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Today's Top News
Georgia Prisoner Strike Continues a Second Day, Corporate Media Mostly Ignores Them, Corrections Officials Decline Comment
Offices of the wardens at Hay's, Macon State, Telfair, and Augusta state all referred our inquiries to the Department of Corrections public affairs officer, who so far has declined to return our repeated calls.
The nine specific demands made by Georgia's striking prisoners in two press releases pointedly reflect many of the systemic failures of the U.S. regime of mass incarceration, and the utter disconnection of U.S. prisons from any notions of protecting or serving the public interest.
The prisoner strike in
Georgia is unique, sources among inmates and their families say, because
it includes not just black prisoners, but Latinos and whites too, a
departure from the usual sharp racial divisions that exist behind prison
walls. Inmate families and other sources claim that when thousands of
prisoners remained in their cells Thursday, authorities responded with
violence and intimidation. Tactical officers rampaged through Telfair
State Prison destroying inmate personal effects and severely beating at
least six prisoners. Inmates in Macon State Prison say authorities cut
the prisoners' hot water, and at Telfair the administration shut off
heat Thursday when daytime temperatures were in the 30s. Prisoners
responded by screening their cells with blankets, keeping prison
authorities from performing an accurate count, a crucial aspect of
prison operations.
As of Friday, inmates at several prisons say they are committed to continuing the strike. "We are going to ride it," the inmate press release quotes one, "till the wheels fall off. We want our human rights."
The peaceful inmate strike is being led from within the prison. Some of those thought to be its leaders have been placed under close confinement.
The nine specific demands made by Georgia's striking prisoners in two press releases pointedly reflect many of the systemic failures of the U.S. regime of mass incarceration, and the utter disconnection of U.S. prisons from any notions of protecting or serving the public interest. Prisoners are demanding, in their own words, decent living conditions, adequate medical care and nutrition, educational and self-improvement opportunities, just parole decisions, just parole decisions, an end to cruel and unusual punishments, and better access to their families.
It's a fact that Georgia prisons skimp on medical care and nutrition behind the walls, and that in Georgia's prisons recreational facilities are non-existent, and there are no educational programs available beyond GED, with the exception of a single program that trains inmates to be Baptist ministers. Inmates know that upon their release they will have no more education than they did when they went in, and will be legally excluded from Pell Grants and most kinds of educational assistance, they and their families potentially locked into a disadvantaged economic status for life.
Despite the single biggest predictor of successful reintegration into society being sustained contact with family and community, Georgia's prison
authorities make visits and family contact needlessly difficult and expensive. Georgia no longer allows families to send funds via US postal money orders to inmates. It requires families to send money through J-Pay, a private company that rakes off nearly ten percent of all transfers. Telephone conversations between Georgia prisoners and their families are also a profit centers for another prison contractor, Global Tel-Link which extracts about $55 a month for a weekly 15 minute phone call from cash-strapped families. It's hard to imagine why the state cannot operate reliable payment and phone systems for inmates and their families with public employees at lower cost, except that this would put contractors, who probably make hefty contributions to local politicians out of business.
Besides being big business, prisons are public policy. The U.S. has less than five percent of the world's population, but accounts for almost a quarter of its prisoners. African Americans are one eighth this nation's population, but make up almost half the locked down. The nation's prison population increased more than 450% in a generation beginning about 1981. It wasn't about crime rates, because those went up, and then back down. It wasn't about rates of drug use, since African Americans have the same rates of drug use as whites and Latinos. Since the 1980s, the nation has undertaken a well-documented policy of mass incarceration, focused primarily though not exclusively on African Americans. The good news is that public policies are ultimately the responsibility of the public to alter, to change or do do away with. America's policy of mass incarceration is overdue for real and sustained public scrutiny. A movement has to be built on both sides of the walls that will demand an end to the prison industry and to the American policy of mass incarceration. That movement will have to be outside the Republican and Democratic parties. Both are responsible for building this system, and both rely on it to sustain their careers. The best Democrats could do on the 100 to 1 crack to powder cocaine disparity this year, with a black president in the White House and thumping majorities in the House and Senate was to reduce it to 18 to 1, and then only by lengthening the sentences for powder cocaine. On this issue, Democrats and Republicans are part of the problem, not the solution.
As this article goes to print Saturday morning, it's not known whether the strike will continue a third day. With prison officials not talking, and corporate media ignoring prisoners not just this week but every day, outlets like Black Agenda Report and the web site upon which you're reading this are among the chief means inmates and their families have of communicating with the public. The prisoners are asking the public to continue to call the Georgia Department of Corrections, and the individual prisons listed below to express concern for the welfare of the prisoners.
