Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer

by moxie • 13 years ago

332 246 13 years ago

gruseom3• 13 years ago

Solitary confinement is now so obviously a form of torture that it's surprising this is still controversial. Future generations will surely look on it the way we look on past barbarities.

woof• 13 years ago

Like waterboarding?

gruseom3• 13 years ago

Like waterboarding, but also not.

Waterboarding was always obviously torture. No fair-minded person would ever have said that it wasn't; the suggestion is a joke. Thus the only people who had reason to say otherwise were ideologues, power-wielders, and bootlicking journalists.

Solitary confinement isn't like that, and it has taken time for fair-minded people to see it in this light. The fact that the science on it is so unequivocal is a big part of this coming into (some) people's awareness, as well. That's why I said "now so obviously a form of torture". It wasn't obvious before.

sliverstorm3• 13 years ago

What sets it apart from other forms of punishment? The definition of "torture" seems somewhat flexible.

david927• 13 years ago

It's certainly considered psychological torture when lasting more than a few weeks. There are a lot of good studies to back this up.

Here's a great article to get your started: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...

alan_cx5• 13 years ago

Only to a torturer seeking self justification. Which makes them guilty because to seek self justification one must know one is doing some thing wrong.

ZirconCode• 13 years ago

The problem is that psychological forms of harm are not treated with as much respect as physical forms. There are no pictures of it, you cannot see it. It is the same reason why people struggle to see a psychiatrist but not a doctor.

Lack of sleep is also deployed in some countries ie. the guards won't let you sleep.

nraynaud3• 13 years ago

The real problem is that the US is part of no international treaty on human rights. Turkey and France have a way more fair process now thanks to the European Court of Human Rights. They have also put hard limits on terrorist law etc. It's slow but it's a real adult supervising the local politicians with true values.

InclinedPlane7• 13 years ago

Even physical forms of harm are downplayed if they have lower visibility than traditional forms of brutality and torture.

This is a widespread trend especially in law enforcement and justice and it extends beyond prisons.

Consider waterboarding. It's a hugely traumatic experience, and undoubtedly a form of torture, but because it doesn't leave bruises or break bones it is tolerated and accepted.

Consider tasers and pepper spray (OC). Again, they cause pain or muscle spasms, but they don't break bones or cause bleeding or bruising so their use is tolerated at thresholds far below what would be allowed to bring about the use of physical force, even for use in restraining someone. Being pepper sprayed in the face and eyes is every bit as traumatic and physically violent as being slapped or punched, yet pepper spray is frequently used by the police in situations where physical force would be considered police brutality. The same goes for tasers.

guard-of-terra5• 13 years ago

I don't see how, given that hell is other people, and other people in prison are quite infernal.

If I ever get in prison (which I hope to avoid but nobody can be guaranteed) I hope to be in solitary.

Mordor• 13 years ago

Perhaps the real hell is being left alone.

yardie4• 13 years ago

I think you fail to grasp what solitary actually means in the prison tense. It's not a few hours of sitting on the floor meditating. It is 1 hour of sunlight, you don't go anywhere, there are no computers.

I used to think like that when I was younger, "going to prison getting raped?! I'll take solitary." Then someone that was released spoke at our college about what solitary really meant. I'll take my chances with the rapists.

honzzz5• 13 years ago

> Solitary confinement is now so obviously a form of torture that it's surprising this is still controversial. Future generations will surely look on it the way we look on past barbarities.

There might be some ethnocentrism here... I might be wrong but it seems to me like you make an assumption about this generation that is only valid in US. I live in Europe and when I think about people I know, there is nothing controversial about it and we don't have to wait for future generations - we consider it barbaric now and as far as I know it's illegal - I mean people can be put to cells alone but they can read books, they have right to go for a walk with other prisoners for an hour and stuff like that - when I talk about solitary confinement I mean conditions described in that article.

I am not trying to be judgemental here - I just think that for some Americans it might be interesting to consider that in some countries things like solitary confinement or death penalty can be looked at the same or similar way that you Americans probably look at punishments like stoning to death or cutting off hands.

dmix• 13 years ago

After a bit of research, I believe this also may be an ethnocentric view, it seems solitary confinement is only banned in Europe and still used in many other places (including the very liberal Canada).

Even the UN has only made it torture if it's some <18yrs old.

But that being said, I'm all for ending it. Or ending most imprisonment and moving towards restorative justice.

Myrmornis2• 13 years ago

Too depressing to read in its entirety. One straightforward way of evaluating whether there might be anything wrong with practices in American prisons is to compare with other countries -- do other nations with stable democracies use solitary confinement in a similar way?

peteretep2• 13 years ago

> do other nations with stable democracies use solitary confinement in a similar way

Other countries with stable democracies have universal health care, don't incarcerate almost 1% of the population, have never landed people on the moon, don't spend 5% of their GDP on the military, aren't the home of Apple, Microsoft, and IBM, and so on. America has always been (and will probably always be) an edge case.

radicalcut• 13 years ago

> and will probably always be

I seriously doubt that. What goes around comes around.

Myrmornis2• 13 years ago

Actually, all nations think they are special. It's not an excuse for backwardness.

nraynaud3• 13 years ago

You know, being an edge case does not prevent from respecting the rules, and human rights rules are made so that "special cases" don't end up like the nazi Germany special case. (yeah, sorry, that's historically when and why it was decided to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

honzzz5• 13 years ago

I am not sure I fully understand what you mean but it seems to imply that US is an outlier in both 'good' and 'bad'.

What seems to be problematic to me is that the bad ones seem to be on different abstraction level than the good ones. Other countries might not have Apple, Microsoft, and IBM but they certainly have huge globally successful companies. They never landed on the moon but they have explored space and achieved important things related to science or technology.

