
Solitary confinement: More than a decade after release, they all come back - pmcpinto
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/11/04/solitary-confinement-prisoners-impact/73830286/
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codyb
I'm not sure who the genius was that thought up "23 hours a day in a small
cramped windowless cell, with 1 hour for TV _or_ a shower (according to my
friend, his brother can either watch TV for one hour, or watch for a half hour
and then take a shower as well), that should rehabilitate these people and get
them ready to be productive citizens when they're due for release into
society."

Prison needs to be about rehabilitation, not confinement. That means social
contact, decent meals, exercise, job training programs, in the prison jobs
(cook, librarian, etc), and educational opportunities.

Solitary for confinement for a day or two as "punishment" for transgressions
is perhaps acceptable, but to let people languish in 23 hour in/ 1 hour out
situations for weeks, months, and years is absolutely inhumane.

When we build our nation up (I'm American) from the bottom up, that's when we
become stronger as a society. It's time for the richest nation in the world to
stop letting people fall through the cracks and provide access to the
opportunities and programs that produce so many of the entreprenuers,
scientists, doctors, and inventors we so revere.

Otherwise, fuck it, we may as well just kill 'em when they get there, no?

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fouric
I agree that we need a better system, one that does better at either
rehabilitation or deterrence through punishment, as our current system is bad
at both.

However, we _can 't_ let these types of offenses continue. Altercations in
prison indicate a type of extreme stupidity and/or violence, given that the
offender is committing a crime _while in the punishment stage for another
crime_. Drunken driving kills ~10k a year
([http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impai...](http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impaired-
drv_factsheet.html)) and gang violence kills about the same in Mexico
([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-
america-10681249](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10681249)).
The numbers for drug overdoses (often indirectly caused by said Mexican gangs)
are far higher. Do you really want to let literally tens of thousands of
people in the United States and Mexico lose their lives every year because we
were too soft on the offenders?

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dalke
> Altercations in prison indicate a type of extreme stupidity and/or violence

Your list is incomplete. Altercations also occur when people are stressed.
Push most people enough, strip away humanity and agency, and they will lash
out.

> because we were too soft on the offenders

Being too hard on prisoners has its own downsides. As this essay demonstrates.

The question is, had we treated Adam Morales, Angel Coronado, and the others
more softly, would they still have gone on to the commit crimes that lead them
back to prison?

> we can't let these types of offenses continue

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of evidence that the US style of
being hard on prisoners has your desired goal of reducing the number of deaths
due to drunk driving, as the case of Silvestre Segovia demonstrates.

Therefore, it doesn't seem the hard/soft classification is really relevant.

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jdc
It seems to me the justice system heavily over-relies on negative feedback,
even where its application has been repeatedly proven to be ineffective.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
It also relies on things like eyewitness testimony which has proven quite
unreliable. All in all it is a very dated system that is in serious need of an
upgrade.

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thucydides
You may not have meant it this way, but it is always alarming when people
dismiss the whole of the American justice system as "dated," as if that were a
bug rather than a feature.

On the whole, the American system -- with its ancient safeguards inherited
from the English common law -- does an excellent job at deterring and
ferreting out serious crime while protecting the innocent. The American
criminal law assumes our innocence; tells us the accusations against us; can
only search our bodies, homes, and things with good reason, as decided by an
impartial judge; compels our accusers to face us in open court; prevents
juries from hearing unfairly inflammatory evidence; and generally allows most
of us to live our private lives unmolested.

That's a good foundation.

On the other hand, the American criminal law also imprisons more human beings
than any other law on the planet by an absurd margin, turns poor black areas
into humiliated angry police states, turns marginal offenders into hardened
criminals with sociopathic prisons, accepts prison rape as a mere cost of
doing business, drives people insane with solitary confinement, and, as you
point out, unfairly convicts people on unreliable evidence.

But we can deal with these problems piecemeal while preserving the good.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>does an excellent job at deterring and ferreting out serious crime while
protecting the innocent.

Are we sure we are talking about the same justice system?

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joesmo
I don't think anyone can rationally argue that solitary confinement is not
cruel and unusual. The Supreme Court should be ashamed for having
opportunities to right such an injustice and failing. And all for what? An
"outstanding management tool." Fucking disgusting.

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deelowe
"Tough on crime" sells. "Compassionate towards murderers" does not.