Prison is about corruption, power and isolation. You can help break the isolation by calling the wardens' offices at the following prisons. Prisons, naturally , are open Saturdays and Sundays too.
|
Macon State Prison is 978-472-3900. |
Hays State Prison is at (706) 857-0400 |
|
Telfair State prison is 229-868-7721 |
Baldwin State Prison is at (478) 445- 5218 |
|
Valdosta State Prison is 229-333-7900 |
Smith State Prison is at (912) 654-5000 |
|
The Georgia Department of Corrections is at http://www.dcor.state.ga.us and their phone number is 478-992-5246 |
A Sunday update to this story will be posted at Black Agenda Report, about 9AM EST.
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70 Comments so far
Show AllUSA treatment of Blacks, 300 years of shame.
USA treatment of Natives, 400 years of shame.
ENSLAVED LABORING MEN -- SKIN NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
USA rich nobility treatment of white uneducated laboring men, 1000 years ago started by rich nobility of Europe.
So somebody figured out how to make big money off prisons. Why not, if were gonna lockup more of the us population the taxpayers don't expect to pay for it too. As far as their wanting rights, try not commiting crimes! Inmates in CA already get better Medical Care, food, and safety than most of the so-called free population.
The 70% recividisum proves it, that's a better return rate than every major hotel chain!.
>^^<
"As far as their wanting rights, try not commiting crimes!"
This is a very limited and essentially authoritarian world view.
The prison population is by and large the oppressed American underclass, an inevitable product of US capitalism.
In my experience, investigations of self-righteous people like you have reliably revealed them to be criminals of various stripes (pun intended). I would bet my 401K that you are involved in incest, child pornography, wife-beating, or some other cowardly combination of crimes.
Theoretically, I COULD be wrong, but, like I say, I'm willing to put my 401K on it.
The US prison population is bigger than China's and India's. They each have about FOUR TIMES OUR POPULATION. Doesn't that tell you something?
>>OSLO, Norway — The first time I went to prison, it was to an idyllic place with lush woodland, bright-colored houses and the waters of the Oslo fjord sparkling in the summer sun.
>>It was July 2006 and I was visiting Bastoey, an open prison 45 miles south of the Norwegian capital. It is home to about 115 detainees, including murderers, rapists and other felons, who enjoy activities not usually associated with prisons.
>>In summer, they can improve their backhand on the tennis court, ride a horse in the forest and hit the beach for a swim. In winter, they can go cross-country skiing or participate in the prison's ski-jumping competition.
This is Norways prison system. Why is the recidivism rate in Norway so much lower then that in the USA?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html
The recidivism rate in Norway is 20 percent.
It seems to me that the US system CREATES Criminals. As a Norweigan Politician stated, if you treat Prisoners brutally they will treat others brutally.
Below is a lot of gibberish from one who claims to be a native American. Actually, the very best source for the latest news from the very best native American activists around, go to: http://www.flashpoints.net/
95% OF PRISONERS -- LABORING MEN
Yes 25% of all prisoners on earth are in our jails
and prisons, but what class and sex are they?
If you were to poll everyone in America and ask them above question, virtually none would know that 95% are men. Also virtually none would know that 95% of them are laboring men, men without a high school diploma.
For all of law enforcement are of the educated middleclass, and they spend 95% of their time policing laboring men, surely establishing a police state only for laboring men.
For no man of the educated middle-class ever looses in divorce court, no laboring man ever wins.
And for an absolute, if 90% of them were given a steady minimum wage job, none would ever again commit a crime.
John I don't generally agree with your posts, but on this you are correct.
Working class and poor men make up the most oppressed group in America, but few if any bourgeoisie liberals (and very few feminists) are fighting for their rights. In fact, to advocate specifically for the rights of working men leads to "class war" accusations from the right and sexism charges from the left.
To all the feminists who believe that the gender equity struggle supercedes the calss struggle, what do you make of this struggle? Also, how many working class men sit in prison because family law and court proceedings that villify and criminalize working class males?
Also it's great to see the prisoners transcending the false racial and ethnic divisions that divide workers in this nation.
hmmm
why is a woman who cares for the rights and welfare of men called names and men who care for women's rights called sweet names.
And a big YES on transcending division. :D
The oppression of women was part and parcel of the development of class societies, that is, a minority ruling class and everybody else. But women’s subjugation is directly linked to the rise of private property and the nuclear family.
--------
Private property transformed the relations between men and women within the household only because it also radically changed the political and economic relations in the larger society. ... With time, production by men specifically for exchange purposes developed, expanded, and came to overshadow the household’s production for use... As production of exchange eclipsed production for use, it changed the nature of the household, the significance of women’s work within it, and consequently women’s position in society.
It was under these circumstances that the monogamous nuclear family–the family as we know it–began to take form. The modern family arose for one purpose only: to pass on private property in the form of inheritance from one generation to the next. All of the romantic imagery of "true love" which has since helped to idealize marriage in contemporary society can’t change the fact that marriage is essentially a property relationship.