Which could negate the idea of being an outlier in bad things is somehow related to being an outlier in good things... if anyone would be making such claim.

kybernetyk3• 13 years ago

A different view: In Germany you are usually locked up for 23 hours/day in your (1 or 2 man) cell when you're serving a prison sentence.

There are some exceptions to this like being able to visit another prisoner for one hour every day or use the kitchen for one hour every few days, etc. (Or if you are really lucky you can get a job inside the prison.)

I'd say being imprisoned is inhumane in every country on this planet. I hope future generations come up with alternatives to this medieval practice.

cmdkeen• 13 years ago

Ironically medieval prisons were only for those awaiting trial - prison wasn't seen as a punishment only an administrative means of keeping hold of people.

Given what they'd do if you were found guilty...

lovskogen• 13 years ago

I think imprisonment here in Norway actually is quite humane.

peterjancelis• 13 years ago

Prisoners in Monaco (there are only a few and mostly white collar criminals) receive a gourmet diet, medical checkups and daily exercise routine. It's a pet project of the local prison director to make it the best in the world - there is a documentary about it but can't find it back right now.

Confusion4• 13 years ago

I don't know where you get your information from, but the source is unreliable and you're now spreading disinformation.

simonbarker873• 13 years ago

A very sad read and the comments are even worse. This sort of thing so clearly crosses the line in to inhumanity. I appreciate that some/many of these inmates have committed awful crimes but it seems that this particular system offers no opportunity for rehabilitation and is focussed solely on punishment.

I forget where I read it but I believe that there is a correlation between the severity of the punishment and it's peak effect. If it is normal imprisonment then the effect of the punishment plateaus at 18 months (ish) and if it is solitary then the (albeit greater) effect of the punishment plateaus at 30 days, after that it is achieving no extra punishment and you may as well go back in to a rehabilitation mode. I'm not saying that prison sentences should be no longer than 18 months but after this point the focus should be on (eventual) reintegration into society with new skills and education to keep them from reoffending.

philwelch2• 13 years ago

It's not about rehabilitation or punishment. It's far more cynical than that. It's simply a matter of separating people from the population. Prisoners are separated from the free population; especially dangerous prisoners are separated even from the prison population.

ippisl• 13 years ago

It's pretty easy to physically separate people but still let them communicate with others. It looks like revenge.

Houshalter4• 13 years ago

The main purpose of prison is to act as a disincentive. A lot of people don't commit crimes in the first place because they are scared of going to prison.

leoh• 13 years ago

True. But you can separate people in a manner that isn't cruel. In fact, if the American system wasn't so cruel, there would probably be a better chance that inmates would recover from antisocial behavior. Many of these prisoners have seen cruelty and haven't been raised properly from the day they were born. They don't need more cruelty. They need care. Some of them haven't had even decent health a single day I their lives—nutritionally, emotionally, etc. And it's not their fault. It's largely our society's fault.

alan_cx5• 13 years ago

Yet most countries, if not all democracies, do it far more humanely than the US does.

Why?

Why is the self appointed leader of the free world so inhumane?

ctdonath• 13 years ago

It's also about preventing incarceration problems which have happened before. Like stupid warning signs proliferating on common products (I recall counting 18 warning signs on a bus door), solitary confinement cells are the result of solving problems with highly motivated, creative, and dangerous people. The result is something inhumane - because too often the occupant is.

psionski2• 13 years ago

This is not punishment, this is revenge. Punishment is a corrective action, this breaks them even more. By the way, this is extremely dangerous - to paraphrase Nietzsche: in solitude, whatever you bring with you grows. Do we really want whatever they're bringing to grow?

simonbarker873• 13 years ago

Good point, I wasn't thinking of the revenge aspect. I guess the system in this case feels like it's purpose is to exact revenge on behalf of society

InclinedPlane7• 13 years ago

Precisely so, the criminal justice system is incredibly vengeful. The widespread toleration of sexual assault against prisoners is perhaps the easiest proof of that.

w_t_payne3• 13 years ago

I agree. A cruel and vengeful society breeds yet more cruelty and vengeance: The evident evil of the machinations of the state becomes a cancer that twists and sickens our collective conscience.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

That explains why the death sentence is on the books ... these are the lucky ones.

That is cruel but sadly not unusual punishment.

Tomis022• 13 years ago

"Born in the U.S.A." is ringing in my mind at this point.

BurritoAlPastor• 13 years ago

I believe the Springsteen song you're thinking of is "Johnny 99":

"Your honor, I do believe I'd be better off dead / So if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head / Sit back in that chair and think it over, Judge, one more time / And have 'em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line."

denzil_correa• 13 years ago

The "Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations" of the State of California tweeted [0] a related article [1] titled Why the Producer of "The Hangover Part III" Spends So Much Time in Prison.

[0] https://twitter.com/CACorrections/status/340220581972692992

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/hangover-part-iii-e...

Tomis022• 13 years ago

I guess a lot of people have seen Oz or documentaries about prison life in USA. I think the legitimate question would be - is solitary punishment not preferable to the life in general population?

alan_cx5• 13 years ago

Get past the comedy, listen to the facts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPZed8af9RI

The facts stated have never been refuted.

Be ashamed. Either Americans are the most criminal in the world, or the US justice system has a real problem.

I mean, worse than Iran? Worse than China? South Africa? Are Americans really that bad?

Perhaps now we know a certain hacker preferred death. I know I would. As a British citizen, I would genuinely rather kill my self than end up in the US justice system. Do not doubt that. And I know my government will not protect me from American "justice" either.

Im sorry, but this makes me very, very angry. If a country cant get justice right and fair, then Im sorry, I believe it has no right being a country, let alone being a country that thinks it has the right to interfere on the world state, and have the sheer arrogance to pontificate on others.

RyanMcGreal2• 13 years ago

"A legal system based on baseball just seems bizarre."

