Video...how America treats its prisoners(Texas style).....Warning graphic

[ElsewheresDaughter]

and some wonder how Abu Graibh happenedhappened eh?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1/2prison.wmv

[BlueEyedSon]

1. watched the first 5 minutes, Abu Graihb fits right in with GWB's MO in TX

[sui generis]

2. the prison lobby and system is fucked up

There are certainly people who deserve to be in jail, but when guards start beating people to death, then you have a system where the penalty for tax evasion is death.

We love the idea of punishment . . . for everyone but the guards, who seem to get away with whatever they want. And because these systems are as subsidized (when private) or entrenched in their own dusty bureaucracies, the only kind of changes they'll do are cost cutting.

The scariest part is that the prison system not only attracts prisoners, but attracts people who should themselves be in prison. I have no delusions about the kind of physical aggression it takes to keep a rampaging 300 pound street fighter from killing someone, but to use those same tactics against a scrawny kid or someone who you just don't like IS criminal.

Spraying pepper spray that permanently scars your skin is also permanently scarring your lungs. Nice - I don't recall any punishment in the judiciary for criminal disposition that calls for scarring your lungs, especially if prisoners aren't allowed to smoke because of the health risks.

These people are sick - I would routinely flush them down the sewer where they belong. Absolute power attracts people who are absolutely corruptible.

[MN ChimpH8R]

3. Sickening

only watched the first few minutes. That was more than enough. Boy, Chimpy's 'murikkka sure is a great country. :sarcasm: :banghead:

was that originally sourced from the BBC?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

4. yes it is a BBC report

[Asgaya Dihi]

5. Yep

That's why I've been trying to tell you guys what's happening with the drug war. As shocking as that video is, put it in context with this.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0601-01.htm

We not only have a system like that, but even the nations we call "despots" or worse don't have more locked up per capita than we do, or in raw numbers. We're the world leader in this. Not a statistic I'm proud of.

[usregimechange]

6. Nominated for the greatest page, kick

[usregimechange]

7. Everybody needs to watch this. When did BBC air it?

[usregimechange]

8. He looks bad, officer, "who gives a fuck" = dead inmate.

[Ruffhowse]

9. Chilling....thanks for the link.

[Asgaya Dihi]

10. Some details on the system

Here's a few details on the prison system for you guys since this seems a suitable thread for it. I'll source each set of details with the links following them so you can verify them for yourselves.

Rising Incarceration Despite Falling Crime Rates – Despite falling crime rates since 1991, the rate of incarceration in prison has increased by 51% since that time. These dynamics suggest that the rise in imprisonment is due to changes in policy that have increased the amount of time that offenders are serving in prison, and not crime rates. An examination of the rise of imprisonment from 1992 to 2001 concluded that the entire increase was a result of changes in sentencing policy and practice. These include such measures as “three strikes,” mandatory sentencing, and “truth in sentencing.” From 1995 to 2001, the average time served in prison rose by 30%.

Federal Prison System Leads Growth – The federal prison system continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, increasing 5.1% between midyear 2003 and 2004 to a total of 179,210 prisoners. The number of federal prisoners in custody has nearly doubled (98%) in the last decade. Nearly one-third (29%) of the national growth in the prison population in the past year is attributable to the federal prison system, contributing to an overcrowding level of 139%. This expansion has come about primarily as a result of the incarceration of non-violent offenders. More than half (55%) of federal prisoners are serving time for a drug offense, while only 13% are incarcerated for a violent offense.

Racial Dynamics Persist – The new imprisonment figures document the continuing dramatic impact of incarceration on African American communities. One of every eight black males in the age group 25-29 is incarcerated on any given day. In historical perspective, the 910,000 African Americans incarcerated today are more than nine times the number of 98,000 in 1954, the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

That's a partial reading from http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/1044.pdf There's also charts and other info.

Over 80% of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 was due to drug convictions.

Source: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1996 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, 1997).

"Between 1984 and 1999, the number of defendants charged with a drug offense in U.S. district courts increased about 3% annually, on average, from 11,854 to 29,306."

Source: Scalia, John, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Drug Offenders, 1999 with Trends 1984-99 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 7.

"As a result of increased prosecutions and longer time served in prison, the number of drug offenders in Federal prisons increased more than 12% annually, on average, from 14,976 during 1986 to 68,360 during 1999."

Source: Scalia, John, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Drug Offenders, 1999 with Trends 1984-99 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 7.

"In 1995, 23% of state prisoners were incarcerated for drug offenses in contrast to 9% of drug offenders in state prisons in 1986. In fact, the proportion of drug offenders in the state prison population nearly tripled by 1990, when it reached 21%, and has remained at close to that level since then. The proportion of federal prisoners held for drug violations doubled during the past 10 years. In 1985, 34% of federal prisoners were incarcerated for drug violations. By 1995, the proportion had risen to 60%."

Source: Craig Haney, Ph.D., and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., "The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment," American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7 (July 1998), p. 715.

All that and lots more at http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm

I can dig up a lot more if anyone wants, source every drop of it, and it doesn't get much better.

We've created a nightmare guys, and nobody is talking about it. The greatest driving force behind this is the drug war, and for all of this use hasn't changed notably in 20 years or more. We've sure increased the size of our prison system in that time though.

