Would you rather be imprisoned in Gitmo or in a Federal Maximum Security pen?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

For all the talk about how horrible Guantanamo Bay is - and I’m sure it is horrible indeed - I would rather be imprisoned there any day of the week than have to be locked up in a regular old maximum-security prison of the sort that armed robbers and murderers go to.

I don’t think there are prison gangs in Gitmo. There’s no Aryan Nations or Mexican Mafia; there’s no underground economy of drug smuggling and “punks” coerced into sex. I wouldn’t have to worry about being stabbed in the cafeteria because I pissed another prisoner off; I wouldn’t have to worry about trying to align myself with one gang faction or another. I might have to “convert” to Islam to get along with the other inmates, in which case, give me a Koran and point me towards Mecca. At least I wouldn’t constantly be in fear of the other inmates.

To me, it’s the other inmates that are the scariest thing about a prison - not the fact that you’re isolated from society, not the fact that you’re confined to a tiny room, not the fact that you have guards telling you what to do all the time.

What would I have to face at Guantanamo? The uncertainty of when I would be released, for one. Strange sensory-deprivation tactics, for another, and an indeterminate status as a prisoner. But again, I wouldn’t be nearly as afraid of any of that as I would be of being locked up in any maximum-security or even medium-security penitentiary.

#2

I fully expect to see in the news in the months and years ahead from one of the former inmates of Gitmo to say ‘I wish I was back there than here’ rather than in conventional prison.

#3

Insanity, crippling, or death from the torture, for one. Being shipped out to another torture chamber less in the news, for another. Or having your children tortured to make you confess.

#4

I have yet to see any kind of proof that prisoners at Gitmo are more at risk for insanity, injury or death than prisoners at run of the mill maximum or medium security federal or state pens in the US. There are people going crazy in solitary confinement at regular prisons. There are people being beaten, raped, and tortured at regular prisons - just by other inmates, not by guards.

#5

Don’t worry if they don’t we’ll torture them until they do.

#6

I’ll be needing a cite for that.

As to the OP, I’ll take a regular Federal max security pen due to easier access to federal courts.

#7

I wouldn’t want to go to any pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

#8

Wait, wasn’t there something else? Oh yeah, the BEING BRUTALLY TORTURED!!

Sorry, but it’s hard to be lighthearted about the fact that my country, my government, happily and gleefully kidnapped and tortured innocent people. I mean, we can all have fun little debates about the various amenities, as if it were a fucking cruise vacation, and while I don’t mean to minimize things like having your captors at least theoretically accountable to an independent judicial system, but are we really pretending that torturing innocent people is just something to make ‘don’t drop the soap’ wisecracks about?

Or are we just all telling ourselves that really, we did these guys a favor by kidnapping and torturing them – I mean, they’re all from godforsaken hellholes full of dirty brown people anyway; it’s not like they have any loved ones to miss – so that we don’t have to feel so bad about it?