So simple and so horribly true. Criminal justice politics in America is utterly overrun with the crudest and most cynical pandering to simple fear, revulsion and vindictiveness.

jrokisky2• 13 years ago

There are many problems with the US Justice System, but those standards are impossible for any country to meet.

eru2• 13 years ago

Norway and Sweden don't seem too bad.

kasra• 13 years ago

"I mean, worse than Iran? Worse than China? South Africa? Are Americans really that bad?"

You should be ashamed of your prejudices (obviously I'm not commenting on US justice system here).

honzzz5• 13 years ago

What prejudice are you talking about? Countries can be measured and compared through many different ways. One factor that can be measured is prison population rate. Compared to other countries Iran, China and South Africa are really bad at this, US is even worse. Measurable fact, not prejudice.

infinitone2• 13 years ago

> I mean, worse than Iran? Worse than China? South Africa? Are Americans really that bad?

Your brainwashed intellect (not sure if its even intellect) has led you to believe that the US is a bastion of freedom when its quite the contrary. Stop watching Fox News for crying out loud.

InclinedPlane7• 13 years ago

People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our prison system is probably near the top of that list, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the sheer size of the prison population these days due to the war on drugs.

Even more significant is the widespread societal belief that prison experience should be brutal punishment and torture, with no concern for justice, fairness, or humaneness. Prison rape is a punch-line, it's not even on the radar as a political issue.

The public acknowledges, accepts, and approves of prison experiences as not merely pragmatic methods of keeping some folks separate from public society, and especially not as rehabilitory, but as retributive, vengeful, and arbitrary. These are the basest and most despicable sentiments when it comes to issues of criminal justice, but they rule the day in the 21st century as much as they ever did in the middle ages or even in the stone age.

This is easily one of the most significant issues of our time, as significant and important as the Cold War in the 20th century or the struggle over the abolition of slavery in the 19th.

jabbernotty• 13 years ago

Some of what you mentioned here, if not most, seems specific to the USA, from my western European point of view. Do you know of any explanation for that?

InclinedPlane7• 13 years ago

Visibility for one. The French prison system is horrible, the British prison system is also pretty bad. Beyond that I'd have to blame the war on drugs and general societal attitudes. The general attitude seems to be that once you have been adjudicated a "bad guy" and are put into the prison population anything that happens to you is fair game.

scrapcode• 13 years ago

I'm kind of glad that this is your perception. This should be everyone's perception of prison. You should have an extreme necessity to keep your ass out of prison. You should be scared absolutely shitless of prison, so much that you play exactly by the rules to keep yourself from ever going there. Our prison system does a pretty good job at driving this perception home.

Prison is not a rehabilitation center. If it were just a means of keeping folks separate from society, I know plenty of unmotivated individuals that would love to sit around with a bunch of other lazy-asses and be fed 3 meals a day. For free. Don't you?

Prison has to be scary. It has to strike one as the number one place that you do not want to go. It's the other ultimate consequence, along side of death. I can't imagine this world if it wasn't.

cynicalkane• 13 years ago

I don't think anyone thinks the deterrent effect of prisons are ineffective. However, the at-risk populations who most often end up in prison are bad at weighing these deterrents, especially before they go there. Another factor is the quality of deterrence: the point is not to arbitrarily and randomly ruin peoples' lives. You want a high ratio of crime reduction to damage. A good penal system does this and bad penal system works the other way around. A lot of science suggests that the life-ruining factor is a significant counter-effect to the original goal of reducing crime and increasing quality of life in our democracy.

That's me being polite. If I was less polite, I would say how much I hate your ignorant, lazy self-righteousness and how this despicable and inhuman attitude is a major factor in how our system destroys people with little to no scientific justification.

InclinedPlane7• 13 years ago

A very Hobbesian view of society, I see. Not one I subscribe to, nor one that, from my experience, is reflective of reality.

Prison experiences in the US are pretty horrific in the norm, and yet there are more people in prison than ever (as a percentage of the population), and many of them are there due to fairly minor or victimless crimes. There is some sort of dissonance there, and I think it comes down to the fact that fear is not the sole or even necessarily the primary motivator for behavior on the boundary of the law.

Also, there are countries where prison is not scary, where the criminal justice system raises rehabilitation above other concerns, and such places (such as Canada and the scandinavian countries) are not the lawless hellholes your theory of human behavior would have them be.

ryanac• 13 years ago

This would be fine if many prisons were not privately owned entities and if most inmates were not overly sentenced for minor drug charges.

We also have a growing incarceration rate (U.S), which shows that prison does a pretty poor job of making people "scared absolutely shitless of prison so much that they play exactly by the rules" and don't forget, sometimes the rules are pretty ridiculous.

Also "...individuals that would love to sit around with a bunch of other lazy-asses and be fed 3 meals a day. For free." is already the reality of the situation in many cases.

It's not a choice between the scariest most brutal situation you can imagine or no prison at all. There are other options to make a better system. And in general, a society shouldn't have to be scared into "playing by the rules".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat... Also read prison privatization.

king_jester2• 13 years ago

> Prison has to be scary. It has to strike one as the number one place that you do not want to go. It's the other ultimate consequence, along side of death. I can't imagine this world if it wasn't.

Prison is not a deterrent. If it was, you would see prison population decline over time. Instead, it has grown quite significantly and in a racist way (black men are massively overrepresented and sent to prison).

munin• 13 years ago

if this view was correct, then surely countries with even harsher penalties for breaking the law, such as even worse prisons or death, would have less crime than the united states, right?

yardie4• 13 years ago

> You should be scared absolutely shitless of prison

Or from another point of view what makes prison less scary than the outside world? Everyone knows prison is unpleasant yet that doesn't appear to stop the increasing numbers each year.

> Our prison system does a pretty good job at driving this perception home.

If this was a performance review they should be fired.

columbo• 13 years ago

> Prison has to be scary.

