How about smaller square footage per prisoner?

Let's take a look at what Human Rights Watch seems so bent out of shape about:

Quote:

Prisons remained overcrowded in 2000: twenty-two states and the federal prison system operated at 100 percent or more of their highest capacity. Overcrowding contributed to the growth of private prisons: according to the Department of Justice privately-operated facilities held 5.5 percent of all state prisoners and 2.5 percent of federal prisoners.

I am willing to bet that if you actually polled the american people on what constitutes "overcrowding", rather than merely accepting the definition of the bleeding hearts crowd at Human Rights Watch these numbers would drop dramatically

Quote:

Most inmates had scant opportunities for work, training, education, treatment or counseling because of taxpayer resistance to increasing the already astonishing U.S. $41 billion spent annually on corrections and because of the prevailing punitive ideology that applauds harsh prison conditions. Idle inmates with long sentences, little hope of early release (and hence little incentive for good behavior) and jammed into poorly equipped facilities, sometimes became violent: in 1998 (the most recent year for which data was available), fifty-nine inmates were killed by other inmates, and assaults, fights, and rapes left 6,750 inmates and 2,331 correctional staff injured seriously enough to require medical attention. Rivalry and tension between race-based prison gangs lay behind many individual assaults and sometimes escalated into violent riots.

Finally! Liberals that understand (although disagree with) the fact that our incarceration system is not based on rehabilitation, but punishment. Consider the absurdity of a group whose name purports to be about human "rights" concerning itself with the work and recreational opportunities for people who have--subject to some of the most stringent procedural due process in human history--been found guilty of crimes and are being punished!

Quote:

Men in prison were subject to prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, whose effects on the victim's psyche were serious and enduring. Inmate victims reported nightmares, deep depression, shame, loss of self-esteem, self-hatred, and considering or attempting suicide. Victims of rape, in the most extreme cases, were literally the slaves of the perpetrators, being "rented out" for sex, "sold," or even auctioned off to other inmates. Despite the devastating psychological impact of such abuse, few if any preventative measures were taken in most jurisdictions, while perpetrators were rarely punished adequately by prison officials.

Gee, prison sucks. I wonder how many truly effective and low-cost prevention methods (like keeping them locked in their cells except for meals and bathing, would diminish such abuse?

Also, the complaints about perpetrators not being "punished adequately" seems a bit hollow given that these people already seem to think prison is to harsh a punishment for ANYONE who is there, let alone the prison-rapists.

Quote:

Over twenty thousand prisoners were confined in special super-maximum security facilities in 2000. They typically spent all their waking and sleeping hours locked alone or with a cellmate in small sometimes windowless cells from which they were released for only a few hours each week for solitary recreation or showers. Super-max prisoners had almost no access to educational or recreational activities or other sources of mental stimulation and were handcuffed, shackled and escorted by officers whenever they left their cells. Although super-max confinement was ostensibly designed to control incorrigibly violent or dangerous inmates, many inmates so confined did not meet those criteria. An inmate committed suicide at the super-max in Ohio in April, the third suicide since it opened in 1998, while draconian rules and restrictions prompted a prolonged hunger strike at the super-max in Illinois. Inmates at Wisconsin's new super-max prison filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the conditions to which they were subjected, including round-the-clock confinement in isolation, constant fluorescent lighting in their cells, twenty-four hour video monitoring that permitted female staff to watch prisoners shower and urinate, and inadequate recreation.

I bet the aforebemoaned sexual abuse is alot less in SuperMax, but as predicted, Human Rights Watch manages to complain nonetheless. As for the hunger strike, if those criminals want to starve themselves in protest, isn't that their "human right"? What we should force feed them?


Reports of frequent incidents of physical abuse, racial harassment and excessive use of force continued at Virginia's two super-maximum security prisons. Between January and June 2000, two inmates -- who had both been transferred from Connecticut -- died at one of these prisons, Wallens Ridge State Prison. One of the deaths was a suicide; the other occurred after the inmate had been stunned several times with a 50,000 volt electronic stun device and left in five-point restraints. New Mexican inmates transferred to Wallens Ridge in 1999 complained of gratuitous and malicious physical abuse by prison guards, including beatings and shocks from electric stun devices. In January 2000, the Federal Bureau of Investigation initiated a preliminary investigation into their claims at the request of the New Mexico attorney general.

Gee, some prison guards abuse their power, but according to their own site, these are being investigated by the FBI.

So what? Whatever it takes to subdue unruly inmates with the least potential risk for the guards. I for one would have no problem with them using real bullets to subdue prisoners who get out of hand.

Quote:

A fourteen month long Department of Justice investigation of conditions at Nassau County Jail resulted in a scathing report released in September 2000. The report said the jail had an "institutional culture that supports and promotes abuses." The documented abuses included brutal beatings by officers and officers paying inmates to beat other inmates, especially targeting sex offenders.

Bet this would be much more difficult at those SuperMax prisons they complain about, hard to have inmates abuse one another when they are all in solitary.

