General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI am OK with Tsarnaev getting life without parole in Supermax.
And Supermax is certainly where he will be, along with Richard Reid, Ramzi Yousef, Terry Nichols and so on.
Just let him rot for the rest of his miserable life, without the drama and the endless appeals.
http://carrington.edu/blog/programs/criminal-justice/anatomy-of-a-supermax-prison/
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)I can't imagine him ever leaving jail. But the torture seems optional.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Do other civilized countries have anything like these? If not, how do they manage to prevent prison mayhem?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)They are fed, showered and exercised and receive necessary medical care. Obviously top level security is needed for people like extremist Islamic terrorists.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Western Europe?
Look at the cell below. It is a gratuitous Hell.
tblue
(16,350 posts)You always say the right thing.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)And unlike his victims, he gets to keep all of his limbs.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)People in these places go insane. They eat their own eyeballs and fingers.
Think for a moment about the lack of these torture barracks in most other civilized countries. They do fine without them. We can, too.
Imprisonment is sometimes necessary. Torture is not.
Prism
(5,815 posts)Of course no one would be "content" with such a place. Are criminals who have harmed and ended lives supposed to be contented? When contemplating the firmest form of punishment short of death, does a prisoner's "contentment" enter the equation?
Of course not.
It's supposed to be miserable. Otherwise, it wouldn't be punishment. It's not like you try to blow a few people up and automatically receive a Motel 6. What would stop thousands of poor people from blowing folks up just for the accommodations?
I'm an empathetic person. Very much so. But there is a line where chest-beating, "more liberal and empathetic than thou" chest-beating becomes egotistical bleating, and that line is just about here.
Stoopid.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)Content? Why should we give a shit if he's "Content???" He killed four people, maimed a hell of a lot more. He placed a bomb right next to an 8 year old child whom he killed. I don't think any of us are worried about his contentment.
He's being punished for his crimes, and a supermax prison seems like a fair place to punish the guy.
(ETA: Warren, your post inspired by response bc I agree with you. My argument is with Manny)
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Last edited Tue Apr 23, 2013, 01:12 PM - Edit history (1)
It is desperately lacking in the sick culture we live in now.
And it is worth noting what groups, with what political agendas, in this culture constantly preach to us to abandon our empathy, and to mock it...
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)soleft
(18,537 posts)The fear of punishment does not and has not ever prevented people from harming others. Only empathy gives us pause and makes us consider if our actions will cause harm.
Empathy is never silly, never wasted, never misdirected.
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)dionysus
(26,467 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)and I say this as one that has seen torture occur in prisons, but mostly at the hands of guards and inmate that were not supervised as much as in a supermax. The supermax protects people from themselves.
And other countries prisons are full of torture, even western europe has been known to be harsh enough where prisoners have to kill and eat rats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/28/world/expose-of-brutal-prison-jolts-france-s-self-image.html
http://www.economist.com/node/8680941?story_id=E1_RGRDJQT
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Solitary confinement is psychological torture. The US not only has the largest percentage of its population in prison of any country, it also has the largest percentage of prisoners in solitary confinement.
The argument makes intuitive sense. If the worst of the worst are removed from the general prison population and put in isolation, youd expect there to be markedly fewer inmate shankings and attacks on corrections officers. But the evidence doesnt bear this out. Perhaps the most careful inquiry into whether supermax prisons decrease violence and disorder was a 2003 analysis examining the experience in three statesArizona, Illinois, and Minnesotafollowing the opening of their supermax prisons. The study found that levels of inmate-on-inmate violence were unchanged, and that levels of inmate-on-staff violence changed unpredictably, rising in Arizona, falling in Illinois, and holding steady in Minnesota.
Prison violence, it turns out, is not simply an issue of a few belligerents. In the past thirty years, the United States has quadrupled its incarceration rate but not its prison space. Work and education programs have been cancelled, out of a belief that the pursuit of rehabilitation is pointless. The result has been unprecedented overcrowding, along with unprecedented idlenessa nice formula for violence. Remove a few prisoners to solitary confinement, and the violence doesnt change. So you remove some more, and still nothing happens. Before long, you find yourself in the position we are in today. The United States now has five per cent of the worlds population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.