No it doesn't. The problem with chest-thumping-ego-driven-bullshit like this is that it is very fact-adverse and causes more problems than it solves. Your type of prison is nothing more than a gang training camp.

Start here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=rehabilitation+vs+punishment...

And don't stop until about page 200ish.

Confusion4• 13 years ago

Western European prisons, Australian prisons, Japanese prisons and prisons in other civilized, well-developed, rich countries are much nicer to stay in than American prisons and still our criminal problem isn't nearly as large as yours.

I'm not the least bit afraid of going to prison here. Still I don't break the law, for reasons better than fear of prison.

sophacles• 13 years ago

Obviously the thought of prison doesn't in fact stop people from breaking the rules. The prison population is in fact growing. Similarly many places have prisons that are very unlike the US prisons, and yet they have lower crime rates. So the evidence against the core of your argument is pretty strong.

At some point, when the punishment for minor offenses is extreme, the difference between minor offenses and major offenses gets very blurry. Extreme example: if stealing carries a punishment that is effectively the same as murder, the only logical thing to do when stealing is murder any potential witnesses. The US isn't quite this bad.

However, when the actual punishment for minor crime includes the concept of a felony record, it becomes much harder to differentiate between minor possession of drugs and say grand theft. They both carry felony record issues. That means the being convicted of either results in prison, exclusion from most of the work force for life, the inability to participate in a lot of "better yourself" programs (and really, people who messed up earlier in life should be encouraged to be in these!) and a host of other life long punishments. I understand this is a bit tangential to your point, but bear with me...

Now, when you look at the way the US justice system actually does things, you get this perception of arbitrariness or even randomness. The threat of prison is there, but there is no intuitive logic to how it works. Carrying some drugs will get you 20 guaranteed years in prison, while murdering someone will get you maybe 5, maybe 100. Raping someone will get you less time than "hacking". Racial discrepancies exist too in how prison is applied, as do wealth issues. There is parole/early release, and differences between judges and prosecutorial discretion further complicating the punishment question.

Whether or not there is good, deep, and sound defensible logic in how this works, the appearance is that there is no way of determining how you'll punished for what you're doing. As such, once the decision has been made to do something relatively harmless, the deterrent effect of prison no longer applies. The rational choice is "punishment, when it happens, could be anything", therefore the game is no about deciding actions based on punishment, it is deciding actions based on getting caught. Any action, no matter how severe, that lessens your chance of getting caught is better than a less severe action which doesn't modify or worsens the chance of conviction.

Basically my point is that when you want to use prisons to deter bad behavior, you better make it obvious that their application is something that can be reasoned about. As it stands, prison can't be included in any reasoning about consequences, except in an overly simplistic binary matter that has no effect at curbing any behavior once it is on the table.

khafra• 13 years ago

> Prison has to be scary. It has to strike one as the number one place that you do not want to go. It's the other ultimate consequence, along side of death. I can't imagine this world if it wasn't.

If your theory were accurate, countries like Norway--with its extremely humane prisons (http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083,00.htm...) would be crime-ridden hellholes.

But Norway's homicide rate is 1/10th that of the United States, and other crime statistics are similarly low: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

So it seems you are, in fact, wrong; and inflicting horrifying suffering indiscriminately on anyone who goes to prison does more harm than good.

mcherm• 13 years ago

> I know plenty of unmotivated individuals that would love to sit around with a bunch of other lazy-asses and be fed 3 meals a day. For free. Don't you?

No. I know absolutely no people who would choose to be put in prison simply because they would be fed. I cannot imagine a wealthy society (and make no bones about it, our society is wealthy enough that people can be fed) which would permit that.

> It has to strike one as the number one place that you do not want to go. I can't imagine this world if it wasn't.

Try visiting Sweden some day. Or quite a few other places in the world -- almost any country other than the US, which is quite competitive for the world's worst prison system.

cabalamat• 13 years ago

Yet prison isn't as scary in Norway and they have lower crimes rates than the USA. So your argument is wrong.

mikeash2• 13 years ago

Why bother with prison at all, if that's your attitude? Just execute all lawbreakers and be done with it.

The answer is that not all crimes are created equal, and neither should all punishments. You can go to prison for very mundane stuff.

skrebbel3• 13 years ago

Upvoted to counter the ridiculous downvote legion. I fully disagree with your point, but it's a fair point worthy of HN, and I applaud you for uttering what is clearly a minority opinion here.

yoster• 13 years ago

How about all the innocent people who end up in prison? A small fraction of those people are exonerated. Imagine if you were sent to prison because of the color of your skin, you were falsely accused, or just because of plain corruption? Scrapcode, you better pray that you don't ever end up like one of those unfortunate people. Our justice system is broken and far from being able to be fixed. Justice is a joke, and so far it is truly blind....

maeon3• 13 years ago

If the prisons were focused on fixing the root problem in the criminals, as if they were some sort of refuge for edification, conditioning and correction then a large body of the homeless would commit a strategic crime in order to get there so they can at least get three meals and an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom.

Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil to punish people who do not deserve rehabilitation, correction or edification. Conditions have to be bad enough so that a large segment of the rock-bottom citizens don't commit crime just to get some hope. Therefore the conditions of prison have to be a few steps less desirable than being homeless, penniless, cloth less, hungry and with no hope of getting out of it.

It's my belief that jails are full of criminals because we don't understand the mental illnesses that brought them there. If we can do whole-brain simulation, emulation, and detection in a client, I think studying the body of brains in jail vs the body of brains outside jail will reveal some remarkable findings. It could be their ethical systems were coaxed into the off position, and we may be able to detect this before a person commits crime. Saying: "You better get your ethical centers back on-line, or we'll have to put you under increased surveillance".

Djehngo• 13 years ago

I am hoping this is satire and you aren't seriously arguing that "prisons have to be barbaric otherwise the homeless and the destitute would use them to avoid starvation".

