Welcome to Terminal Island, baby.
If it were up to me, for some crimes the situation described in the OP is too lenient. A child-murderer, for example, should have a completely gray room with no access to anything. Not a radio, not a book, not a pamphlet. Food slipped thru a slot in the door at irregular intervals. Moved into an identical adjoining cell periodically so the first one could be hosed down and disinfected. And so on.
Agreed, but a lot of them didn’t kill anyone. Some are on 23 hour lockdown for crimes as small as smuggling, they just couldn’t behave in general population.
Now, I say small because it’s in comparison to other violent and unthinkable crimes. I’m by far a tree hugging liberal. I’m actually in favor of the death penalty in most cases. I also think just about all of them need to be there.
My point is that being locked in a 6 x 9 room 23 hours a day for years on end is a little unnecessary in my opinion. Maybe lock them up for…oh…I don’t know…18 hours a day. But 23? That was just my point. Also, I don’t know what they have access to either.
I spent 8 hours in a jail cell once and wasn’t let out the whole 8 hours. Let me tell you, I was about to go fucking insane in just that short time. Maybe it was because I knew I was getting out soon or something, I don’t know. Just not trying to sound like a overly soft pussy, I just think it’s harsh, that’s all. To the other people who are opposed to this, what are some of your ideas for changing this 23 hour a day structure?
I just saw this and think it’s good they are at least trying to segregate the mentally ill ones. It’s ashame it’s not working as well as it should though. Thanks for posting that.
What do you tell the other prisoners?
“Hey guys, we all know that Jones stabs other prisoners when he gets cranky. But we just don’t feel it’s fair to lock him up all the time. So just watch yourselves and if his left eye starts twitching, run away real fast.”
Keep in mind there are hundreds of prisoners living in a prison and we have to protect all of them from each other.
I hope a network executive doesn’t read this.
As for the subject, we need a better system to deal with the mentally ill, but violent criminals are there for a reason. What is the alternative to 23 hour lock down for someone who can’t be controlled in a normal prison?
If I was allowed to go online and read books I think I would be able to deal with it. I would definitely start an “Ask the guy who is on 23 hours a day lockdown” thread.
I think people should remember that it’s possible for the justice system to have made a mistake. Errare humanum est and all that. Sure the prisoner’s been convicted of a truly hienous crime and as such has been placed in a supermax or isolation or whatever, but we should bear in mind the possibility that a mistake has been made. The prisoner might have been framed, for instance; or the defence lawyer incompetent, or any of a number of other things. So a prisoner should be given the opportunity to prove their innocence and the conditions we impose upon them in prison should reflect the possibiity of them being innocent. There’s no point in being proved innocent if you emerge a basket-case.
How we do that I leave to better minds.
Problem being, that’s a direct communication line to the outside, something which in the case of gang leaders and suchlike you definitely do not want. At least in the way you made it with the second sentence, i.e., the guy can’t just get ebooks to read but he actually communicates with others.
Nothing that you’ve quoted or linked to really supports what you’ve said to Shagnasty.
He stated that “you can’t get much more effective at protecting other prisoners, guards, and the general public.” He didn’t say isolation units (SHUs as they are called both in the Federal prison system and California), without reservation, prevent further crime.
All the linked articles just explain how one gang continues to commit crimes despite being in California’s SHU. It does nothing to suggest that we’d be better off if these gang leaders were allowed even more liberty inside prison walls.
One single person you quote does offer the opinion that the brutal nature of SHU’s enhance a gang’s recruiting ability. Which is a worrying statement, not one that makes me think we should get rid of isolation units, but one which makes me wonder why California in particular is so poor at running an isolation unit that gang leaders can actively recruit other inmates inside of an SHU.
What an isolation unit does do is provide the most control possible over inmates. In my hierarchy of concerns when it comes to handling extremely dangerous inmates, it goes like this:
- Society at large
- Corrections officers
- The inmate
I’m not saying the inmate should be totally disregarded, but any inmate that is a consistent violent threat to corrections officers need to be in pretty much permanent lock-down, so that staff can engage the inmate on their own terms and with maximum control. (Even an inmate who is locked down and kept isolated still has some dangerous options; but a well-trained staff and lots of safety procedures combined with total isolation/monitoring make a dangerous job about as safe as it can be.)
In response to this, and:
And:
It’s my opinion that in general long-term isolation should have nothing to do with the prisoner’s crime. I think of course that violent inmates, ones with violent criminal histories, should be housed in higher security institutions. But 23 hours a day lockdown, total-isolation (the “Supermax” approach) should only be used on people who have proven they are a risk to staff and others inside prison walls.
