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niyad

(112,448 posts)
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 02:30 PM Mar 2023

We Never Thought We'd Live To See Gavin Newsom Turning San Quentin Into Norwegian-Style Prison

We Never Thought We'd Live To See Gavin Newsom Turning San Quentin Into Norwegian-Style Prison
Robyn Pennacchia
March 17, 2023 03:30 PM


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commons.wikimedia.org

San Quentin is one of the most notorious prisons in the United States, once home to Charles Manson and — due to the fact that California has not executed anyone since 2006 — home to the largest death row in the nation. But California Governor Gavin Newsom has a different vision for it. The prison will soon close and reopen as a Norwegian-style rehabilitation center to prepare inmates leaving the prison system for life on the outside. Unlike the United States, Norway and other Scandinavian countries have humane prisons, where the punishment is understood to be the loss of their freedom, not that they are not allowed to leave and also required to be miserable in other ways as well. Rather, the focus is on preparing them for life and to be "good neighbors" once they leave prison. They have nice food, pleasant living arrangements — in actual, regular houses, even — and are not treated like human garbage.



. . . . .


As much as we can look at Norwegian prisons and see that they are more effective in terms of lowering recidivism, it's a hard pill for a lot of Americans to swallow, because we're so used to seeing prisons as this incredible, absolutely ruthless vengeance against people who have broken the laws of our nation and potentially hurt innocent people. We're also very committed to the idea that "criminal" is less a status than it is an orientation.There's also the idea that our criminals are a special kind of evil. Like "Oh, that might work for Scandinavia, where the worst thing anyone does is steal someone's else's snowshoes, but not in the United States!" Personally I think Anders Breivik is a pretty bad dude, but what do I know? While we can acknowledge that America has a tendency towards extreme violence, particularly gun violence, it's also worth noting that our prisons are a part of that violence. That people root for prison rape (though thankfully not as much anymore) with cutesy "don't drop the soap" jokes, that we are inured to what goes on in them, that we gripe about "Club Fed" not being horrible enough, that's all a kind of violence. If we don't want to be a society where people are a "special kind of evil," getting rid of state-sponsored violence is a pretty good start.

. . . . . .

An often overlooked factor in our decisions to run prisons the way we do is the effect on the people working as correctional officers inside the prison. Correctional officers have a suicide rate that is seven times the national average, they have PTSD rates as high as veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. When you think about it, it's a horrible thing to do to people. We hear a lot of stories of serious prisoner abuse in the system by correctional officers, but I doubt most of them go into the work thinking "Oh boy, I'm gonna get to beat the shit out of some people and be horrible to them."

"Most of them, when they go in, they want to treat prisoners well," said Shane Bauer, an investigative reporter who spent several months undercover as a CO, "But then you have to face the fact that you’re doing something that is not really within your normal realm of what it means to be a decent human being." And in a lot of areas, prison jobs are the best jobs available. There's a cruelty in that. I don't just hope that this experiment will go well — I know that it will. Because it is based on methods that have actually been proven to work rather than methods that feel like they are supposed to work simply because they scratch an itch for vengeance.

https://www.wonkette.com/we-never-thought-we-d-live-to-see-gavin-newsom-turning-san-quentin-into-norwegian-style-prison
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We Never Thought We'd Live To See Gavin Newsom Turning San Quentin Into Norwegian-Style Prison (Original Post) niyad Mar 2023 OP
Kickin' With Gusto! Faux pas Mar 2023 #1
Thank you. niyad Mar 2023 #7
Good. Lunabell Mar 2023 #2
Exactly. niyad Mar 2023 #8
Endorsing this, and sending a little donation to Wonkette at the same time. NBachers Mar 2023 #3
Thank you. niyad Mar 2023 #9
Judges, I guess, are on board? Don't think I could be Backseat Driver Mar 2023 #4
If you actually read the whole article.... hippywife Mar 2023 #6
The U.S. doesn't rehabilitate people... hippywife Mar 2023 #5
Sadly true. The system here is punitive rather than rehabilitative. niyad Mar 2023 #10
Most of the people I know don't believe anyone CAN be rehabilitated The Mouth Mar 2023 #11
From what I understand, there are some who cannot. .Child predators, rapists, niyad Mar 2023 #12
kick BlueWaveNeverEnd Mar 2023 #13
Thank you. niyad Mar 2023 #14

Backseat Driver

(4,342 posts)
4. Judges, I guess, are on board? Don't think I could be
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 04:18 PM
Mar 2023

convinced this works better while so many live in such distressing poverty, in abuse, with a lack of access to mental health care in the moment, persecution for admitting to being who they are? So when the criminally insane "get well" and a return to medicated on-going health, the court now accepts their mad sense of guilt and accountability, and are gifted with long-term lives in paid hotel-like prisons? What value of harm in the crime quaifies one to be held in this Norwegian prison accommodations of kindness? Youthfulness, life-time total # of points/charges? damage to individual(s)?, to a community? I don't think you can convince me that evil intent and action does not exist nor can be suitably rehabilitated back into society. Great, now criminals once released, have the freedom to live a life that is unpredictably worse than challenging and far more dangerous than that of a predictable catch-all of kindness!

Rather, the focus is on preparing them for life and to be "good neighbors" once they leave prison? And if or when they fail at that?

hippywife

(22,767 posts)
6. If you actually read the whole article....
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 04:51 PM
Mar 2023
...no one can be sentenced to more than 21 years in prison (though in some cases there is an option to renew for 10 year periods) and even that is rare.


We need to do this across the country, and it has to start somewhere. People are just being tossed into terrible inhumane conditions, where many die (or are killed by other inmates, as well as correction officers.) You can't just lock up people without any options. Additionally, there are way too many poor people taking plea bargains when they're innocent. It has to stop!

One of my favorite legal defenders and activists, Bryan Stephenson, covers it very well:

From the last MLK Day celebration (video set to start playing when he speaks, not the whole 4 hours of the day.):

&t=11420s

The Mouth

(3,124 posts)
11. Most of the people I know don't believe anyone CAN be rehabilitated
Fri Mar 24, 2023, 05:18 PM
Mar 2023

Lots of my family in Jefferson CA.

niyad

(112,448 posts)
12. From what I understand, there are some who cannot. .Child predators, rapists,
Fri Mar 24, 2023, 07:49 PM
Mar 2023

for example. True or not, I do not know.

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