I think all prisoners should get a puppy. I didn’t even have to watch the video to come to this conclusion…its obvious. The US is a bad, bad place…and to begin our reforms, puppies are the very thing.
And a flower.
-XT
Like I said, the deaths and maimings do concern me, but honestly, I don’t know how widespread this problem is, nor the current response levels. This documentary team didn’t really go into that beyond some apparently unsubstantiated claims.
I know. I’m actually pretty familiar with British TV.
Eh. I just found the OMINOUS TONE of the narrator to be waaaaaay over the top.
Wow. I guess I don’t want to go to prison now.
Thanks Britain! Good to know this doesn’t happen in UK prisons.
Yawn…
Are you kidding?!?
Do you know how easy it is to make a shank out of a puppy rib and a flower stalk?
What are you thinking man!
Yeah, maybe they could start a prison dogfighting ring.
From what I saw in the video, Arpaio’s methods didn’t seem to be out of line at all. If Arpaio is vigorous and vigilant in protecting his officers, and allows policies that establish order, then he’s doing his job well, in my opinion.
He’s the guy who got everyone upset for making the inmates wear pink underoos, right?
I’m sure the prisoners wouldn’t abuse either the puppies or the flowers…they (the prisoners…not the puppies or flowers) are simply misunderstood. Or being playful (this could go for the prisoners OR the puppies…probably not the flowers, as I’ve never seen playful flowers).
I’m quite confident in my assessment as its based on emotion…and you can never go wrong when you base an assessment on emotion, or put your faith in the goodness of your fellow man.
-XT
Our prisons are a national disgrace, have been for as long as I remember. They are machines for taking not very good people and turning them to monsters, or prey to monsters. About the only thing Americans hate more than prison inmates is the horrid notion that they may not be suffering enough. Despair.
And maybe foreigners pointing that out. That doesn’t go over too well.
beyond that - nearly every inmate will be out, eventually. Do you honestly think we’ll be safer when they’re released if they were brutalized while incarcerated? Even the baddest of the bad can become badder.
and, additionally - those that do the brutalization and torture - ya think they just turn that off when they come home? I am of the belief that crossing the line into torture diminishes the torturer as well.
Good lord.
I made it as far as 29:48 and the solemnly intoned, “Brian Crenshaw was registered blind”, bound to be yet another sad tale of an inmate tortured, yes, tortured! To death! well, sometimes…maybe By prison guards who can be prosecuted, or sued, for doing it! In a prison that is accountable to the Body Politic! With surveillance cameras recording their every move! In a prison whose officials refuse to speak to strange British camera crews that pop up on their doorstep and request interviews! Except for that Eeeeeeevil Arizona Sheriff, who seems to “relish” giving tours of his facility…
So which is it? You’re mad when they won’t let you in, and when they do let you in, you’re horrified that they seem to enjoy giving you a tour of their workplace…
… before I had to quit, torn between laughter and disgust. It’s frickin’ hilarious, to begin with, this terribly solemn British film crew, doing an expose of American prisons. Hey, when do we get equal time, eh?
And as a piece of conspiracy-theorist yellow journalism, it’s alternately wonderful fun, and exasperating. Oh, no, prison officials refused to meet with us! It’s a conspiracy! Oh, no, if you get drunk in Phoenix on a Satiddy night, they’ll throw you in the tank! And maybe even [gasp of horror] put chains on your wrists! And if you start a fight, oh my dear god, all the depitties will just pile on you!
And didja know that pepper spray use in Florida’s prisons has trebled in the past few years? Fact. Those poor, poor people…
So yeah, that part of it is fun, but the political agenda isn’t. So the Abu Ghraib hearings come up, and suddenly someone decides to dig up the Brazoria incident, and the Frank Valdez incident, and, oh by the way, let’s mention that the Brazoria thing took place while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, like that means anything. Except that it’s fashionable, when you’re constructing a 48 minute British TV special, to throw in a few potshots at GW Bush.
And so they cobble together 48 minutes’ worth of solemnly intoned “expose” that actually doesn’t expose anything at all. The Florida Department of Corrections features the Frank Valdez case prominently on its website. Oh, wait, I thought there was supposed to be a coverup? Oh, you mean, the coverup is in all the abuse cases that aren’t being reported; the fact that the abuse cases that are reported result in the perps being fired, punished, and sometimes fined are mentioned only in passing. The important thing is to get ahold of some more prison officials who will refuse to speak to you.
Oy.
Everything in this video–everything–is slanted so as to make the Big Bad Violent Americans seem even more so to the Teddibly Civilized British audience. “This jail is run by the man who revels in the title 'America’s Toughest Sheriff…” “But…more than a dozen officers, to pull a man out of his cell, fling him on the floor, jumping on top of him…?” One senses the frisson of delicious horror running down the spine of the telly watcher back in Surbiton. “Oooh, those Americans!”
What the comfy suburbanite doesn’t understand is that yeah, when someone is being put in the Tank in Phoenix on a Satiddy night, and acts up, yeah, he gets a pile-on, because the officers don’t know what he’s capable of, he could go batshit crazy and do some real damage.
I bet you any money you like this same sort of thing goes on in British prisons.
