Sure, I have no problem going after the employees who cause problems. In hospitals or in prisons.
But there’s a difference between saying that a bad doctor hurts his patients and hospitals, as a system, cause disease. Most people understand that hospitals, as a system, do not cause disease. The reason hospitals are full of disease is because sick people congregate there not because hospitals make the people inside them sick.
People need to have the same awareness of prisons. Prisons, as a system, do not cause crime. The reason hospitals are full of sick people is because sick people congregate there not because hospitals make the people inside them sick. The reason prisons are full of crime is because people who commit crimes congregate there not because prisons make the people inside into criminals.
And just like hospitals put a lot of effort into reducing diseases, prisons put a lot of effort into reducing crimes. I don’t think people appreciate how constant that effort is and how much resources are devoted to that end.
And yet they do- until efforts were made to prevent transfer of illness from one patient to another hospitals caused disease all the time. From birthing bed fever to MRSA, going to the hospital carries risk of becoming sicker because hospitals had bad policies that resulted in people getting diseases they wouldn’t have, had they not gone.
No analogy will be perfect, but the idea holds. Bad prison policies, like dehumanizing prisoners and treating them like scum, looking the other way at prison violence, denying them access to education, and indulging the narrative that these people are unredeemable and are already bad makes people into worse criminals when they are paroled.
Before we go any further, I’d like to know where we stand.
Let’s not look back before the era of Semmelweis and Pasteur. Let’s look at hospitals in this century.
Do you feel that hospitals as a whole represent a net positive for public health, a net negative for public health, or a net neutral for public health? In other words, if I snapped my fingers and made every hospital and hospital employee disappear, do you feel the results would be more sick people would exist, less sick people would exist, or the same amount of sick people would exist?
Try to state your opinion clearly.
To play fair, I’ll answer my own question. I feel that hospitals are a net positive for public health and if hospitals and hospital employees all disappeared the result would be more sick people would exist.
Are you saying the conditions you describe would be a problem if they generally existed in the American prison system? Or are you saying the problems you describe do generally exist in the prison system? Again, I am talking about the American prison system that exists in 2022.
Again, I will ask that you state your opinion clearly and I will provide my own answer to the question. I will state that the conditions you describe do not generally exist in the American prison system. I base this on my own extensive experience and personal observations of the workings of the American prison system.
Our big losses (which I was happy about about) were suits brought by the ACLU and the federal Dept. of Justice. Those were the plaintiffs in the cases directed against us in particular, the results of which brought relatively rapid change and resources.
Several court rulings directed at other state correctional systems did make for a few minor proactive changes, with some folks in legislative power smart enough to give in without fighting a losing battle and spending tons of money in the process. But more often, the attitude of the legislature is to give ground only grudgingly, when forced to.
And the legislature will tend to give in only just so far as they must. One court loss resulted in some excellent reforms in our women’s prison system. The logical next step would be to extend those reforms to the men’s system (10+ x larger and far more expensive of course) but the court decree did not mandate that, so that didn’t occur.
With respect and admiration for the good people in this thread who work in “corrections”, it’s also true that, as in any field, there are good people, bad people and in-between. There are people with deep philosophies about the work they do (sometimes contradictory to the philosophy of their coworkers), and there are those who ultimately are punching in and punching out.
I’ve had some disturbing conversations with people who work in prisons, not only because of the abuses they report inmates inflict upon each other, but also because of the indifference bordering on humor/voyeuristic glee that these folks clearly have towards the lowlifes’ and degenerates’ abuses. People on the outside get to feel better about themselves for not being as twisted as the prisoners, while pointing and going “look at that, that’s just how these people are!”
And, working in prison probably exacerbates negative and unhealthy attitudes among staff.
What terrifies me about prison is not other inmates, but rather the degree to which my safety and security would be at risk on a daily basis by any professional in the process who has just decided that they don’t care that much today, or that whatever happens is probably inevitable or deserved (let alone those who might enjoy even a little the fact that those convicted get a little extra suffering).
most staff would rather work anywhere else if they could
everyone, prisoners and staff, are miserable
the reform and corrections portion of the system is failing
both staff and inmates agree that the prison is under-resourced and maintaining systems that harm both staff and inmates
It supports a lot of what @Qadgop_the_Mercotan has been saying- that underfunded and undersupported prisons can lead to all sorts of issues down stream, even with skilled and well-intentioned staff.
…America has the most incarcerated people per capita in the world.
If you were to snap your fingers right now and reduced the prisoner population in the United States by half, you would still have twice as many people incarcerated (per capita) than they do in Australia.
Do I think the industrial prison complex is a net negative in America? You betcha.
I am talking about hospitals in this century. The Institute of Medicine in 2004 identified medical errors as one of the leading causes of unavoidable deaths in the US and that those deaths are frequently attributed to systemic failures, not just individual mistakes. Those errors include not enforcing best practices (such as wiping down a stethoscope between patients, which can spread MRSA) or oppressive hierarchal structures (that prevent members of the medical team from being able to question doctors when they think a mistake is about to happen, such as amputating the wrong leg), to avoiding labeling different doses of drugs with similar packaging to avoid dosing errors.
