America Is A Terrible Country

[Kim]

High Security Unit (HSU) was a “control” unit for women within the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky. In the less than two years that the HSU was operational it became a focus of national and international concern over human rights abuses.
It was opened in 1986 by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). This special unit of 16 isolation cells was sealed off in a basement from the other prisoners. Reports from different human rights organization including Amnesty International brought the attention to the existence of the unit and the inhumane treatment of prisoners.

The HSU prisoners lived in constant artificial lights 24 hours a day. Personal property was forbidden. Twenty four hours camera and visual surveillance recorded every activity. There were periods when the guards experimented with sleep deprivation: waking the prisoners every hour during the night. When prisoners filed complaints, the guards started waking them every half hour. Contact with the outside world was sharply restricted: Visitations were limited. There were frequent cavity searches done by male guards considered “constant sexual harassment” by the reports.

In August 1987, Dr. Richard Korn, a clinical psychologist and correctional expert issued a report for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. Dr. Korn concluded that HSU was designed to force “ideological conversion”.

A report by the United Methodist Church concluded that the extreme isolation of the unit was cruel and unusual punishment. A 38 page report by Amnesty International said that the HSU was violating the international standards of treatment of prisoners.

A lawsuit was filed in behalf of prisoners Silvia Baraldini and Susan Rosenberg. It challenged regulations that allowed the isolation of prisoners based on their political beliefs or affiliations. Judge Parker said in his ruling that: ‘“The treatment of the plaintiffs has skirted elemental standards of human decency. The exaggerated security, small group isolation and staff harassment serve to constantly undermine the inmates’ morale.” He ordered the Bureau of Prisons to rewrite its regulations and transfer the prisoners into the general prison population .

In response to mounting opposition the Bureau of Prisons closed the facility in 1988.

The facility never housed more than six women. They were officially labeled “high risk,” though none of them was convicted of a “violent” act while in prison.Some of them were chosen because of their radical political beliefs:

Marie Haydée Beltrán Torres: Puerto Rican activist indicted for the 1977 bombing of the Mobil Oil Building in Manhattan.
Silvia Baraldini: She was active in both the Black Power and Puerto Rican independence movements in the United States in the 1960s thru 1980s.
Susan Rosenberg: A former member of the weather underground (sentence commuted by presidential order in 2001).
Alejandrina Torres: A former member of FALN (granted clemency by President Clinton in 1999).

Source

I want to destroy every prison. Regular prisons are fucking awful enough in so many ways, but that this happened is just fucking infuriating and I want to find every fucking "patriot" in the nation and rub their nose in this as some would a dog to it's own shit.

[Krylo]

[Amake]

[Locke cole]

Who the hell authorized this?

[synkr0nized]

ITT: An article -- well, more correctly, a Wikipedia entry about an historical event -- shows how an awful place was shown to be awful by concerned groups and then shut down accordingly after two years of operation.

[stefan]

Fun fact: There are countless for-profit prisons in the United States that have all but openly admitted to being, essentially, slave labor camps. There's more than a few documentary shots of inmates working literal cotton fields that looks like something out of a fucking pre-CW period piece.

The US has essentially become a modern Rome in every worst possible way, and the prison system is more or less a perfect example of it.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

ITT: An article -- well, more correctly, a Wikipedia entry about an historical event -- shows how an awful place was shown to be awful by concerned groups and then shut down accordingly after two years of operation.

An awful place used as a test facility for ideological brainwashing and torture for political prisoners, approved by the federal government and was only shut down because it was found out and there was a response to it. There were no major punishments for those responsible so far as I can see, no meaningful lessons learned by those in power, and what's more the government TO THIS DAY continues to violate international standards for prisoner treatment and violate its own laws regarding prisoners. And all of this is in addition to the fact that prison facilities are themselves awful, horrible systems that accomplish almost nothing worthy of praise, do more harm than any alleged good, and are a major part of modern day oppression of minorities.

Fun fact: There are countless for-profit prisons in the United States that have all but openly admitted to being, essentially, slave labor camps. There's more than a few documentary shots of inmates working literal cotton fields that looks like something out of a fucking pre-CW period piece.

For-profit prisons are some of the fucking grossest bullshit we allow in this country.

[Amake]

Re. synk, personally, I'm more for tearing down all the prisons. But then again, if we wait long enough to do that - thirty years or so I think? - then it will be physically difficult to distinguish between those and the United States.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Kim

An awful place used as a test facility for ideological brainwashing and torture for political prisoners, approved by the federal government and was only shut down because it was found out and there was a response to it. There were no major punishments for those responsible so far as I can see, no meaningful lessons learned by those in power, and what's more the government TO THIS DAY continues to violate international standards for prisoner treatment and violate its own laws regarding prisoners. And all of this is in addition to the fact that prison facilities are themselves awful, horrible systems that accomplish almost nothing worthy of praise, do more harm than any alleged good, and are a major part of modern day oppression of minorities.

It sounds like you have a better argument here, but the OP as it stands doesn't really say much other than "Look at this piece of shit that happened in the eighties. Let's write off the whole nation because of it."

For example, I know there have been a couple, if not more, specials on national news series/shows that have gone into prisons and dug into what it's like for inmates. It's not pretty.


Amake: What would be the alternative solution for crime, then?
No, that's not an attempt to say that prisons are the solution, but as it stands now culturally we seek out punishment and correction for those who have broken our laws. Something has to happen to see that justice is served. If it's not right to use prisons -- which considering the general stereotype of prisons and the actual facts of many prison situations it's not -- it needs to be some kind of facility or program. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume a large number of the population is opposed to the idea of criminals just hanging out at home or whatever after being found guilty. I would say this then runs into the same problem that makes prisons so awful: resources. No one is spending appropriate resources into a proper correctional program, instead making it more a focus on punishment, treating inmates like shit regardless of what they are in for, or in the wort cases trying to turn a profit off of incarceration, as noted already.
So let me go back to the question: What would you propose (or, if you prefer, have you read that others have proposed or implemented)? Then, realistically, is that a viability for the US?

[Krylo]

Psychological and psychiatric treatment and humane correction with the intention of reintegration into society and/or a better understanding of what drives people to commit various crimes, rather than base revenge.

I mean, just ball parking here.