Interestingly, the original meaning of the word "family" (familia) comes from famulus meaning domestic slave, and familia is the total number of slaves belonging to one man.
Source: http://www.isreview.org/issues/02/engles_family.shtml
Yes it's all very complex, but get with the times. American corporations thrive from the energies of millions of women employees. The blue collar male is now far outproduced by his white collar wife, at least that was true unril the most recent wave of outsourcing, downsizing and bankruptcy under O'Bush II.
News alert!!! Roving bands of solar powered RV's are posing a serious security threat - like the cyber-terrorists they're accused of unpleasant leaks. Now that's the Future of America!
Solar energy won't work in America because the oily government will buy it up and shut it down.
Obama is a war pig!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
oZZy
Working class people, in general, working class men more particularly and working class white men specifically, are oppressed under capitalism. In pointing out that truth, you do not need to denigrate another even more oppressed group: women. If working people are ever to emancipate themselves, they need to create some class solidarity.
"Get with the times" - yourself.
Where have I denigrated women, you self righteous prig.
RE: "Where have I denigrated women, you self righteous prig."
Case in point:
"To all the feminists who believe that the gender equity struggle supersedes the class struggle..."
Which feminists exactly? This is a straw-man (or woman) argument. You set up a fictional foe, and then criticism the weakness of its fictional position. More importantly, isn't it kinda silly to have a pissing match of who (class or gender) is the most oppressed? Your statement that I quote above is clearly provocative and designed to "put women in their place" as less important than the class struggle. Tell that to the woman who regularly gets beaten up by her working class husband...
You might notice, in my post, no ad hominems directed at you.
Maybe not ad hominems, but the accusation of "denigrating women" is at least as insulting as "self righteous prig."
You may see it as "putting women in their place" but that's your hangup not mine, and your accusation is baseless and frankly quite a trite cliche.
Also, I am not creating straw men. I am continuing an ongoing debate with feminists on this thread, particularly Salusa Secondus who has written here that she thinks the femnist struggle is more fundamental than the class struggle.
In my experience feminists frequently and angrily claim the top perch on the totem pole ogf victimization and are not told that they are "silly" or "engaging in a pissing match", but when I point out the oppression and class based problems facing working men, I immediately suffer accusations from shallow thinkers induldging in hoary old feminist stereotypes.
RE: In my experience feminists frequently and angrily claim the top perch on the totem pole of victimization...
Again, you continue adhere to a hierarchy of oppression. Why do you need to judge the injustice to one group vis- a- vis the injustice to another group? It’s all injustice! Why not focus on the cause? Let’s work in solidarity to oppose all oppression.
Incidentally, wouldn’t it make sense that women would tend to focus and find more real, injustice done to women? And would not men tend to focus and find more real injustice done to men? So what? That's what one would expect. You want to bring women’s claims of injustice down a notch - but think about what you are doing - you are falling into the ruling class trap of keeping the “lower classes” (that is, all working people: men and women) divided against each other.
I am not perpetuating a hierarchy of oppression. I'm responding to the explicit proclamation of such a hierarchy by feminists here on this chat board; so spare me the tired, and in this case distorted, anti-hierarchical rhetoric.
I've focused on the causes of oppression most of my life. I don't want to bring women's claims of injustice down a notch, I just want to raise awareness of the male victims of capitalism, militarism and imperialism. In America there is a lot of awareness of women as victims of discrmination and violence, but poor and working men who are also victimized elicit little if any sympathy and are invisible.
I view your stereotyped feminist responses to my comments as perpetuating that invisibility.
Finally, there are definite problems with the judicial and police based approach to gender issues that is promoted aggressively by bourgeoisie feminists and their allies. This approach has enabled the criminalization of working class and poor men.
I have worked with many strong and fearless women on the picket line, at the negotiating table and at protest actions. I am not trying to defeat the struggle of working class women, but I do oppose what I see as bourgeoisie police state feminism as exemplified in anti-male and anti-worker police and family court law and practices.
Men are also being severely underserved by the American education system and yet affirmative action based on gender continues in the academic world, and I've had feminists tell me that men are education refusers and not victims of a discriminatory system, truly blaming the victim in a way that would be patently unnacceptable if the under achievers were female
I am not a ranting misogynist, despite your PC attempts to pigeon hole me as such. I simply believe that the struggle of working class and poor men is continually denied and discounted, not just by the right, but by many well heeled liberal feminists and their allies.
RE: "In my experience feminists frequently and angrily claim the top perch on the totem pole of victimization"
In this sentence you didn't qualify "feminists", (all feminists, or certain feminists - again you didn't say here or in your earlier posts). I'm not the one making sweeping generalizations. Now in your most recent post you say "bourgeois feminists". I am not and would not defend bourgeois feminists, just like I wouldn't defend bourgeois anything.
