Prison Bans Books and Disco Pickle Learns a Lesson

[East Coast Hustle]

Also, I quite clearly remember you making a post about how you were totally OK with using those convicts as labor so they were giving something back.

But, you know, keep on applying your high-minded ideals to your defense of a system that is intentionally set up to be inherently racist (and to a slightly lesser degree classist) where you can be arbitrarily convicted of a crime and sentenced to the gulag the labor camps prison for most of your life over, as you call it, "crimes against people and property".

Because, you know, that homeless drug addict who got a 3rd strike for a larceny conviction totally deserves to rot away in prison as slave labor for the rest of his life, you know, because of the choice he made.

[Phox]

dishonest argument.  I said committing a crime is a choice.

Yep. my in law totally chose to get arrested, taken to prison, and then charged with smuggling weed into that prison based on what he had on his person when he was searched.

I don't actually know anyone dumb enough to take drugs into a prison.  I find it hard to sympathize with anyone who would.  

Charged with =/= tried to do.

ok, yeah.  As ECH mentioned, a cop planting something on you means you can get pretty fucked and railroaded.  I see no long term solution for this short of screening potential cops for this sort of behavior.  Good luck with that.

There's no need for a long-term "solution", as you call it, because as far as the people who oversee the system are concerned the system works perfectly. And the fact that nobody has offered you an example of a preferable codified alternative is a pretty poor reason for being in favor of an entrenched system that actively seeks to punish and extract labor from people rather than educating them and rehabilitating them. In essence, your argument is "fuck if I care how unjust it all is, I'm just glad that guy who robbed the convenience store down the street got what he deserved in the form of a 40-year slavery sentence!"

unfair argument.  I have clearly said that privatized prisons and ones that use labor for private profit are abhorrent.  I've also said that educating them is the best possible solution, excepting that not everyone can be rehabilitated.

Bullshit.

what, all of it?

What, are we deciding that facts can't be used in arguments now? So you say "privatized prisons are bad". Great. You don't "condone enforced slavery." We're on the same page. "Victimless crimes shouldn't be crimes." Couldn't agree more. thing is.. they are all part of the system. What exactly are you even arguing anymore?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I have clearly said that privatized prisons and ones that use labor for private profit are abhorrent. 

Well, that's only ALL OF THEM.

link?

In 36 states, at least:  http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/stunning-statistics-on-prison-labour/

[East Coast Hustle]

He agrees with everything we're saying except the part where the root cause of the problems is something to be concerned about.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Also, I quite clearly remember you making a post about how you were totally OK with using those convicts as labor so they were giving something back.

But, you know, keep on applying your high-minded ideals to your defense of a system that is intentionally set up to be inherently racist (and to a slightly lesser degree classist) where you can be arbitrarily convicted of a crime and sentenced to the gulag the labor camps prison for most of your life over, as you call it, "crimes against people and property".

Because, you know, that homeless drug addict who got a 3rd strike for a larceny conviction totally deserves to rot away in prison as slave labor for the rest of his life, you know, because of the choice he made.

A great deal classist, actually.  Po'buckers are in just as much doodoo as Blacks, if they get snagged by the system.  Granted, they are marginally less likely to get arrested in the first place.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's just another yahoo arguing a subject he knows nearly nothing about.

[Thurnez Isa]

Stopped right there. For this reason, your opinion cannot be taken seriously. Them's the breaks.

then please, tell me all you know of causality and how it relates to humans and their actions, their election of lawmakers, and the enforcement and adjudication of laws in this country.  

I'd like just one example of a human doing something that could be ever be thought of as being "random"

If that sounds dickish, it's not intended.  I really am learning from you guys.  I'm not just some "right wing nutjob" as the good Rev. insists.

Causality? Whatcha want? Deontological philosophy? Sorry, I've seen enough to figure out that there isn't a grand set of rules to follow in terms of human behavior. Predictable patterns of behavior don't exist, because if they did, deviations would be far rarer and there wouldn't be so many variables that affect it. As for the election of lawmakers and the enforcement and adjudication of laws in this country? Fuck, I could pay off the cops in this town with what's in my pocket, a smile, and a short skirt and get off scott free for anything short of murder. Faith in the system? Not me.