InclinedPlane7• 13 years ago

Let me take a different tack on this response.

If what you say is true, then why is this not an explicit part of our criminal justice system? Why are there no laws and regulations which spell out the brutalities that prisoners should be exposed to? Why is the process not formalized, institutionalized, documented, and routine?

Why has there been no public campaign to repeal or modify the 8th amendment to the US constitution (banning cruel and unusual punishments)? Or to set new legal precedent in the UK to invalidate the equivalent protections in the English/British constitutions? If it is such a foundationally important part of a well-functioning society then why is it not being talked about and debated above board?

irahul• 13 years ago

> If the prisons were focused on fixing the root problem in the criminals, as if they were some sort of refuge for edification, conditioning and correction then a large body of the homeless would commit a strategic crime in order to get there so they can at least get three meals and an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom.

1. Prisons as correctional center far outweighs some homeless guy pick-pocketing so that he doesn't have to die tired, hungry, cold, alone on pavement.

2. A homeless guy not dying on the pavement is a benefit in itself.

> prisons are a necessary evil to punish people who do not deserve rehabilitation, correction or edification.

People go to prison for a variety of reasons. Not paying your parking ticket or possessing 5gm of Marijuana do not qualify as "do not deserve rehabilitation".

> Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil

Slavery was a necessary evil?

> It's my belief that jails are full of criminals because we don't understand the mental illnesses that brought them there.

1. You can believe whatever you want.

2. Stretch the definition of law and everybody is a criminal.

3. The spectrum of things you can go to jail for is so wide the belief that all criminal brains are wired the same way has a low probability.

4. The belief that "criminals" deserve what they get is how all sorts of draconian laws come into being. When the govt. says it tortured a few alleged terrorists, and you stand on the sidelines and cheer, you don't realize you are being instrumental in your own destruction. Tomorrow it can be you getting water-boarded, and the rest of us "good citizens" will stand on the sidelines and cheer.

msisk6• 13 years ago

Yeah.

There's a guy currently in solitary confinement serving time for felony hacking. The hack? Executing GETs against a public API. He got a 41-month sentence for that.

By any definition that's just crazy.

tripzilch• 13 years ago

> people who do not deserve rehabilitation, correction or edification

Wow. I know it's a matter of philosophical debate whether such people actually exist[0]. But it's a matter of wilful ignorance to pretend that anything but a tiny minority of the US prison population falls under that category.

I think they don't. There's people that would be a really bad idea to ever let back in to society (say, a Breivik) but for a lot better reasons than "does not deserve rehabilitation/edification". Then there's people for whom rehabilitation is pointless because they're so mentally deranged they're not going to get better. Obviously such cases are the minority and very rare.

Also, did you consider to think: If your homeless prefer prison, that might not be because your prisons are too pleasant, but rather how you treat your homeless? Why are they left without "an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom"? It's a ridiculous argument, "we can't treat group X humanely because then group Y who we also don't give a chance will want it too"--what?!

It's those lowest rungs that a society is judged by, you know. Whether the average American has a better life means absolutely zilch as long as you leave your schizophrenics begging and mumbling in the streets, and keep people in solitary the way this article describes.

klibertp• 13 years ago

Minority report?

Nice, I was moved enough to reply, so as a satire it's a good piece.

arjn• 13 years ago

>> "Like slavery in the 18th century"

This person is clearly a troll. Ignore. [Edit: or is this a joke that I didn't get ?]

AnthonyMouse7• 13 years ago

>Conditions have to be bad enough so that a large segment of the rock-bottom citizens don't commit crime just to get some hope.

The blatantly obvious alternative to this is for the government to provide adequate food assistance and homeless shelters such that you can get the free meals and roof without committing a crime first, in which case there would be no incentive to do this whatsoever.

roc2• 13 years ago

> "Our prison system is probably near the top of that list,"

If by "our" you mean "the US" then I'm already of the mind that it's bizarre and barbaric and I doubt I'm alone.

In many ways it strikes me as suffering from problems similar to those in our older (now largely dismantled) system of insane asylums.

Both sought to address a very serious problem, for which we only have flawed solutions to choose from. And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise [1], it -- as a whole -- is progressing to a place where the system has been corrupted into a larger problem than the one it's trying to address.

[1] Though when we have for-profit industry lobbying legislators based purely on their profit motive, it's foolish not to say there are proven-better alternatives to many of the problems. To say nothing of the prison-rape culture and our societal response to it.

lars• 13 years ago

> And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise

Oh please. The US has a recidivism rate within 3 years of 67.5%. Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% within 2 years. There are proven-better alternatives, but your society has decided not to implement them.

xenophanes• 13 years ago

> People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our prison system is probably near the top of that list, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the sheer size of the prison population these days due to the war on drugs.

I agree except that I don't consider our prison and drug policies "normal" or acceptable. And a significant amount of people don't consider them normal. I think, for more in the spirit of that question, it's interesting to consider what 95+% consider normal that in the future 95+% will consider barbaric. Something like that.

conanbatt• 13 years ago

I agree completely. I believe that this is a cultural and political problem.

I cant imagine a politician saying that he will fund prisons get any votes whatsoever. It would be suicide. And whatever fruits would come from such measure , he would never see, and the population as a whole is likely to ignore.

This is the kind of problem that comes from Democracy, unfortunately. Not prisons, but the inherent inhability to address a real, provable issue that falls flat on public opinion.

I also believe this is an economic policy issue as well. The problem is exacerbated by increasingly unequal living conditions. Its no secret that crime and socio-economic status is highly correlated.

The above statements really make the problem a lot larger, however i believe this wont be fixed until something changes in the above, because convicts are the most politically and economically weak part of society.

mcintyre19942• 13 years ago

I just don't understand how such a ridiculous system comes into being, these are people's lives, criminal yes, but people. Or do they just not think like that?

