Children Locked Up For Life: 10 Shockers About America's Prison System

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/children-locked-life-10-shockers-about-americas-prison-system



***SNIP



1. Margin of error? A mere technicality to death penalty advocates.

In case you were on the lookout for new and novel government loopholes, here’s one: the “margin of error” excuse. Florida courts declared Freddie Hall “retarded” in both 1992 and 1999. Yet despite the Supreme Court’s 1999 finding in Atkins v. Virginia that executing mentally retarded individuals violates the Eighth Amendment, Hall is still facing the death penalty. That’s because in Atkins the Supreme Court left the process of defining who is mentally retarded up to the states. In Florida, where individuals are required to prove they have an IQ of 70 or below, Hall was found to have an IQ of 71—on a test with a margin of error of 5 points. Last year, the Florida Supreme Court ignored that fact and ruled Hall eligible for execution, but this October, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hall’s appeal. Let’s hope the Supreme Court justices remember more from Introduction to Statistics than that Florida crowd.

2. You can get spider bites like this... and still be refused medical attention.

As if prison weren’t scary enough.

Carolos Archuleta, an inmate in Tuscon, asked repeatedly for medical attention after being bitten by a spider in the groin. Four days later, Archuleta was finally transported to the hospital, where he had to have an emergency operation to remove infected fluid and tissue; he needed to be resuscitated while on the operating table. Other prisoners in Arizona have suffered miscarriages or died of cancer after being denied medical treatment for months or years. A class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU in March 2012 details some of the many instances in which prisoners in the state have endured unnecessary pain, amputation and even death because of inadequate care.


***snip


3. Mass incarceration of children and the elderly.

Shimeek Gridene was only 14 years old when he walked into the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office with his grandparents to give himself up; he and a 12-year-old friend had found a gun under a car and fired it at a local restaurant worker (the injured victim was released from the hospital on the day of the shooting). In 2010, Gridene was tried as an adult, convicted of attempted murder, and subsequently sentenced to 70 years—a hefty sentence for someone barely in high school. This past September the Florida Supreme Court heard Gridene’s case and will rule on whether he qualifies for resentencing under Graham v. Florida.

[Doctor_J]

1. Look at the US prison system and the health care system to see how truly fucked up we are

we're permanently broken by our insistence on profits for every service, and nothing short of mass guillotine parties is going to fix the US

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. 70 years...INSANE

Our entire philosophy of punishment has gone insane. People will look back at our sentencing practices in 100 years the way we look at medieval torture. It's bonkers bananas, and it is all part of the same right-wing/victim's rights/tough on crime/neoliberal complex of Reaganism. We gave up on rehabilitation, which is why we can sentence a 14 year old to 70 years in prison.

By the way, if you believe in the stupid lie of "sociopathology," it is part and parcel of the same nonsense - the pseudo-scientific branch of the tough-on-crime philosophy. If one is a "sociopath," then one can't be "rehabilitated," at which point, 60 years! 80 years! 300 years! Whatever!!

It's pure bullshit - modern-day phrenology to justify the prison industrial complex.