A Love Story That Upended the Texas Prison System

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/love-story-upended-texas-prison-system/

by rmason • 8 years ago

136 37 8 years ago

ezoe• 8 years ago

I've read the whole article. It was like good written dystopian novel but non-fiction which I can't believe.

noobermin2• 8 years ago

What a fantastic and riveting read. Of course, as with real life, the ending was upsetting (heroin really does kill and to this day, dealing with addiction to heroin is something we as a society still haven't figured out). I think one thing this highlights is something I've learned from reading and talking to activists who work with prisons. There really is a "different world" in prisons. Even with all the motion we've made since the 60s and 70s, prison remains a strange institution that has some moral abstract basis and purpose for existing in society for the rehabilitation and punishment of those who commit crime, but generates its own logic, and its own hierarchy, and perpetuates itself. Just like in Beto and McAdam's day, today prisons try to help fund themselves using prison labor, which has come up here before. United States prisons and the justice system as a whole still needs dire reform.

owenversteeg3• 8 years ago

Interesting how he still seems to enjoy a clean reputation on the Internet. His Wikipedia page is spotless and there seem to be plenty of places extolling him all over.

I'm pretty surprised, given that he died in 1991 and I figure he'd be universally seen as a terrible person. But he's noted in several places as a master of PR, so perhaps that continued after his death, despite causing the death and enslavement of countless people and losing a Supreme Court case related to his literal enslavement of prisoners.

I wonder if he's got fans monitoring things for him after his death? Some form of post-mortem reputation service? In any case, I'm disgusted that someone who literally enslaved more than 16,000 people for over a decade seems to have gotten away with it scot-free. I figured that in the age of the Internet, someone with a horrific legacy like this would never get away with it, but indeed nearly everything about him I can find is positive, and he's even got prisons named after him operating today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Beto

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbenm

gwern2• 8 years ago

Looking at the WP article history, the current mention of his fight with her is in there from the beginning. It's not that anyone has been adding or removing it, just no one cares enough to add more on it...

owenversteeg3• 8 years ago

Of course the Supreme Court case is there, it would be very weird if it wasn't. But it's phrased in a very specific and neutral way, as if he was fighting an odd bit of tax legislation, when the reality was he used prisoners as literal cotton picking slaves, personally oversaw brutal violence, and deprived 16,000 prisoners of due process.

I mean, come on! He literally used violence to force prisoners to lie under oath to attack an attorney! He operated a system where prisoners were forced to mutilate themselves in order to survive.

From the article:

One former prisoner named Clyde Sewell told a graphic account of an incident in which three inmates, all supposedly shot by McAdams while they were trying to escape, were laid out as examples, alive but bleeding profusely, at the entrance to the dining hall. “We had to walk through the blood to get to the dining room,” Sewell testified.

Can you imagine a hell like this? Can you imagine someone who ruled over it for over a decade and knew about every little detail and was responsible for all this horrific carnage? It's absolutely insane. These things are crimes against humanity.

Being responsible for this shouldn't mean some mild mention of "Beto was the lead defendant in 405 U.S. 319 in which the court upheld a Free Exercise claim on the basis of the allegations..." in the last paragraph of an otherwise fairly uninteresting Wikipedia article. It should mean that the person is permanently condemned for the monster they were.

That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me.

mattigames2• 8 years ago

Happens all over Wikipedia, for example Aleister Crowley (same one the Ozzy Osbourne song "Mr Crowley" is based on) is described as an scholar and where "occultism" is hold in high regard never mentioning its fictional nature and never suggesting or implying its just another money-making scam scheme; heck the Wikipedia page for Crowley or for occultism dosn't mention the word "scam" even once despite being one of the most used by its critiques.

chris_wot3• 8 years ago

Well, it's really not on. I've just added a comment on the talk page of the George Beto article, perhaps others should do the same?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:George_Beto#Scrubbed_arti...?

daodedickinson• 8 years ago

It's a power scheme, NOT a mere standard money scheme.

Aloha• 8 years ago

This is a long read, but well worth it.

theparanoid• 8 years ago

Women love bad boys e.g. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2179107/James-Holme...

noobermin2• 8 years ago

James Holmes should not be compared to Fred Cruz in this story. Even the crimes Cruz committed are nowhere near as grave as Holmes' and even so, the connection between the Frances Jalet and Fred Cruz has no comparison to the sort of murderer fascination you link to here.

chris_wot3• 8 years ago

Not to mention the stereotyping and condescension in the parent poster's comment is extraordinary.

kposehn• 8 years ago

Wow, what a story. This is quite amazing - I could not stop reading it.

mpnagle• 8 years ago

so so so heartwarming oh my god

nyolfen3• 8 years ago

this story was a lot of things but that's not a term i would have chosen personally

nyolfen3• 8 years ago

as usual, texas monthly knocks it out of the park.