I mean, let's say you get sent to the SHU, I won't go into why because that's probably impossible without introducing circular logic. Now all your "associates", ie everybody who knows you in prison, can also be sent to the SHU. The only way out quickly is for you to "debrief", accuse some other people so they can be sent to the SHU in your place. But, how many people can you genuinely criminalise who aren't known associates? Judging by the fact they read prisoner's diaries, I'd infer surveillance is quite high, so surely the number of unknown criminal associates is pretty low? If that holds, then who do you "debrief" about? Like the article said, it's a catch-22, or at least should be. Instead the guards have a - according to a judge - legal right to make up stories, attribute them to you, forge your signature and incarcerate others on that basis.

It's so abstract it's bizarre. It just seems so dystopian, if you consider the world inside the prison where you're 'innocent' until you commit crime on the inside, that world would be ridiculed if they weren't criminals. Thrown in on false evidence, and the only way out is to give more false evidence. I don't understand how that ends up happening.

InclinedPlane7• 13 years ago

The truth of the banality of evil comes into play not just at the extremes (death camps and so forth) but also at the margins.

zupatol• 13 years ago

There's a wealth of information on solitary confinement in the US, including a few excellent articles like this one. This makes me think that the problem is on the way to being solved. A lot still needs to be done, but solitary confinement is now declining.

This site has a huge amount of information, this is probably also the place to look if you want to help: http://solitarywatch.com/

If you want to know more, a good place to start is this national geographic documentary http://documentarystorm.com/solitary-confinement/

and these two excellent articles https://www.byliner.com/susan-greene/stories/the-gray-box-an... http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...

king_jester2• 13 years ago

A lot of the comments here are completely ignorant about the state and nature of prisons, both on a small scale level for the lives of people who are incarcerated as well as at a large scale in how Amercian society supports prisons as a racist institution. I urge everyone looking for starting knowledge to start with Angela Davi's Are Prisons Obsolete?: http://www.amazon.com/Are-Prisons-Obsolete-Angela-Davis/dp/1...

rdl6• 13 years ago

I think I'd rather spend 3 years in solitary (given adequate books, ability to write, etc.) than in general prison population. I accept that I'm probably an outlier, though.

gyardley• 13 years ago

Understandable - but from what I understand, your givens aren't typically given.

Confusion4• 13 years ago

You think that, until you've spent a few months, perhaps only a week, in solitary confinement.

rdl6• 13 years ago

I spent 6 continuous months on Sealand with one other guy (who I avoided as much as I possibly could, saw him about 3 minutes a day if I didn't correctly time my hallway trip to avoid running into him).

Lots of space, and the Internet, though.

scotty792• 13 years ago

I've spent few weeks without talking to anyone. I had to go out shopping every two weeks or so but I live in country where even 'hello' at the checkout is optional.

I kinda forgot a bit how to talk but apart from that it was pure bliss. I had lots of games and books though.

grecy3• 13 years ago

What's the longest time you've actually gone in your life without seeing another human?

I've done 10-12 days a few times, and routinely do ~5 days.

You need to experience it for yourself before you make such bold claims. It's a very intense experience.

rdl6• 13 years ago

9-10 days without Internet a couple times. A week or so at a time with internet, routinely, most of the time for a few years. 6 months where the only person was seen about as much as a prison guard at pelican bay would be, and another year which was quite close to that, and where I effectively couldn't leave.

I agree it's intense, but not exclusively bad. And I'm pretty sure I'd prefer it by far to being in prison with contact with inmates and COs.

There are a lot of people who have spent weeks/months solo in pursuits like sailing. It clearly isn't just the isolation of solitary which is a problem; it's probably more to do with 1) the type of people sent there and 2) the lack of control over one's own destiny. People who require "social interaction", put in a new/stressful situation against their will, etc. are a lot more likely to suffer from it than people who aren't particularly social and are solitary voluntarily and in a non-stressful setting.

honzzz5• 13 years ago

1. According to that article, books, ability to write etc. would be out of the question. That's the part of the problem that we are discussing here - that the lack of stimuli (basically absolute boredom) can be torturous. Your argument seems to be like 'I would be OK with them torturing me if they just did not do things I don't like to me'.

2. I think that you would be really surprised how cruel the lack of social contact can be. We are wired to be social but it's hard to even imagine spending prolonged time without talking to others etc. because most of us have never experienced it.

Someone who has never experienced hunger could think that they would be OK without food... but I am pretty sure they would change their mind after three days without a bite.

estavaro• 13 years ago

And that would be anti-social behavior by itself, right? :-)

Other people think that inmates are anti-social people. But were they always anti-social? Or just some of the time? And how is anti-social measured? Do extroverts make less anti-social people? And if so, does it matter that many inmates are also extroverts?

Bureaucracy seems to be incredibly painful in the Justice system. Decisions get made. To reverse those decisions it becomes a problem in itself. To err is human? To persist on it is stupid. Or is it just a bureaucratic mare?

w_t_payne3• 13 years ago

The nature of America's prison system is driven by the fact that middle class white people vote for politicians and policies that put poor black people through a cruel, inhumane and all-too-usual system of torture and deprivation. Is unusual sadism a national characteristic? I do not want to think so, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

_account3• 13 years ago

I didn't know that the laws so clearly stated that black people are singled out to be tortured.

Can you provide at least one reference to this atrocity?

[I'm guessing you can't]

rthomas62• 13 years ago

I do not agree with the hyperbole of the OP, but there are a disproportionate amount of black people in prison, black people get on average longer sentences for the same crimes, and drugs forms more commonly used by blacks carry longer sentences than the same drug in other forms (crack vs. cocaine). Are black people singled out to be tortured? No. Is the US prison system racist? The evidence points in that direction.

potatolicious• 13 years ago

Racism doesn't necessarily entail singling a group out explicitly, especially today where we have a trained smell for racism.