[silverlib]

11. Texas abuse in prisons didn't start of Bush's watch

It just continued and manifested and it is beyond disgusting.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Privitization/Texas_Inc.html

In the 1980s Texas sold contracts to manage its overcrowded, violent prisons. In just a few years, the scandals were legion. One privately run jail in northwest Texas that housed inmates shipped in from Hawaii and Montana was not giving prisoners enough food or proper medical care. At a prison run by Capital Correctional Resources corrections officers were videotaped beating up prisoners and setting attack dogs on them. And Wackenhut Corporation lost a $12 million contract when twelve former guards were indicted on charges of having sex with female inmates, some of whom said they had been raped. In practice, "flexibility" can mean cutting back on prison staff and programs, not giving welfare clients due process or making it far more difficult to obtain review of decisions made by the private company.<snip>

[Asgaya Dihi]

12. To clarify something...

I know the title of the thread says Texas style, but the video is from the web page http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm

I've seen the video before and the text on the page itself says in part...

In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a ‘restraint chair’. His hands and feet are shackled, there’s a strap across his chest, his head lolls forward. He looks dead. He’s not. Not yet.

The chair is his punishment because guards saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head and he refused to take it off. The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia. Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair. And two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment.

The tape comes from Utah – but there are others from Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Arizona and probably many more. We found more than 20 cases of prisoners who’ve died in the past few years after being held in a restraint chair.

Two of the deaths we investigated were in the same county jail in Phoenix, Arizona, which is run by a man who revels in the title of ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff


It's not from Texas in particular, it's from all over the US, Arizona and Utah mentioned there. That's our prison system wherever someone with the urge to abuse and too much power is, not just in an isolated example or State.

[silverlib]

13. You are absolutely correct....

I watched the video and it is great in-depth and accurate reporting about a criminal justice system run amok in the US.

I just thought it important for viewers to know when this started in TX. If we are going to his * with it, we need to have our information correct to the smallest detail. He could easily wiggle free from the incident portrayed in the video. He never did anything but try to further privatization of everything government in TX - and Gov. Goodhair is following right in his miserable footsteps.

[Asgaya Dihi]

14. Agreed

You're right, any details anyone can add are important. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't mistaken as isolated rather than a national problem.

[PittLib]

15. Here's some irony for you...

a fundy friend of mine forwarded me an e-mail touting Sheriff Arpacio (sp?) and his "tough" methods. I should forward him this link.

[Asgaya Dihi]

16. Another position to consider

I checked the rules on the crossposting policies here, it's not encouraged but it's allowed in separate forums if there's a good reason. I think this would qualify.

I just posted the following in the drug policy forum in response to someone making statements about what the conservatives stand for. It seems relevant to this thread both in how we're feeding the system and with who, and with the conditions we've been putting our kids through and why. So, here's the post. It'll likely be the last one I make here, so take care everyone and I do hope you take the time to look into the issue. We all know that there's things going on nobody is talking about, and this is one of them. Here's the post I made.

If people didn't spend so much time telling the other side what they stood for and spent a bit more time asking them, you'd have a lot easier a time solving these problems. I'll offer you a few personal details about me here, something to consider maybe.

Most of my life I considered myself a moderate conservative, and I had pretty damned good reasons for it I think. When I was little my father beat the crap out of me, eventually it got bad enough that my mother divorced him. She couldn't afford a good neighborhood alone though and this was in the DC area back in the early 70's when it was the murder capitol of the world.

A gang problem developed at school, no big deal at first because it didn't occur to me that I had a choice, so I just went to school and defended myself best I could. One day though they asked me to join them, said they liked the guts. Now I had a choice, and at just ten years old I didn't like it. I could either join them and do to others what they'd been doing to me, or I could refuse and offend them, just make things worse. At 10 neither was acceptable, so I just stopped going to school. It was the only choice that did seem to make sense at the time.

For that the social workers of the State of Maryland decided to declare me uncontrollable, I spent the next 4 and a half years locked up with the very people I'd been trying to avoid getting tied up with. I learned what it was like to spend over 30 days at a time in a isolation cell when they shipped me off to Deveraux in Texas, learned what it was like to be alone in the world at 10 and have nobody consider you anything but another problem in a job they hate to start with. The conservatives didn't do that to me, the social workers did.

By 14 and a half they had turned me mean, I came out a criminal and spent the next few years doing things I'm not a bit proud of. But I knew who to blame, and you guys are still putting people like that in prison, and for as little reason. So is the other side, eventually I found things to hate about them too. Now I have no faith in either. If it wasn't for meeting my wife at 17 years old I'd probably be dead or in prison now, but she offered me hope again. Those tough on crime commercials play well and are hard to stand up against, but maybe you should anyway. At least RESEARCH the system and see what you've been doing.

You think you know who the other side is and what they stand for? You don't. Spend a little more time asking them. Some have their reasons and think they are doing the right thing. When I try to convince conservatives of what's going on in other debate boards I do just fine, once I get the partisans to stop offending them and let me explain things. Unintended consequences are real too.

[ieoeja]

17. "Quit school. Go to Jail" is NOT Liberal

What numbnut told you that?!? That sounds, in fact, like a policy the Freepers would happily support.

[Asgaya Dihi]

18. I hope you got more out of the post than that

I never claimed it made sense, it was a decision made out of anger and when young. The post explained pretty clearly I thought that I wasn't crazy about either side these days. Both have been doing the tough on crime thing, and it's killing a lot of us and hurting more. It's about time to take a serious look at if it's actually doing any good, and there's a lot of evidence that it's not. Try the word of a few law enforcement professionals if you've got reason to doubt mine. Look at the resumes on these guys, they are posted, then listen to them.

LEAP: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - Homepage
http://www.leap.cc/

[stevedeshazer]

19. Very disturbing

[FreedomAngel82]

20. I heard something about this

on Alex Jones' show last night. He was interviewing someone from the Texas state and they were talking about the cops and how they treat people sometimes. :\ I think it's horrible.