The point was asserted that we don’t blame hospitals for having sick people so we shouldn’t blame prisons for having criminals.
I countered that we do blame hospitals for having sick people when the policies and procedures result in sickness that would have not happened if they hadn’t gone to the hospital. We also recognize that some long-term hospitals (such as psychiatric and addition rehab) absolutely did have horrible policies, and yes, in late 20th century, which absolutely caused harm.
The analogy is that prisons have criminals, yes, but that dehumanizing policies can make them even worse criminals. The absence of real rehabilitation and not enforcing good policies to avoid abuse, prisoners leave our care worse than they came. And that we can implement systems approaches to do better.
So, to answer your direct question, yes, I think hospitals do a lot of good but also do real harm by negligence or design, but not with intent. When those bad policies are identified the hospitals do better and outcomes better match intent.
FWIW, this is my area of study and I’ve spent a 20+ year career teaching and studying how medical training can minimize excess hospital errors that make people sicker. I think the same approach, which the same goal of not making criminals worse when they leave the prison system would benefit from a systems analysis.
That’s all in accordance with my observations, for sure.
And even the best intentioned staff needs support, counselling, ongoing training and consideration when they’re chronically lied to, manipulated, cursed at, sued by, and otherwise demeaned, and having inmates trying to compromise them. Now that comes from far less than 10% of the people in our custody, but those are the ones we notice, remember, get angry and resentful towards, lose sleep over at night, grind our teeth when we see that name on our schedule, etc.
Without that support and help, staff tends to become burnt out, anxious, hostile, and generally regretful of their career choice. And some become bad at their jobs, and some become worse than that.
I do not regret my choice to serve a very medically underserved population. I did more actual good health-wise for inmates than I would have been able to do for a private practice population where I would have been doing more ‘worried well’ care than meaningful interventions. But I’m glad I’m done with it.
I think society is worse off if people come out of prison in worse shape than they went in.
This includes people that get brutalized, people that get better at brutalizing and people that become accustomed to overlooking brutalization.
As a nurse, I support a sentencing enhancement for crimes that betray public trust, but that would be through due process, not something willy-nilly that rewards brutalizers.
So how do we ensure that cops who abuse their power don’t get cushier sentences than other assault/battery offenders simply because they’re cops? That would be an absolute miscarriage of justice.
For all your supercilious talk about “the rest of the plan”, you don’t seem to have much of a plan to account for that.
Here’s the plan as I see it:
Former-police convicts do not get special treatment.
If former-police convicts are singled out for violence, then they can be sent to “special custody” (solitary) as is done for prisoners in similar situations.
If we have too many cops in solitary because prisons are too violent, then we fix prison violence. If this is a real problem, then certainly there must be some sort of prison-reform movement composed of formerly-incarcerated cops who can provide the necessary moral leadership.
Only after all those steps fail do we even consider giving taking special steps to grant a privileged level of protection to former-police convicts.
What is “the rest of your plan” for ensuring that cops who abuse their power don’t get cushier sentences than other assault/battery offenders simply because they’re cops?
I mean, if you can badger someone else for a complete accounting of all the knock-on effects of an opinion, surely you’re prepared to share “the rest of your plan?”
I find this dichotomy a repeated theme in dealing with social issues- which side of the equation do we prioritize?
In this example, some worry that LEO getting treated worse is the bigger problem; others worry that getting treated better is the worse problem. I’d rather risk that they get a somewhat “cushier” sentence if it means they won’t be unduly abused. Others are willing to risk undue abuse to avoid a “cushier” sentence.
It like the people who worry more about stopping welfare fraud even if it means some eligible can’t access benefits, while others are ok with some fraud if it means fewer eligible people miss out.
Well, rehabilitation is obviously not a part of the rest even if they even have any plan in the first place. I’ve always believed that there are individuals that have to be removed from society, but turning them into even more hardened and vicious criminals is pretty darn counter productive in terms of making our society a safer place to live. When I point that out to hard liners, their “solution” is to greatly expand the use of capital punishment. Apparently, they find killing the patient to cure the disease a logical and acceptable methodology.
OP is suggesting that one’s position isn’t really valid unless they have a solution for every single knock-on effect of that position.
I am merely suggesting that if OP doesn’t apply the same rigor to his own positions, then “what’s the rest of your plan” is not the gotcha he seems convinced that it is.
I don’t see the OP suggesting that not having having every detail worked out is the problem. I see him doing the thought experiment that people haven’t thought of the implications of their positions, and offered up some implications to highlight the short sightedness of what they’re suggesting.
Eh… not so much. He’s inventing a lot of stuff that "have to be accounted for.
If he can demand stupid nonsequiturs like that, then what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Specifically, I want to know if he plans to create a special snowflake jail to protect the police who violated the public trust, and if he’s thought through the incentives created by the fact that police know they’ll be sent to an easier, safer jail than the citizens they’re arresting.