If your intent is to single out black people, there are many ways you can target them without spelling out "black people". Specific job categories, specific neighborhoods, specific types of crime (which are hugely lopsided racially), etc etc.

The same can be applied to any race. You can effectively create a law that only targets Asian immigrants without once mentioning the words "Asian immigrant".

In the US race and crime are inexorably linked, and highly politicized. Through a combination of factors and people (acting both maliciously and otherwise), blacks are without a doubt targeted.

Here in NYC we have a rather odious policy of stop, question, and frisk, where the police are empowered to stop anyone they deem suspicious or threatening and search them. It turns out that Blacks and Latinos are search disproportionately often, well beyond their proportional contribution to crime rate. There's nothing in the regulation that spells out that dark-skinned people should be searched more, but everyone in charge knows this is the consequence, and everyone in charge intends this to be the consequence.

Racism is complicated. The fact that you don't have a hooded guy on your lawn burning a cross, screaming "lynch him!", doesn't mean it's not in front of you.

betterunix• 13 years ago

Were every violation of the law punished with a prison sentence, you would not see disproportionate numbers of black people in prison. The problem is that the law is not uniformly enforced, but it is so broad that eventually any normal person will have broken it.

When the police presence is higher in black neighborhoods, you are going to see more arrests. When the law is so broad that anyone can be arrested, the effect will be magnified. Eventually you get to the situation we are in today, where in some black communities one in four black men has been to prison. This is not merely a measurement error or some kind of mistake; our approach to law and law enforcement right now is disproportionately affecting black people, especially black men.

rooshdi• 13 years ago

Here's a link to the prisoners' contact information, if anyone wants to send letters.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/prisoners-contac...

virtualwhys• 13 years ago

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares...and their prisons into monasteries.

_account3• 13 years ago

Prison is society's recourse for anti-social behavior. Does it have to be a violent and horrible place? No. The residents tend to make it that. In addition, I am against pampering in anyway, with my tax dollars, people whom I've had to remove from proper society...for anti-social behavior.

Prison is supposed to be a deterrent. My biggest gripe is that I have to pay for it at all. I support banishment or death.

rthomas62• 13 years ago

Does this view not presuppose that the exhibitors of the anti-social behavior cannot be fixed or remade into useful members of society? If you believe that, fine, but if you think that some could be reformed, why is that not worth the money? "Reform", in my mind, has nothing to do with pampering. It could be even more torturous than now...For example A Clockwork Orange. Not that I'm advocating that.

Does this view also not presuppose that all prisoners have exhibited anti-social behavior? I think we can both say that this is not the case. Although, prisons tend to somewhat separate the two populations.

_account3• 13 years ago

I suppose that good people can make a[singular and non-violent] mistake or error in judgement which can run them a foul of the law. These people don't require reform. They are typically leaniently sentenced, pay for their mistake and move on.

I also suppose that others are more habitually and fundamentally anti-social. These people are not worth the effort of trying to 'save'. The brains have literally been wired for this behavior[over the course of many years]. They must be removed from society.

There are also those somewhere in between natural-born killer and 'busted for pot'. These people are responsible for their own personal choices. If they keep making bad choices of their own volition I have no compassion for them. [I say this from first hand experience dealing with a close relative who is a lifelong fuck-up.]

tomjen3• 13 years ago

If people can be changed then they will change given the right incentives, which can be achieve simply by making prison sufficiently harsh and long enough.

gangst• 13 years ago

Your use of declarative and profound statements, with no evidence, gives me a high degree of distrust towards anything you say.

With that said, I have a few specific points.

> Prison is society's recourse for anti-social behavior

Lets speak objectively. Prison is a punishment that is forced upon some people who are found guilty of breaking some law. Many laws exist without thought for "social" behavior.

> Does it have to be a violent and horrible place? No. The residents tend to make it that.

Some residents make it that. Other residents have little to no "social" means of preventing or defending themselves against it.

> I am against pampering in anyway, with my tax dollars, people whom I've had to remove from proper society...for anti-social behavior.

Its funny that you use the word "pampering" when the alternative we are discussing is torture.

Nonetheless, this is the easiest point at which I can find common ground with you. Would you, rather than pay with your tax dollars for "pampering" prisoners, pay for educating prisoners so that our GDP grows? If there were ways to measure that GDP increased because we educated and enabled certain prisoners, would you gripe less?

> Prison is supposed to be a deterrent.

I've always heard that its supposed to be for rehabilitation. But, again, lets speak to the reality rather than the ideal: Prison is obviously not an effective deterrent.

> These people don't require reform. They are typically leaniently sentenced, pay for their mistake and move on.

What evidence do you have that people who don't need reform are typically leniently sentenced?

angersock• 13 years ago

Oh for fuck's sake...is smoking a bowl on a weekend anti-social? What about trimming a quarter inch from a shotgun barrel? Or issuing well-formed GETs against a public API?

Banishment or death? Really? You do realize that pretty much any inventor or programmer of note in the US--the folks on whose shoulders all of us stand--are likely guilty of several "anti-social" actions?

Prisons, as implemented, are a bad answer to a stupid question.

vacri13• 13 years ago

Humans make mistakes. Here on HN, it's repeatedly announced that making mistakes is a good thing, as long as you are allowed to learn from them - it makes you a better person/founder/businessperson. Your mindset just doesn't match this - one mistake and you're literally dead. That you consider a few tax dollars so rapaciously important to yourself speaks rather badly of your priorities.

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

Hmm, you know, this is a comparison of two different prison systems with two different prisoners. I fail to see a control here. As much as the observation of one person that has been through a system would be valuable insight looking into another, I don't find it anything more than subjective.