It wasnt always like this. The wide-scale use of isolation is, almost exclusively, a phenomenon of the past twenty years. In 1890, the United States Supreme Court came close to declaring the punishment to be unconstitutional. Writing for the majority in the case of a Colorado murderer who had been held in isolation for a month, Justice Samuel Miller noted that experience had revealed serious objections to solitary confinement:
A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover suffcient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)is getting raped by a person who has aids not harsh? I do not say this as shock value, but because I used to work with people that exact same thing happened to.
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)Can you give me a citation please?
It's been my understanding that these joints are for remorseless psychopaths.
Ya really gotta be a fuckup to get kicked out of San Quentin for bad behavior.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Can't find the finger one - it was in the last few months, a Cool-Hand Luke kind of deal where a middle-class guy went to prison for a relatively minor thing, a few infractions later he's eating his fingers while serving decades in solitary.
More from my own state: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/08/magazine/is-solitary-confinement-driving-charlie-chase-crazy.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)dookers
(61 posts)Because his bed is too hard? Should we give him 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and silk pajamas?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Thank you for reminding us that not every country thinks this way.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)And what happened to them was physical. EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
Solitary confinement is a harsh measure which is contrary to rehabilitation, the aim of the penitentiary system, he stressed in presenting his first interim report on the practice, calling it global in nature and subject to widespread abuse.
Indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement in excess of 15 days should also be subject to an absolute prohibition, he added, citing scientific studies that have established that some lasting mental damage is caused after a few days of social isolation.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40097#.UXYhQsomxeE
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)Because I would so so for many of yours.
Tx4obama
(36,974 posts)MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)I guess both situations are pretty luxurious.
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)as far as solitary goes, i would rather be by myself than worry about a prisoner shanking me or worse. Yes, people joke about prison rape, but it is for real, so much so that AIDS and other diseases flare up in jails.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)where many longtime posters have advocating sticking people like Joe Arpaio in Supermax?
Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)Taverner
(55,476 posts)The other 22-23 hours are spent in your cell, sitting.
Supermax means no roomies.
You get 2 books.
No TV
No Cable
Now do this for the rest of your life
-------------------------------
On a side note, I've always felt they should have the charges displayed in big letters in their cell.
Remind them why they are there.
Tx4obama
(36,974 posts)Taverner
(55,476 posts)TBN, 24x7
octothorpe
(962 posts)Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.
octothorpe
(962 posts)I was wondering if they at least got reading material. That truly does sound worse than death after awhile.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)I think it does what it is supposed to do
Punitive measures
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)I know Canada has units like this. They are used only for very dangerous inmates who pose a severe threat to other inmates and guards.
I do think they are torture, but assuming that Tsarnaev is found guilty, it seems unlikely that he can ever be placed in general population for his own safety, if nothing else.
Canada I think has four currently operating, some as special units within other prisons.
http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/pblct/lt-en/2006/31-2/3-eng.shtml
Zorra
(27,670 posts)Being locked up is a bit like being in hell.
Some facilities have more privileges than others, usually dependent on the offender level.
Prison mayhem is prevented through strict application of corrections procedures. Prisons have it down to a science. Correctional Science. Max lockdowns are designed to keep the most dangerous inmates from killing other inmates and guards, and from escaping. Long term inmates are often thoroughly institutionalized, and can't handle not being locked up for very long. So committing crimes while in prison is not always a big deal to some of them, even if it means losing all their privileges.
Normally, states have different prisons for different levels of offenders. They don't want to mix people busted for selling an oz. of weed with people like Hammibal Lechner. There are minimum, medium, and maximum security prisons (and sometimes in between) for different levels of offenders. Minimum security prisoners generally have the most privileges, while maximum security prisoners often have 23 hrs a day lockdown.
There are some pure evil people in prisons. This is no joke. Vicious sociopaths People who would cut your throat for a cigarette and never think about it again. People who would strangle a guard for cheap thrills without consideration of consequences.
Some states have more humane systems than others. Some countries, like Sweden, have very humane systems, and many prisoner's rights advocates believe the US should change over to the Swedish model.