I don’t care if someone is a mass murderer or a drug smuggler, they all deserve the chance to behave in prison. If they do behave, they should be given as much liberty as is feasible inside of a prison (given desired prison jobs, et cetera.) Likewise, no matter how serious or how minor their crime, the ones who have proven themselves a severe risk to staff should be isolated. It isn’t a move that should be done as punishment for crimes outside prison walls, it’s something that should be done as a safety measure for the people inside the prison walls (and in a few exceptional cases, the general public.)
Yes, it is harsh. Yes, it is unpleasant. But corrections officer’s safety has to trump any other concerns, and a person who has repeatedly acted violently towards other prisoners and corrections officers shouldn’t be part of the general population of a prison. This type of isolated housing should be reserved for repeat offenders of violent attacks or people who have committed murders inside a prison (if you do that, it should be one strike and you’re out–other prisoners and corrections officers shouldn’t have to be victimized multiple times before something is done about a homicidal maniac.)
As for the possibility of innocence–if someone is innocent, I suggest they don’t attack staff or other inmates. If they make a habit of that, their innocence of the crime for which they are incarcerated is irrelevant, they are still a safety problem and need to be dealt with as such.
What if we gave them the option of volunteering for the death penalty? If they choose it, win-win. It’s a shame we have to house and feed them for 30-50 years. I’m happy to do so to keep them away from the civilized, but hey, if it’s that bad and they’d prefer the DP as an option, I’m all for it. I’d just add, that if it’s not absolutely miserable, the error would be ours.
This makes a great deal of sense. Prison is the punishment for the original offense, and restrictions within prison come from actions within prison. Where these conditions (23 hr lock down etc) are unacceptable is in particular when they are imposed on prisoners on remand, and when they are imposed because of prison overcrowding/understaffing.
The problem with this, is that fighting in prison is often a necessary thing to do to live. Prison hearings for accused inmates are often no more than simply a rubber stamp for solitary confinement. A person may be attacked, but find themselves punished because they fought, despite the fact it was in self defense.
The whole prison system seems to need reform. I’m not opposed to the Supermax concept as a whole, and see how it might be necessary, but simply increasing the level of incarceration, and the restrictions when incarcerated, doesn’t seem to be the answer.
villa, I’m not sure SuperMax prisons are an attempt to address staffing problems. When a prisoner refuses to cooperate in a SuperMax, the guards have to go pull the inmate out of his cell in numbers. (I’ve seen a few videos were there appears to be 8 or so guards in riot gear to extract a prisoner from a cell. Greater numbers means they can pile on and hold him down while applying the restraints.)
Sorry - I realized after posting that I was squishing certain ideas together. I agree - Supermax is not a response as such to a desire for lower staffing. The sort of conditions, though, including 23 hour lockdown, when imposed in other “regular” prisons, is at times a response to staffing issues. It was, as I think about it, somewhat of a hijack based on overall prison conditions. Similarly - remand prisoners aren’t kept in Supermax institutions (I believe).
To clear up a misconception, we don’t put prisoners in the “box” because of their street crimes. Quite frankly, we don’t care what a prisoner was sent to prison for - that was decided by the court system. We only care about how he behaves in prison. If he murdered twenty schoolchildren but doesn’t cause any problems inside, he’s going to get his TV and yard time. If he breaks our rules he’s going to the box and we don’t care if he’s only in for joyriding.
Actually it works the opposite way. It’s more expensive to put prisoners in isolation units and takes more staff to run those units.
This is what it all boils down to. The man himself has made the choice to act in a way that makes him a threat to others. To put others lives at risk, both guards and prisoners, can’t be allowed by society. And society has made the call to place him behind bars to begin with. Whether that initial judgement is correct or not does not matter. As human beings we each choose how we will act or react to our situation. That is why it is important that each of us as citizens do our part to insure justice is served by sitting on jurys.
To give you an idea of what these individuals are capable of doing to each other.
We had to have one taken to hospital last night, he was attacked with a can of tuna, which had been put in a sock and used as a makeshift cosh.
As a result, the perp himself was attacked later on, very badly beaten up, by the original victims cohort, and all this over a mobile phone.
Some prisoners are simply too dangerous to be placed among the general population, the real risk to the public is that if they serve their time, even in solitary, there will be released, and they haven’t beome any less dangerous.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what else can be done with a person such as this ?
So 23 hour lock down (outside of isolation units) isn’t a staff saving measure? I don’t know if it has happened in the US, but I am pretty certain this happened in the UK penal system at times. Lock down in regular cells, I mean.
No, lock-down units always have more staff per prisoner than general population in my experience.
The problem is that this doesn’t get factored into the sentence. Our judicial system should have some sort of conception such as 20 years of hanging out with people behind walls equals 4 years locked up alone in a cell. Citizens should also be aware of what crimes result in what kind of prisons.
There’s nothing wrong with having different suffering for different crimes. But if it is haphazard, then it is cruel and unusual.