BTW, you used the word "perch" meaning an elevated position that you believe "feminists" (again unspecified) seek to place the value of their oppression. I used the word "denigrate" which means "to belittle". It seems to me that my use of the word as applied to you was, and continues to be, apt.
RE: "explicit proclamation of such a hierarchy by feminists"
Huh? What explicit proclamation? And, how can you have an explicit (specific and clear) proclamation by a general category of women - feminists - whose views vary considerably? This makes no sense.
I think I've made it clear that I've been having an ongoing debate with feminists on this site. How can you leave out "on this site" from your quote "explicit proclamation of such a heirarchy by feminists ON THIS SITE.
Why do you find a need to distort what I've written, and why do you need to see a denigration of women where none exists? Is it because I've deviated from your PC standards.
For example, "frequently" is a qualifier and I specifically identified the feminist who made the statements that led to this hierarchy of oppression debate. Nonetheless you want to portray me as making wild categorical statements.
This is essentially sophistry on your part.
Like so many on the Left, you find it necessary to attack criticisms of feminism as a anti-woman. In this regard you seem unable to think outside the rigid limits of feminist propaganda.
Perhaps one day you will wake up to the fact that feminism is no friend of the working class male. Until then I expect that you will continue deragatory labels and twisting words to fit your limited world view.
RE: think I've made it clear that I've been having an ongoing debate with feminists on this site.
I am not following all your posts, nor should I be expected to. And at no point have you referred me to the "proclamations" that you seem to think are so obvious. I'm sure you know how cut and paste...
RE: Perhaps one day you will wake up to the fact that feminism is no friend of the working class male.
Outside of women themselves, working class men should be the biggest defenders of feminism. Working women have two jobs, one paid and one not. Women maintain their households and raise children, (these "used to be" full-time occupations) and these things are still done predominantly by working class women - often as not, alone. This unpaid labor raising the next generation benefits men (i.e. their children) as well. Feminism, like many "-isms", is not monolithic, there is definitely a strong bourgeois strain (Gloria Steinem et al) but there is also a revolutionary strain. Broadly speaking, feminism (as a movement of liberation) and revolutionary thinking are not mutually exclusive; they are complimentary.
BTW, the real Joe Hill was an ally of the suffragettes - the feminists of his time.
I don't have to cut and paste for you. Your point is accepted that feminists do not compose a monolithic entity. I never implied otherwise.
Re: your second re
The numbers of fathers raising children has increased dramatically. Still the Family Courts need to get with the times and end the anti-male bias in custody proceedings.
Several decades ago NOW was explicitly in favor of shared custody but now is opposed as are many prominent feminists.
I keep talking about Family Court and the injustices brought on by anti-male laws and procedures and all you seem interested in doing is parsing words and proving that I am anti-woman.
I'm not really interested in making this about me, that's a tactic that has been tried and failed here before. I am interested in opposing specific aspects of feminism and am tired of lefties, like yourself, who treat feminsm as a sacred cow.
The most important features of the American judicial system are:
• It acts to perpetuate white supremacy. When the Civil Rights Act was passed, the southern white population promptly began a campaign, which continues to this day, to prevent blacks from becoming full members of society—in other words, to maintain the Jim Crow system by whatever means available. Mass incarceration of blacks is one of those means. The prison system is so designed that judicial imprisonment has permanent effects: the victim becomes permanently disadvantaged in subsequent economic and political life, and is therefore more likely to be again convicted of breaking a law.
• It is not explicitly racist. The prison environment (after its racially-selected victims arrive in it) is an equal-opportunity brutalizer. This makes it useful for the Anglo-Saxon oligarchy*, which is indifferently contemptuous of all its subjects. The oligarchy intends to apply Jim Crow to all of them regardless of race, and reduce each country it rules to a kind of plantation. (See John Ellis' post of 12:53 pm.)
• It is essentially regressive, and employs many people who are likely to vote for regressive politicians. By taking in many people on the pretext of minor or harmless acts deemed illegal, hardening them, teaching them better techniques of crime, and depriving them of opportunities for a law-abiding life, the prison system guarantees endless repeat business for these employees.
• Anglo-Saxons, and particularly Americans, have a weak sense of social solidarity and a weakness for self-righteousness. They regard judicially labelled people as a different and inferior form of being—a "them" who deserve no consideration from "us" and who are so different from "us" that the members of "us" need not consider the possibility of becoming one of "them". A classical Greek philosopher declared that justice would not be established in Athens until the Athenians were as indignant about injustice done to a fellow Athenian as about injustice done to themselves. It seems that most of the moral progress made in medieval Europe (see Hermann Bianchi's work on the concept of "justice as sanctuary") has been subsequently undone in the Anglo-Saxon Protestant revolution.