If predictable patterns of behavior didn't exist then car insurance companies would be right proper fucked.  I believe there's another thread about this sort of thing that Nigel started.

while I've no doubt and even evidence that happens here, it's hardly on par with a country like say Mexico, where a $20 got me out of a potentially bad situation and another one got me over the border from Belize.  

So you must have lost faith in any system devised by humans.  

I believe I'm starting to really understand now.  It's terrifying btw.

Oh, yeah, that stuff happens in smudgy, unfurnished countries...But not here.  Ho ho!

jebus fuck, I never said it DIDN'T HAPPEN.  Sometimes, I think you argue just to argue.

What, you think the "wrong people" don't get railroaded in countries where the melanin in your skin puts you in the minority?

name me a country that does it better for crimes against person or property.

Canada, Denmark, Holland, Germany...Oh, wait.  You only wanted one.

After these last elections it seems we maybe trying desperately hard to fix that one.

[Phox]

He agrees with everything we're saying except the part where the root cause of the problems is something to be concerned about.

I know, it's almost surreal, except, ya know, I remember the argument we had when he first showed up.  

[Jenne]

I think DP needs to define "choice."









...what?


*looks innocent*

...I'm just not feeling it in this thread, hopping onto DP's tailfeathers and giving him the spanking I really wanted to about 5 pages back...you guys did a fine enough job without me.

I'll instead return to the OP:

...SO!  Yet AGAIN, the legislature (which we all know is in the THRALL of an upsurge of right-wingasms, one right after another).  I just want to have the group of assholes who decided to make this nifty little law repeat after me,

ALLAH HU AKBAR!
ALLAH HU AKBAR!

They might as well.  They've effectively reduced themselves into that which they proclaim to hate--freedom raping jihadists.  They've claimed jihad against the rights of any human (because that's what it's come down to, really, in this post-9-11 fervor of civil rights plundering), as we have less and less "fair" trials, more and more legislation of "can't" rather than "permit."  THE POWER OF NO is no stronger than in a prison.

So those who think that being allowed ANY reading material at all (and I've restated and restated this bullshit too many times to count since July of '04) is a nicety, and that being in JAIL or PRISON was THEIR choice and so they should accept they are being punished need to think fucking hard about a couple of things.  Namely:


**what does a prisoner do with themselves all day if they have nothing with which to occupy their minds?

**if a mind that is surrounded with other idle minds is put in frustration in the midst of similar minds, what happens?

**if the BIBLE is all there is to read, how does this reintegrate a person who may soon be released into society, prepare him or her for what's to come in the days, weeks, months ahead?

**why does it follow that treating prisoners like animals with no intelligence make any sense to anyone, except those that would exploit and use them as slave labor and concentration camp dwellers?

**how is it that almost every other "Westernized" society has understood the above as a plan to follow logically for eventual rehabilitation, but the US, in all its "infinite wisdom" (read: arrogant bastardry) still has not?

In an age where the US is coming to the end of its hegemony, you'd think the fuckups in Congress everywhere (stateside, Federal, etc.), would realize this is an untapped workforce that would work BETTER if it were well-fed and well-trained.  Monkeylabor with a diseased, malnourished chain gang/factory worker/slave trade will only get you so far.  It's rather pathetic, this short-sightedness in the name of what? "Safety"...?  "Freedom"...?  Nah.

It's the very attitude that I used to display and that which poor DP is displaying here:  a fundamental lack of understanding of the root of the thing--until it happened to me.  Yeah until it happens to you, you just don't KNOW....  Our justice system may have a LOT going for it, but its corruption is absolute in too many places to count, and those places need strong people to pull those roots and cauterize.

Do we see this happening?

I don't.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Fucking rah, Jenne!

[Jenne]

UPSHOT:  anyone who thinks this is all "fine" and being in prison is "a choice"...they just haven't made it THERE yet.

Yet.

[Jenne]

Fucking rah, Jenne!

Thank you.  <3

[Nast]

Saying that being incarcerated is a choice has terrible implications. For one thing, it assumes the infallibility of the system - that no one is sent to prison by mistake or receives an unfair trial.
Or, at the very least it assumes that such mistakes have to be accepted as "inevitable" glitches in the system.