Anyway, one of my SO's started out as a teacher in a prison and ended up as a high level central administrator in the state prison educational system, so I ended up being her live in amateur sort of counselor sounding board, and learning so much more than I ever wanted to know about prisons while we were together.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)It's a life-long time out
Even Ted Bundy preferred the DP to that
Brooklyns_Finest
(789 posts)We go from not considering execution because it is in humane. Then we consider the super max, but then change our mind, because being locked up for 23 hours a day is considered torture. Then we say life in prison is cruel and unusual. Eventually we become like Norway, where a man can kill 80 kids and get a 20 year sentence.
When does it stop?
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Just how screwed are they?
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)he might be out in 10 years, 21 maximum.
http://www.thelocal.no/page/view/why-norways-maximum-sentence-is-just-21-years#.UXZsp7WceSo
He is young enough to where in his 40's, he can make a fine living speaking in Dubai about killing people, while Saudi princes feed him Caviar.
Tx4obama
(36,974 posts)Jack Sprat
(2,500 posts)That view of the inner courtyard would make anyone jealous.
dookers
(61 posts)The windows are angled so that prisoners can only see the sky. Its to prevent the from knowing their location within the building.
aquart
(69,014 posts)I'd be perfectly happy knowing Dick Cheney lived there.
Schema Thing
(10,283 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)He will live and eventually die in a small cell, probably over a very long period of time. He will have little human contact and will likely be incredibly frustrated and angry. He's young so that's very hard to take.
But so were his victims. Four of them are dead, others lost limbs and worse.
I don't think there is serious cause for worry. He will never breath freely again. His life is over because of his choices. So are the lives of his victims.
tblue
(16,350 posts)just kill me now, because my soul will have already died.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Like Barack Obama, for example?
Are their souls even deader?
morningfog
(18,115 posts)Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)Union Scribe
(7,099 posts)ChazII
(6,198 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)with those who have committed heinous crimes?
SuperMax and the Death Penalty are not the only options, as much as some would like to frame the discussion that way.
tblue
(16,350 posts)No way are those the only options.
Union Scribe
(7,099 posts)what we're supposed to do with him.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Our use of SuperMax (and even the extremity of the conditions in SuperMax) is relatively recent (see SpiderJerusalem's posts elsewhere in this thread), and other civilized countries do not use them at all. Given that there is ample historical precedent for imprisoning even hardened and dangerous criminals for life without resorting to SuperMax, your challenge here is rather strange.
Union Scribe
(7,099 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)might find the capacity for remorse and empathy and do something to contribute in some small way to society.
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)Just a thought.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)rejoin society. I hope that for everyone - but in his case he is after all but a young boy.
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)He'd be lionized as some sort of hero by radical Islamist facists who would destroy all human rights. Let his ass rot, it's more life than a certain eight year old boy is ever going to have.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)one - he is certainly not going to be lionized. A long-haired, dope smoking 19-year-old Chechen who was far more interested in chasing girls, watching basketball and listening to wrap music - not years ago - but days ago is no model Islamist extremist.
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)Right now, President Obama would look like a national war hero for sending a drone strike on any organization that gave the slightest whiff of approval for this. But passions die down after a few decades, and he would be quite embraceable by terrorist organizations that would use his quarter-century of time in Supermax as a reason to declare him a hero.
Remember how the Libyans welcomed back the Lockerbie bomber? There's the precedent.
cali
(114,904 posts)I just can't get behind it as a concept.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Torture is like austerity in that regard.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)I said what I believe about supermax prisons. I insinuated nothing about you.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Which of these two choices would you favor?
cali
(114,904 posts)that i'm implacably opposed to the dp across the board. but that doesn't mean that I support cruel and unusual punishment either. So by default, life in prison.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)They all go together, always.
This is the mentality and the world view the Third Way brings to our party.
It all goes together. It's about the kind of society we want to build. Manny has it right earlier in this thread. Do other civilized countries need this? Why do we?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Our choices are not only the death penalty or SuperMax. You ignore what Manny was saying to you above. This is about who we want to be as a nation. Not every nation does this.
What a depressing thread.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)or life without parole in Supermax.
So which would you pick if the choice was up to you?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)That is how we lose our humanity, by pretending that no other options exist.
MFM008
(19,774 posts)worse than death for a 19 year old.
madokie
(51,076 posts)Keep him alive as long as is humanly possible, that to me would be punishment.
Too easy for these kind of cretins to find religion and die thinking, believing they are going to heaven for the death penalty to be punishment.