*I know that this is a broad and vague term, but I don't want to get hung up in a debate over what it consists of and who belongs to it. For people who want to know: I think of it as consisting of an international, essentially nomadic ruling class with sub-oligarchies at the federal and state/provincial levels. In some of his articles Joe Bageant describes the arrogant despotism of local ruling cliques, which (as I see it) are imitators and servants of the oligarchic level above them.
The way we create, and treat prisoners in America is appalling, and displays concretely how our rhetoric as a nation, and our national character are two highly incongruous concepts.
RE: "To all the feminists who believe that the gender equity struggle supercedes the class struggle, what do you make of this struggle? Also, how many working class men sit in prison because family law and court proceedings that villify and criminalize working class males?"
I definitely see here that class plays a role, but I think again the use of the term 'working class' is either inaccurate, or misleading, and is not exactly related to the problem were looking at. The way I see it, its not the 'working class' that is being incarcerated to such a high degree – it's more accurately the 'non-working class' or the 'uneducated class', who either do not have the training, the opportunity, or the proclivity to make themselves productive individuals providing value back to society.
Framing this as a 'workers' issue loses the point, as its really more of an issue of a) Education, and how we as a nation offer this to the public, and b) our Justice System and how it regards individual liberty, and concepts of enforcing security measures, and c) our Social Safety Net which is inadequate to offset the impoverished conditions many American's face on a daily basis. These are the areas that need reform, moreso than manufacturing, or other economic concerns (at least in regard to this issue).
Moving past this, many of our prisoners are really in a class all to themselves. The conditions of life under lock and key will have little connection to the struggles for rights that workers fight for outside prison. Inherent concepts of fairness do not apply in conditions of incarceration. People are not put in prison to offer them a fair situation in life. Fairness is abrogated by the crime committed, what is left barring this fairness is 'appropriate treatment'. Fairness is a relative concept after all.
And what is appropriate are certain rights that I believe apply to all prisoners. The right to adequate nutrition, legal advice, healthcare, freedom from injury and extreme discomfort. The opportunity for self-improvement, i.e. education, and access to quality information. It is a good thing that the prisoners in Georgia are striking for these protections, and I hope they succeed at helping to correct what appear to be wide abuses throughout the system.
Personally, I see the entire system here as being a cynical and exploitative exercise in short-sightedness. These prisoners could and should become a legally protected, special working class. I see no reason for those in prison to not pursue careers, and continuing education while incarcerated. Society gains by allowing prisoners to improve themselves, as well as to remain employed, which is its own therapy/self-improvement. I think every prisoner in America should either have a job or be getting an education (if they are able).
I also have a number of other prescriptions for improvements to our national penal system, but these probably belong in another discussion. For starters, the racial segregation in US prisons is a reinforcement of criminal memes, not a good approach to reform, for prisons or prisoners. This is one of the first issues that must be addressed. The time seems to be coming where the prisoners themselves are beginning to see their own issues beyond the lines of race, as mentioned in the article.
If you are part of a group on the web, please give us a link.
For rare is it to see a post with such relevant truth, and so on-topic.
If you're being sincere I appreciate it.
These are just my own opinions though. I don't plan on keeping them to myself, but have no group yet on the web.
Someday perhaps... someday. : )
Your post claims that the current prison crisis is not a class issue. I couldn't disagrree more.
First, the past three decades have seen moe than a doubling of the prison population. The vast majority of this increase has been working class, low income people.
You imply in your post that the prison population is made up of the lumpenproles, and while that is in part true, it begs the question of why the American lumpenproletriat has expanded dramatically right along with the expansion of the prisons. The answer is that as the proletarit is exported to lower wage nations, the lumpenproletariat expands and the capitalist state must either expand social welfare or build more prisons. Europe chose to expand the social welfare state, and we'll see if the attempt to dismantle it succeeds.
America chose the more repressive route. In industrial societies, the level of wealth polarization is directly related to the level of imprisonment. The polarization and mass impoverishment of America has led directly to the increase in imprisonment (mostly through racial and class bias in drug laws, prosecution and sentencing while at the same time the capitalists finncially exploit the drug sub-cultures) In industrial societies, the level of wealth polarization is directly related to the level of imprisonment.
Finally you assume that, "Fairness is abrogated by the crime committed, what is left barring this fairness is 'appropriate treatment'. Fairness is a relative concept after all."
It's relative alright. Relative to class status. My guess is that the majority of prisoners are there because they couldn't afford a good enough lawyer, and that's the inherently classist underpinning of the American justice system.
If you can't see the classst foundation of the American penal system, then you are simply blind or dishonest about issues of class. That's backed up your previous statements that elevate feminism above the class struggle.