Quote:

Hampered by lack of counsel, inadequate access to legal materials and legal restrictions on inmate litigation, prisoners rarely obtained judicial relief against abusive officers, though some did. In March 2000, a county jail in Oregon paid $1.75 million to settle an excessive force lawsuit brought by an inmate who had been strapped into a restraint chair, doused with large amounts of pepper spray and subjected to choke holds. He lapsed into a coma for 71 days and suffered permanent brain damage. Criminal prosecution of brutal correctional officers was rare, and convictions in such cases even rarer. In February 2000, four guards from Florida State Prison were indicted on murder charges in connection with the July 1999 beating death of Frank Valdez. An autopsy revealed that all his ribs had been broken and there were boot marks imprinted on his body. The guards contended that Valdes injured himself. They were awaiting trial at this writing. In California, eight prison guards were acquitted in June of federal charges that they staged gladiator-style fights among inmates at Corcoran State Prison. Similarly, in November 1999, four Corcoran guards were acquitted of setting up the rape of an inmate by a notoriously violent prisoner. Independent investigations and state legislative hearings in 1998 confirmed a pattern of brutality at Corcoran and the failure of the Department of Corrections to investigate abuses and discipline those responsible. In both court cases, the authorities faced the daunting tasks of breaking through officer solidarity and a code of silence, and of prosecuting prison guards before juries drawn from the rural communities in which the guards lived-and in which prisons were a major source of employment. Over 100,000 children in the United States were confined in juvenile facilities. Many of them faced appalling conditions of abuse and neglect. In South Dakota, a class action suit was brought challenging widespread physical abuses against girls detained at the State Training School. The suit charged that guards routinely shackled youths in spread-eagled fashion after cutting off their clothes, sprayed them with pepper spray while naked, and routinely placed them in isolation for twenty-three hours each day for extended periods. Although the state government conducted an investigation of juvenile detention facilities in 1999, it did not implement any reforms to end abusive policies and practices.

I have absolutely no problem with increasing prosecution for those in positions of power who abuse that power, but I would also severly limit any tort actions available to inmates.


The distinctions I would draw with regard to the incarceration and handling of minors are too substantial to go into here, but I do have somewhat differing views on that from those I hold on the incarceration and punishment of adults

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Isn't this a heartwarming story ?

Of a society that values it's children, it's next generation, SO much that it releases demons like this back into the main population to carry out more molestations and even torture and killing ?

I love it !

Don't you love it ?

Watching a large and powerful society of humans enter and STAY in a self destruct mode ? Awesome fun watching. Maybe they'll put the video of him sadistically molesting and killing this boy on youtube.
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Idaho Boy Tortured by Pedophile Could Have Been Saved

A boy who was kidnapped, tortured and shot by Joseph Edward Duncan III likely suffered excruciating pain before his death, a forensic pediatrician told jurors Wednesday.

...presentation of a taped interview in which Shasta Groene, 8 at the time, related grim details of Duncan's sexual abuse and slaying of her older brother, Dylan. Groene, who also said she was sexually abuse and tortured, ...

Cooper said the description of the boy's injury — he was eviscerated, his sister said, with his "guts" hanging out — indicated it was "a very potentially salvageable injury."

Duncan pleaded guilty in December to 10 federal counts in the 2005 kidnapping of the Coeur d'Alene-area children and the murder of the boy. A jury must decide whether Duncan should be executed or spend life in prison without parole.

"How much in your experience do children tend to elaborate or exaggerate and fill in details ... especially after a traumatic experience like that?" Duncan asked.

Children who exaggerate are typically much younger, between 4 and 6, and lack the vocabulary to describe what happened to them, Cooper said.

Duncan asked whether the "guts" mentioned by the girl could have been RamDon noodles the boy had eaten earlier.

Cooper said that was unlikely because chewed-up noodles wouldn't look like intestines. Besides, she told the jury, food would spill out of an abdominal wound only if the stomach also had been pierced.

Later in the morning, FBI Agent Mike Stoke told the jury he found a piece of Dylan Groene's skull at the campsite. Some jurors covered their mouths and looked down as the fragment, contained in a plastic evidence envelope, was displayed in court.

Jurors also were told by FBI firearms expert John Web that he could not get the shotgun with which the boy was shot to fire accidentally in "drop tests." Web added that the shotgun required five pounds of pressure on the trigger to fire.

Duncan bludgeoned to death the children's older brother, mother and her fiance at their home before abducting the pair in May 2005, setting off a nationwide manhunt. Duncan has pleaded guilty in state court to the killings at the house.

While it is The Associated Press' policy not to identify victims of sexual assault in most cases, the search for Shasta and Dylan Groene was so heavily publicized that their names are widely known.

Duncan, formerly from Tacoma, Wash., has a long string of arrests and convictions for crimes ranging from car theft to rape and molestation. He is suspected in the slayings of two half-sisters from Seattle in 1996 and is charged with killing a young boy in Riverside County, Calif., in 1997.

FOXNews.com - Doctor: Idaho Boy Tortured by Pedophile Could Have Been Saved - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News
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Jim Nelson Black, in his book When Nations Die, identified ten factors that bring about a civilization's collapse. Read this list and think.

• Increase in lawlessness

• Loss of economic discipline

• Rising bureaucracy

• Decline in education

• Weakening of cultural foundations

• Loss of respect for traditions

• Increase in materialism

• Rise in immorality

• Decay of religious belief

• Devaluing of human life

[ Kerby Anderson, "The Decline of a Nation," Probe Ministries, Home - Probe Ministries ]

This Duncan creep, and many creeps just like him that we've released, is just one of the symptoms of a civilization in decline.

This demon can be killed:
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BOISE -- A jury needed just three hours to decide confessed child killer Joseph Duncan deserves to die for the kidnapping and murder of 9-year-old Dylan Groene.

Verdict: Death for Joseph Duncan | Top Stories | KREM.com | News for Spokane, Washington
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Excellent.

I'll be sure and party the day they put him away.

What's scary is three more will pop up when he's put down. And we'll keep letting them out of jail for minor molestations. Then they can graduate to this.

And we'll still be baffled