At 23:22, she mentions that a schizophrenic guy who was “uncooperative” and who was put in “The Chair” (that evil instrument of the Spanish Inquisition, which apparently nobody in Britain expects anymore, judging by the narrator’s obvious horror), died later–her voice drops away–“from a blood clot”–but hey, the important thing is, he was in jail! And he died!
At 22:52, she says ominously, “But here’s the taser as punishment”. And they show a guy lying on a hospital gurney, not handcuffed, with a deputy approaching with a taser. And you think, “OMG, they’re going to taser that guy! Deliberately! And he’s just lying there, helpless!” But then she says, “This prisoner is stunned several times because he won’t get into a wheelchair…” So they render him partially limp and put him in the wheelchair. Then when he refuses to use his walking frame, just lies there on the floor, he’s tasered again. Um, yeah, if the depitties ask you to get up and move, and you don’t, you get, like, punished. It’s supposed to be, like, an incentive. Even animals understand “avoidance of pain” as a motivation.
And then, she intones, “Amnesty International has linked tasers to 70 deaths in North America in the last four years.” And–brace yourself–here comes the conspiracy: “Although drink, drugs, or heart attacks are often the official cause of death…”
So I went and googled “amnesty international tasers”.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR511392004
Thank you.
Deborah Davies is a reporter for Channel 4. After this, she moved on to some other project. So it’s not personal for her, not a labor of love. It was just another 48 minute TV show, constructed in order to sell advertising.
Dnooman, what’s your purpose here? I hope it’s to poke fun at a muckraking tabloid TV special posing as journalism, 'cause if so, I’m in.
Oh, yes. There is. Why go out of your way to tie it in to Abu Ghraib? Why bother to mention that Brazoria happened when GW was guv of Texas? The subtext is clear: Oh those crazy, violent, uncivilized Americans, who use pepper spray on people. Which we civilized British don’t, er, well, at least, not unless we’re the Sussex Police Department. Or, er, the North Wales Police. Or, er, the Lancashire Police.
When can we look forward to an equivalent expose of, say, Canadian prisons? Answer: never. The phrase “Vancouver Police” doesn’t have near the cachet that “Arizona Sheriff” does.
Police need better Taser training.
Canada’s federal prison guards to test stun guns this year
Bolding mine. Pepper spray forms a major component of Ms. Davies horror-show script, probably because she couldn’t get any footage of guards torturing prisoners with the Chinese water torture.
Looking forward to seeing grainy security camera footage of drunks being tortured by pepper spray in the Moose Jaw lockup.
No kidding. Does this thread offer college credit or something?
Appalling video, though certainly understandable reading some of the disgraceful comments on here.
’luc, I’m afraid and saddened a the same time, that you’ve once gain hit the nail right on the head. I honestly don’t understand what’s happened to your country over my lifetime.
In Spain of course all prisoners get a puppy and a flower. They are much more civilized over there.
-XT
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say-- do you think prisons were better in the US 50 years? I doubt it.
Look, we’re all pretty familiar with prison abuse. Believe it or not, we actually have some news outlets here in the colonies that have reported on it. Imagine that! It’s true, too-- you can read about it on the internets.
Sorry, but this thread gets filed under R.O.
I am ashamed of brutalities commited in Spain because they are committed by humans. I take brutalities commited by Americans rather more personally. YMMV.
So you think things in American prisoners were more civilized back in the days of Alcatraz? Really?
So I went and actually finished watching the rest of this blather, and it seems that this documentary has a few main points, all of which we are supposed to conflate into the idea that our prisons are hell incarnate.
- A few alarming cases of guards going well beyond the bounds of normal or accepted behavior. When it was discovered what they did, they were disciplined, fired or brought up on charges.
- Tasers, pepper spray and tear gas are used in order to subdue inmates who fight or do not comply with orders given by officers.
- Prisons are overcrowded. Methods like Arpaio’s tent city are used to handle overcrowding, but the inmates don’t like being in tents.
- Cops stick together and don’t like internal snitches.
- Some prisons in Florida don’t allow camera crews to go on a tour. (I love the insinuation that there is some massive cover-up going on because a guard is calling his boss to see if the camera crew is allowed to film)
Did I miss something? Is any of this new, or terrifying? Perhaps the thing which I find the most ridiculous, and the documentary returns to over and over again, is the taser/ pepper spray deal. There’s no question that prisoners get into fights with each other, and disobey the requests of the guards. What should the response be when a pair of guys (who may or may not be chartered accountants on the outside,) start whaling on each other?
Do officers should just start punching the inmates to stop them. No? Okay, then officers should let the inmates fight it out. Still bad? How about lethal force, if (mostly) non-lethal options aren’t allowed? What options are left to the guards, other than perhaps distributing peer-mediation manuals to every inmate upon arrival?
For the record, I’ve been pepper sprayed. It sucks. It’d sure stop me from fighting, or from disobeying someone.
Fuck-off once and for all, you fascist xenophobic (funny that, being a first generation Latino-American) prick!
kid,
I wasn’t speaking merely about your prisons (although I am sure fifty years ago, you didn’t house the largest population of inmates IN THE WORLD. Police state, anyone?) but the overall hardening of your society – it’s becoming more and more about ME, ME, ME…and fuck the rest.