I would expect a bit more awaremness of class injustice from a "left liberal."
Working class people are not the exclusive victims of capitalism, but they are the class of people who embody the necessary(but not sufficient)potential required to overthrow the existing order.
Left liberal professionals are also a neccesary part of he mix, but gnerally they must overcome their tendencey to moralize and reflexively disparage the workers, and for that matter the prisoners in our capitalist system.
Hi. You've got good points.
RE: "Your post claims that the current prison crisis is not a class issue. I couldn't disagrree more."
No. I agree that class is an issue. But I think that prisoners rights are a specific, and distinct class of issues that do not benefit by being thrown in as an afterthought of class struggle. There are specific considerations that deserve their own philosophical arguments.
RE: "First, the past three decades have seen moe than a doubling of the prison population. The vast majority of this increase has been working class, low income people."
I do not contest any of your statistics... not double checking them either – they sound about right to me.
RE: "America chose the more repressive route. In industrial societies, [...] the level of wealth polarization is directly related to the level of imprisonment."
Again, no disagreement.
RE: <"Fairness is a relative concept after all.">
"It's relative alright. Relative to class status. "
OK, here you raise an important issue I missed the opportunity to raise myself. The discrepancy in treatment along class lines. Good point. I was speaking in general towards the phenomenon of high-security, highly authoritarian prison facilities for hardened convicts, and didn't address the fact that many white-collar criminals never even encounter this system. For the record, I firmly advocate for a single, absolutely class blind justice system. If a petty thief receives 5 years sentence for stealing $5000, a CEO caught stealing $5,000,000 deserves 1000 years, in the same prison as the petty thief – same facilities for all. I just think all the facilities should be fit for all society, not only hardened criminals.
That being said, there is a difference between the two. There obviously needs to be considerations about keeping 'soft' criminals separate, or safe from 'hard' criminals... Let's face it, many corporate/white collar criminals would be torn to shreds inside a high-security prison; The entire US penal system needs to be made far more safe (for both guards and convicts), more humane, and uniformly systematized across the board.
RE: "I would expect a bit more awaremness of class injustice from a "left liberal."
Thank you for holding me up to my own standard. I respect your doing so.
RE: "but gnerally they must overcome their tendencey to moralize and reflexively disparage the workers,"
My apologies if I came across as doing so too much. I admittedly jump into deep waters trusting I can traverse the many obstacles and distance, but sometimes come up short. I can only be so complete in every post I make.
Finally, I began my post with this statement: "I definitely see here that class plays a role"
I did mean it, but your response helped to bring my point into better focus.
thank you and cheers
I agree that imprisonment in America has created a large underclass of people with important issues specific to the length of sentence & the level of institutionalized violence to which they are subjected.
The lifelong sentence to the underclass that a tangle with the law often invokes is another nasty aspect of the penal system.
I also agree that the class status of the individual is the most important factor in determining treatment by the police, access to competent lawyers, ability to make bail, ability to go to trial, ability to appeal and success at appeal. Oh, I think I forgot to mention ability to make significant pre-trial motions.
I'm not entirely sure what we're disagreeing about here anymore.
C'mon join Chris Hedges. Be a socialist!
I think my original point is that prison is itself about punishment. Its a removal of one specific right that is at the heart of all others: One's liberty.
That is the punishment. People out in the rest of society now are safe from this individual because they are separated and restrained. But after that, why we treat these people like animals is beyond me. It's as if our democratic government has excused itself to administer a harsh collective revenge on our inmates by giving them a life of shame, and lack of any pride or dignity.
My thought is that prison life should attempt to approximate outside life in as many productive ways as possible, in order to restore as much capacity as an inmate has to redeem his or herself. This means access to real jobs. For skilled inmates – work that utilizes their skills, while of course not loosing consideration of their unique criminal profile. Otherwise, I picture regular job-fairs, recruitment events and reps that offer interviews etc. If a prisoner needs education, this should be made available, with as wide a field of curriculum as is possible to provide. Based on a merit system, I picture well-behaved and safe inmates gaining more and more access to what could be considered real lives, with income, greater access to outdoors, pets, social outlets, even open relationships. Rehabilitation requires this, and cannot occur in a distinctly punitive environment. Rehabilitation requires the ability to have pride in oneself... to be able to grow, to regenerate.
These are earned privileges mind you – I don't intend that prison turn into club med. I have a whole other theory about the 'de-testosteronization' that needs to take place in our prison systems, but that's another discussion (and no, its not about forced castrations).
RE : "[T]he class status of the individual is the most important factor in determining treatment by the police, access to competent lawyers, ability to make bail, ability to go to trial, ability to appeal and success at appeal. Oh, I think I forgot to mention ability to make significant pre-trial motions."