it's darkly ironic that beto's prediction of inmate-run prisons would come to pass, though for many reasons beyond just administration reform.

tqi2• 8 years ago

Can you elaborate?

nyolfen3• 8 years ago

during the 70s and 80s, there was a huge influx in american prisoners due to the war on drugs and more severe sentencing that followed the surge in crime beginning the 60s. the old prison culture was organized around severe methods like the one described in this essay, and small groups of prisoners who tended to keep each other in line following a 'convict code' of behavioral norms and a system of seniority. the surge in population, especially of men who were younger than the old timers who previously made up the bulk of the long-term population (sentences tended to be much shorter than they are now), threw the situation into chaos. reciprocal violence, petty predation and prison riots suddenly exploded.

the old system broke down because the guards and older inmates could no longer effectively keep the new prisoners in line. the power vacuum was eventually filled by the race-based gangs we know today, which stepped in to effectively provide governance where the state was no longer able to. the massive availability of drugs provided them with a business model and incentive for creating stability among the other prisoners, enforced by ruthless violence where necessary.

it's still this way today in american prisons. the state of course formally controls the facility, but the gangs exert extraordinary power underneath the surface, over the relations and arrangements that aren't legible to the administration. i'm not making any normative claims about which arrangement was better, but it's a pretty interesting story. i'm giving a very brief summary of what i read in this book:

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=A6D69CBF4ADEEA046A4...

nitwit005• 8 years ago

Excellent article. I have to admit not caring much about the love story angle, but the legal struggle and general perseverance of the people involved was quite interesting.

mproud• 8 years ago

Amazing. Has this been turned into a movie yet?

ex3xu• 8 years ago

Looks like there was an archival footage documentary that aired on PBS back in 2008: http://writwritermovie.com/trailer.html

But my reaction is the same as yours -- maybe it was just the spectacular pacing by the article writer, but this story feels like it would make a great and timely Netflix original. Like, the Green Mile meets I Love You Philip Morris.

chris_wot3• 8 years ago

The Wikipedia article for Beto mentions virtually nothing of any of this. What is going on?

paulgrant999• 8 years ago

the correct way to force prison systems to follow the law and their regulations, is called a "consent decree". it forces them under penalty of law, to actually live up to specific terms in a settlement.

unfortunately; they are now banned ... "just for prisons". the courts will not enforce, or create any new consent decrees... "because it denies agencies their discretion".

the same discretion, that leads to rampant abuses in prisons and "detention" camps.

tcj_phx• 8 years ago

This is a fascinating article. I'd run across the term jailhouse lawyer in my readings about habeas corpus.

The law and courts have long recognized that some people aren't capable of writing their own petitions for relief, and need the help of a 'next friend' because no attorney is available to help the disadvantaged make their case. Just now I searched for "Jailhouse lawyer habeas", and found that Columbia Law School has a manual [0] to help prisoners assert their rights. Habeas corpus is one way of presenting a case to the court that says your rights were violated (the manual has a comprehensive chapter on this type of filing).

[0] A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, 11th Ed. - http://jlm.law.columbia.edu/viewprevioused/

This manual would have been helpful, but it didn't show up in my searches 3 years ago... I just used Wikipedia, a template from a Florida law firm, and the legislature's listing of the state's statutes to figure out how to petition the court. The judge ruled that the hospital's authority to hold my friend against her will had expired, and that she was to be released. I made the little mistake of thinking the hospital would care about the judge's order, after their attorney blew off the hearing...

I think most state prisons have libraries for prisoners to use. Most county jails are terrible places with no meaningful access to libraries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_library#United_States

gambiting• 8 years ago

It's interesting that in hindsight, those were the times when US was most staunchly opposed to communism - yet everything written in this article makes me think of the way USSR treated its citizens. Yes, there were laws that protected you, yes you could appeal to courts and at least in theory your rights were always protected. In practice, it was the same as the situation in Texas - people put in charge of prisons or judges answered to absolutely no one and the laws were completely arbitrary and could be dismissed without any reason. The targeting of lawyers and demanding they be fired from institutions that employed them looked exactly the same under communist rule. In any case, what is described here seems more like a torture system, not a prison system - no wonder it had such poor rehabilitation rates.

ddingus• 8 years ago

Wow. I was hooked right away.

Worth reading.

Complaint written on TP. Hard to imagine that hell.

quadcore• 8 years ago

The damage to Beto’s reputation, however, was the true cost.

If I understand correctly, and if the source is correct and not significantly misleading, he's a murderer, a human trafficker and an influence peddler. This guy should have gotten death sentence.

A Love Story That Upended the Texas Prison System

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