It's one thing wax philosophical about causality and choice, but it's another thing to use such abstract concepts to justify something as real and heartbreaking about a life ruined by an unfair and unjust system.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

dishonest argument.  I said committing a crime is a choice.

Yep. my in law totally chose to get arrested, taken to prison, and then charged with smuggling weed into that prison based on what he had on his person when he was searched.

I don't actually know anyone dumb enough to take drugs into a prison.  I find it hard to sympathize with anyone who would. 

Uh, he didn't choose take drugs in.  He got his ass hauled in for being drunk and happened to have drugs on him.  Being an unwilling participant in the smuggling doesn't actually matter to the system.

How about a system where we exploit prisoners as if they are slave labor, we have harsh punishments, and we just shrug our shoulders that being arrested is a "choice"?

dishonest argument.  I said committing a crime is a choice.

Is being black a choice? How about being poor?

I don't think he understands that argument.

Ok, then it assumes at the least that only black or poor people get a bad defense.  The job of a Public Defender is def insably a calling that is arguably one of the most demanding jobs in this country.  Of the 3 I've ever met, they've been a few of the most passionate people I've had the honor to know.  They really were trying their best to help as many people as possible.  Of course, this wont always be the case in every part of the country.

Passionate about telling people to just plead guilty whether they are or not, maybe.
The function of a public defender is to shuffle people through the system.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I think DP needs to define "choice."









...what?


*looks innocent*

...I'm just not feeling it in this thread, hopping onto DP's tailfeathers and giving him the spanking I really wanted to about 5 pages back...you guys did a fine enough job without me.

I'll instead return to the OP:

...SO!  Yet AGAIN, the legislature (which we all know is in the THRALL of an upsurge of right-wingasms, one right after another).  I just want to have the group of assholes who decided to make this nifty little law repeat after me,

ALLAH HU AKBAR!
ALLAH HU AKBAR!

They might as well.  They've effectively reduced themselves into that which they proclaim to hate--freedom raping jihadists.  They've claimed jihad against the rights of any human (because that's what it's come down to, really, in this post-9-11 fervor of civil rights plundering), as we have less and less "fair" trials, more and more legislation of "can't" rather than "permit."  THE POWER OF NO is no stronger than in a prison.

So those who think that being allowed ANY reading material at all (and I've restated and restated this bullshit too many times to count since July of '04) is a nicety, and that being in JAIL or PRISON was THEIR choice and so they should accept they are being punished need to think fucking hard about a couple of things.  Namely:


**what does a prisoner do with themselves all day if they have nothing with which to occupy their minds?

**if a mind that is surrounded with other idle minds is put in frustration in the midst of similar minds, what happens?

**if the BIBLE is all there is to read, how does this reintegrate a person who may soon be released into society, prepare him or her for what's to come in the days, weeks, months ahead?

**why does it follow that treating prisoners like animals with no intelligence make any sense to anyone, except those that would exploit and use them as slave labor and concentration camp dwellers?

**how is it that almost every other "Westernized" society has understood the above as a plan to follow logically for eventual rehabilitation, but the US, in all its "infinite wisdom" (read: arrogant bastardry) still has not?

In an age where the US is coming to the end of its hegemony, you'd think the fuckups in Congress everywhere (stateside, Federal, etc.), would realize this is an untapped workforce that would work BETTER if it were well-fed and well-trained.  Monkeylabor with a diseased, malnourished chain gang/factory worker/slave trade will only get you so far.  It's rather pathetic, this short-sightedness in the name of what? "Safety"...?  "Freedom"...?  Nah.

It's the very attitude that I used to display and that which poor DP is displaying here:  a fundamental lack of understanding of the root of the thing--until it happened to me.  Yeah until it happens to you, you just don't KNOW....  Our justice system may have a LOT going for it, but its corruption is absolute in too many places to count, and those places need strong people to pull those roots and cauterize.

Do we see this happening?

I don't.

It's like Calvinism.
A few people declare themselves "The Elect" and fuck over everybody else, saying they "earned" it somehow.