Again, here we agree, but this is a separate issue than I originally intended to tackle. Nevertheless, my idea for reforming our judicial system and penal institutions is to offer a similar type of egalitarian process even to hardened criminals. A system that treats all people with humanity demonstrates its own authority, and removes some level of the hardness of these individuals. Clearly, for highly dangerous individuals specific considerations must be maintained – there is a big difference between a button-pushing accountant and a weapon wielding gang member – but as I mentioned, beyond distinguishing between a violent, and non-violent defendant/prisoner, the criteria of treatment and sentencing should be the same for all people across the board.
Dear Jimmy Carter:
Please, right in your own state, you need to start a new kind of HABITAT FOR HUMANITY.
PLease remind the prison people that the motto of your state is:
" Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation."
GEORGIA, the 13th coloney...how far your have fallen from the original intentions of what a nation and a state could be.
Amazing, and from a Southern state too, that you have begun a version of Sherman's March to the sea...upon your very oown people.
Civil disobedience is not the enemy...it is your UNcivil disregard for human life....and those TRUTHS should be self evident.
ALL WOMEN -- VICTIMIZED BY GOVERNMENT
dreamjoehill
“To all feminists who believe gender equity more
important then class equality, where is your logic?”
Mom bless her darling heart, she divorced dad twice, each time after he had built us a quality home. Then after second divorce, low and behold we lived as a family together in peace. For during both marriages she would jam the deadly force of divorce court into his emotional guts by a question, not really a question:
“Do you want a divorce!”
For 60% of women in America suffer sever depression, this caused almost entirely by being forced to live alone -- without the deadly force of a man to make them feel safe and secure.
It all started in 1920, for under the double smokescreen of Probation and Woman’s Suffrage, without a law being passed or any political debate, secretly all 48 states gave out divorces to any woman who asked.
Now women of the educated middle-class never win in divorce court, especially win not the kids if the husband is willing to pay for a legal battle. So, in a middle-class family it is the man gets deadly saying, “Do you want a divorce!”
But among the lower half, the 50% with more debt then wealth, what we have is the laboring class turned into matriarch ruled society. For no laboring man ever wins in divorce court, 95% of young laboring men live separate from their minor children and about half of all laboring men live alone.
For no man, who is a man, can endure the stress of living with a women who will not allow him to be the head of his family.
Are you for real?
You have a pretty twisted idea of what it is that makes a man.
So yeah, I can imagine how stressful it would be for a man who is so lacking in self confidence that he has to live in a fantasy world where men are heads of families.
Further, what twisted world do you inhabit where people threaten divorce?
Honestly, threats like that would make me want a divorce.
iow, go grow some ovaries and grow up.
GIVE WOMEN EQUAL AUTHORITY -- GIVE THEM GOVERNMENT DEADLY FORCE
Above is a man stuck-up of the educated middle-class, men to smart to ever do a honest days hard manual labor, men to dumb to ever be rich.
You see, having been raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, and having been kept so isolated from anyone out of his class, or any neighborhood out of his class, and never having experienced the police state forced on the laboring class, this has caused him “to live in a fantasy world where men are” among his class, “heads of families.” A complete reversible of things compared to the real world slavery endured by laboring men.
For the gods of society, the trophy husbands educated and middle-class, they are the self-appointed knights in shining armor who charge to the rescue in defense of woman’s right to have equal deadly force.
For the only way possible to give women equal authority as men, is to give women deadly force equal to men, namely to give women the Sheriff Deputy’s gun on their every whim and caprice.
Strange. So many women say they don't want to be dominated by a man, yet in any relationship, they'll get upset if the man doesn't make all the decisions. I thought it'd be ideal to form a partnership, but odviously humans haven't reached that level of accepeance yet, not females anyway.
Must part of the whole people not knowing what they want, context.
>^^<
"For no man, who is a man, can endure the stress of living with a women who will not allow him to be the head of his family."
What??
An honest opinon born of hair gray and 70.
Prove me wrong.
it all comes down to your definition of what is a man
Reality is that there are many ways for a man to be a man.
And no man I know is anything like your definition.
In fact, they are repelled by any woman who wants what you say all women want.
True enough, hidden in the divorce statistics, and buried in the bottles of anti-depressants is the truth, that men expect to be the head of their family,(yes still today)you can deny it you can hide it and take the pills, but the lies only damage us as humans, possibility leading to generations with no idea what dignity and personal responsibility really are.
Like asking a dog to be a cat.
>^^<
This is specific to certain Countries such as the United States which is rather attached to Authoritarianism.
In the US over 50 percent of people surveyed think the man should be the head of the Household. In Canada this is less then 20 percent. The divorce rate in the USA is over 10 percent higher then in Canada.
In other cultures the number feeling the man should be head of the household is even higher.