I bring up the point about two different prisoners in that 1. I don't believe all prisoners should be treated alike and 2. Different strokes for different folks. As for baseline humanity, again that is subjective. Pirates viewed marooning with some jug of water and a knife and shot as humane. I don't think that fits today's standards of humane treatment.

The article suggests that because of one man in the system the exception if you will, is getting screwed, we must do more to prevent this from happening. I'd argue that if this was a computer system, one exception isn't something to write home about. Many exceptions depending on how you define it however...

Systemic exceptions are expensive to fix and will cost us all a good amount in practice, so the real question we may ask ourselves is, how much money are we willing to put in taxes to overhaul the system? More specifically how much are each one of us willing to pay? A lump some of a dollar? Sure. A million dollars? Not so sure.

  Anyway, it's a mother jones article, it and many like it prey on the notion of self-hate and guilt-ridden introspection that many of the U.S. audience loves to talk about, including me!

thoughtcriminal• 13 years ago

So what the hell is Obama doing anyway? He's done nothing but wring his hands and give lip service to human liberties.

You have to give Obama credit though, he is supernaturally charismatic and completely amoral, not to mention the best centrist in US political history.

I think that when he is gone and his powers of charisma and diversion have long dissipated, history will not be kind to him. He never had the courage and compassion to do the right thing.

moxie2• 13 years ago

Many of the structures that make up our society (jails, taxes, laws, rulers) were not "our" creation, but the creation of kings.

When those kings were deposed, rather than abolishing the structures those kings had created, they were instead largely preserved and put under "democratic" control.

It could be that this was a mistake: that there's something structurally intrinsic to the instruments of monarchies that can not be eradicated, regardless of who nominally controls them. ACAB.

rdl6• 13 years ago

What are structures that make up our society that were not creations of kings? (i.e. things created in the last hundred or two years, under democracy). Are these any less difficult to change?

Fiat-money Central Banks mostly were created under democracies, and seem quite resistant to change. Social-welfare programs. Anything related to lobbying.

I think the razor points to "institutions are highly resistant to change", not anything specific to monarchy vs. democracy.

chc2• 13 years ago

I don't think moxie is suggesting that they are durable because of their origin, but something more along the lines of what you're saying. I think the point is that they aren't the sort of thing a modern democracy would come up with on its own, but they're very hard to get rid of once you've allowed them in.

(Not meaning to put words in anyone's mouth — just offering the thought the way my brain processed it.)

john_b• 13 years ago

In some ways the prison system in the U.S. seems to be worse precisely because it is supported by a democratic society. If prisoners are tortured under a king, their barbaric treatment can easily be associated with the cruelty of the king. This connection creates a risk of revolt, and a sensible king will be mindful of it.

In a democratic society with a Kafkaesque prison system, torture of prisoners is not as easily associated with any one person's cruelty. Because most people are optimistic and don't like to believe that several hundred million of their neighbors would silently condone the torture of a whole class of people, it's easy for lazy minds to consider prisoner torture acceptable, necessary, justified, and so on to whatever stronger beliefs these individuals may hold.

I'm not saying that prisoners would fare any better in a non-democratic society, but how people think of prisoner mistreatment would definitely be different.

moxie2• 13 years ago

Totally. I think one of the most pernicious things about ineffective but reaffirming processes like voting is that it's easy to conclude that if we don't change things, we must not have wanted them to change.

Hypothetically, we believe in justice and freedom (and other good things and not bad things), or we would not have formed a democracy. Since we freedom-loving, democratic people would naturally act to end all oppression, it follows that if a policy, law or practice does not change then it must not truly oppress people.

ddonnelly• 13 years ago

Preferential voting helps a lot to resolve this problem.

Irishsteve• 13 years ago

Wow 42 years in solitary confinement for a 'political' prisoner

http://sfbayview.com/2012/hugo-pinell-is-42-years-in-isolati...

cooperq• 13 years ago

If you enjoyed this article, there is a fantastic book explaining all of the problems with the American prison system and the 'Felon' Label that goes along with it. It's called "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander. Highly recommended reading.

lawnchair_larry2• 13 years ago

After reading this article, keep in mind that Andrew Auernheimer is also in a SHU, for having someone update his twitter account on his behalf.

And the reason he is in prison in the first place is for changing an integer on the end of a URL.

Do these punishments make sense to anyone?

edyoung• 13 years ago

The punishments make sense to the people meting them out.

The prison authorities transparently use isolation in an SHU as punishment for making them look bad or for inconveniencing them. The two inmates mentioned in the article who acted as 'jailhouse lawyers' seem like good examples of this. Anyone in prison who offers any resistance to the power of the authorities is very likely to be treated this way, even if they are merely requesting legally-guaranteed rights or marginally better treatment, because doing so acts as an example to others.

Auernheimer was imprisoned, it seems to me, primarily for unrepentantly embarrassing those in positions of power, and later transferred to the SHU for the same reason.

gcb0• 13 years ago

Most states have private prisons. We read about that all the time, mainly on how profitable they are.

But unlike private health care, there's no one even poking it with a stick in the start up world.

scotty792• 13 years ago

I think that's the core of the problem. Once you make an industry out of something it's bound to grow.

crazy1van• 13 years ago

Well, we in the US have made just about everything a crime, so it's no wonder that we have a ton of people in jail. Gone are the days when people didn't need to consult a team of lawyers to stay compliant with the law...they just instinctively knew that things like stealing and murder were illegal.

With so many startups and entrepreneurs here on HN, I bet tons of you have violated laws for taxes, banking, employment, or zoning at one time or another and you probably had no idea.

nichols• 13 years ago

Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons...

"But it wasn't until I started posting on Hacker News that I truly realized man's inhumanity to man..."

Uchikoma• 13 years ago

Interesting how many people here are hand waving to explain this with immigrants, blacks etc. when from the outside everyone else sees it as the brutal "eye for an eye" policy that runs US thinking, society and foreign relations.

Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

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