A former neighbor our ours who went on a killing spree a few years ago was recently put to death and he went to his death thinking, believing he was forgiven and he was soon to be in heaven. How is that punishment I ask
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)lunatica
(53,410 posts)The people thinking this up should be the first to spend a year in it. After that we'd see so just how great they think their ideas are.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)So you should prefer my position on this issue to those like President Obama who favor the death penalty.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)But if you want to think in extremes then go ahead. Either/or is black/white thinking with disregard to the many hundreds of alternative solutions available.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)We are constantly being urged to accept cruelty, to accept predatory policies, to accept a corporate, dehumanizing world view, and to pretend that no other options exist.
No.
Terra Alta
(5,158 posts)I don't like the idea of Supermax prisons myself, I think it's a form of torture worse than death. I knew Supermax prisons were restrictive, but I didn't know they were this restrictive. He should obviously never be free, but is this really an appropriate punishment?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Terra Alta
(5,158 posts)but does he deserve what is basically torture for the rest of his life? I don't think any human, no matter their crime, deserves that.
RobinA
(9,874 posts)Supermax is disgusting and inhumane. As soon as we get rid of the death penalty we need to get rid of Supermax. If not sooner. If someone is dangerous to society, lock 'em up. That should solve the problem of them and society can get on with it without worry. Beyond that it's just piling on to make some people feel good.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)utterly predictable in the context of defense of an increasingly inhumane, corporate state.
Javaman
(62,435 posts)zappaman
(20,605 posts)I hope he is comfortable!
I would also suggest some nice posters for the cell of the people he killed and maimed.
Give him something to look at.
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)how supposedly progressive minded folks turn into hateful vengeful lynch mob members when their "ideals" are actually tested by reality
"Swing low, swing low, swing low and carry me home"
redStateBlueHeart
(265 posts)Looking at the walls of a cell for 23 hours per day...I would definitely go crazy. How are all the inmates there not on suicide watch?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)while in Supermax. (The courses were conducted by closed circuit TV).
OCTOBER 27--Five years into a life sentence, Ted Kaczynski is proving to be a model prisoner at the country's "supermax" federal penitentiary. He keeps a tidy cell, has a clean conduct record, and maintains a "positive rapport" with staff.
But the Unabomber's stay behind bars is not without its frustrations, including noisy neighbors, commissary miscues, and mail problems galore for a man who once relied on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver his deadly packages.
Bureau of Prisons documents obtained by The Smoking Gun offer the first glimpse at Kaczynski's life in the federal lockup in Florence, Colorado, where his fellow inmates include shoe bomber Richard Reid, Latin Kings boss Luis Felipe, and terrorists like Ramzi Yousef and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Kaczynski's routine is filled with the kind of banalities that leave a guy obsessing about the small things, from a balky faucet to getting shorted eight ounces of milk.
Kaczynski is also vexed by Florence's mail system, which never seems to pick up his outgoing parcels in a timely fashion, loses mail addressed to him, and delivers items meant for other prisoners. At the conclusion of one four-page memo to Florence's warden, Kaczynski helpfully included a neatly rendered drawing showing how inmates are supposed to leave items for mailroom staff (see image above).
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/behind-bars-unabomber
redStateBlueHeart
(265 posts)Maybe having a 170 IQ helped him somehow? I mean, helped him to find some productive way (say, studying or writing) to not go completely bonkers.
Floyd_Gondolli
(1,277 posts)Said no one ever.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)(shudders)
DevonRex
(22,541 posts)I posted them yesterday in another thread. I've mentioned them over and over again. This argument about this prisoner may be a moot point. Google Federal sentencing guidelines. It's a point system for classes of crimes.
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)It's actually caused me to rethink my pro-DP stance. I like this better.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)The whole point is how high of a danger he is. Where he ends up may also depend on the federal vs. state charges. I am opposed to the death penalty. If he is convicted and spared his life, then he will have to be classified and put into a prison.
The thing is we don't yet know what will happen at the trial, or whether a plea bargain will occur in place of the trial. One possibility is that he pleads guilty to the federal charges and accepts life in prison without the possibility of parole for having the death penalty and the state charges taken off the table. If the evidence is solid, that may be the best deal he gets. In that case it would put him in somewhere in a federal prison.
He is a threat to society and when he is convicted should be put in a high security prison.