The differences in various Countries and the view as to whether the man should be head of the household is purely CULTURAL meaning it learned/taught behaviour.
A cat can not learn to be a dog.
RACE SUPREMACY -- OR CLASS SUPREMACY?
Angry Kraut
“The most important features of the American judicial system are:
• It acts to perpetuate white supremacy.”
But, as a volunteer paralegal who formed a support group that helped over a thousand uneducated laboring class couples get through a divorce, without educated middle-class lawyers inflating anger to inflate fees, I saw not the slightest difference between the way laboring men of different races were treated by the courts.
For a money dictatorship are the courts, as the most educated and wealthy party always wins. For all lawyers are of the Educated Middle-class, all judges are of the Country Club class, and the party who can best advance their wealth and career, he always enjoys a win-win encounter with the law.
For having been a white boy who grew up in the slums of Milwaukee, Minneapolis and LA, if you lived among the laboring class, be you black, brown or white, surely police state enslaved where you by all the Educated Middle-class cops on the beat.
And now living in the deep south, the last 20 years of my 70 years on this earth, I earn the same pay for my planted trees as any other laboring man black or brown, and no man who labors dare look cross at a cop, and to get their mercy looks straight at the ground.
While watching MSNBC's: "Lockup", I was amazed at what they willingly broadcast. The inhumane treatment. The utter sadism of chrome and glass dungeons. The brutal assaults, the attacking of unarmed, naked prisoners. And every one of those guards is obese, and lacking any sense of right and wrong. Their cowardice is plain to see. They charge the victims with assault, after a dozen guards in full riot gear with pepper-spray and Tasers, attack them in their cells. If we had tapes like these of Nazi's at Nuremberg, we would have hanged those guards. Today, these prison guards commit crimes against humanity daily. And there is no recourse for those unfortunate people who get caught up in the US prisons.
A judge in Texas said a few years ago, while he was condemning an innocent man to death, refusing to allow exonerating evidence in court, that "...a person's guilt or innocence had no bearing on his sentence."
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in the USA.
A nation can be graded fairly accurately by how it treats two groups:
Animals and prisoners
(and I'm not conflating the two).
"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Thank-you Black Agenda Report for bringing this to my attention. God knows the racist corporate media will never report it.
WORKING CLASS -- INCLUDES COUNTRY CLUB CLASS
Salusa Secundus
“Its not the 'working class' that is being incarcerated... to such a high degree.
It's more accurately the 'non-working class' or the 'uneducated class'”
True, for those who do all the manual labor, they are the laboring class, the uneducated 50% of society including the 35% high school dropouts.
FOUR CLASS SOCIETY
1% High Society investor class (80% of wealth)
10% Country Club manager class (10% of wealth)
40% Educated Middle-class (10% of wealth)
49% Laboring class (more debt then wealth)
Morticia
“The men I know are repelled by any woman who
wants (to be protected) what you say all women want.”
Only men have deadly force, a natural instinct to kill to save a loved one.
For when a man and woman encounter a tiger charging at them in the jungle, the woman will grab her hair, step back and scream. While the man will grab a rock, step forward and yell.
For a men must do or die for women, defend with his life the body and morals of a wife, and what insanity it is for a man to try and protect a female he has no control over.
A dear jumped out in front of our car, and though my wife had the time to maneuver out of the way or jam on the breaks, she took her hands off the steering wheel, kept her foot on the gas and being so paralyzed could only scream. Such are the overpowering natural instincts in women.
Hi Everybody,
my Husband is at Macon State Prison. Yes there needs to be a change in the Correction System. My husband is black and I',m white. We go through hell when I visit. I must say it is not every officer. The most racial comments are coming from Female LT's and Male LT's. Food is very bad and it is creating health problems for many Inmates. I can understand why the Media is ignoring this. This Inmates are outcasts in the so called " Good Citician" eye, however not everybody is a hardcore criminal. GA and the rest of America needs to wake up before it is to late.
Prison is a trap, there are many baits, once one falls in, one rarely ever crawls out. Our society will never be free, as long as there is one person incarcerated.
It is doubtful things will change with a strike, we have had these strikes in past generations, the conditions may improve slightly, and all will soon be forgotten.
The prison system is just another of our endless wars. It's a government jobs program. One that warehouses men and women, society would rather not help.
It's kind of hard to have a revolution once you are locked down, i.e. a strike. Some previous posters were throwing around some odd statistics about the labor class etc. The only important statistic is that 95% of all prisoners accepted a plea bargain! Were they all to have demanded a jury trial by their peers, they would still be waiting for their trial, which of course would not be a speedy trial, and hence unconstitutional.
You can't bring down an unjust system once you are locked inside it, you can only fight it while still standing on level ground, outside of it, and still free from its dungeons.
My prayers to the strikers!