguments and evidence earlier in the thread?

I got other things to do; like clean up scans of some rare World War II US Naval Squadron insignia I just spent the day scanning in at the Washington Navy Yard. I'll get around to the other points when I damn well get around to them. In the meantime, fuck off.

[Terralthra]

Funny how you have time to reply in detail to people who responded later in the thread, but not to those who have valid criticisms of your "evidence" earlier in the thread.

[Teebs]

Its pretty much a requirement under the rules set up by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (C/P of the ridiculously long name, of course). It requires that each prisoner has at least 4m^2 of cell space, at least 8 hours of "purposeful" activity outside of cells under normal circumstances (including at least an hour of exercise outside), medical supervision after use of force and during solitary confinement (which must be as short as practicable) as well as requiring various other quality of life issues (access to medical assistance, clean air, etc.). Judicial oversight is maintained by both local courts and, as the final instance (through the European Convention on Human Rights), the European Court of Human Rights which regularly deals with detention issues. As such, the prisons-as-dorms is fast becoming a standard in Europe (older facilities often being a generator of fines by the ECHR for inadequate conditions).

Do you know whether Britain has a derogation from that or something similar? I'm pretty sure our prisons are not that 'pleasant'.

[Flagg]

So, I guess Shep isn't planning on responding to people who brought up valid critiques of his arguments and evidence earlier in the thread?

I got other things to do; like clean up scans of some rare World War II US Naval Squadron insignia I just spent the day scanning in at the Washington Navy Yard. I'll get around to the other points when I damn well get around to them. In the meantime, fuck off.

So you're running away like a little bitch with a skinned knee but are too much of a pussaholic to concede the point?