Are you more Conservative than George Will?
"they will tell you that there is such a necessity of strengthening the arm of government, that they must have a criminal equity, and extort confession by torture, in order to punish with still more relentless severity. We are then lost and undone."
- Patrick Henry, 1778
Last night, I was floored to see serious support for endless solitary confinement in a DU post and responses.
The way we treat prisoners in our country is appalling. Sure there are people who need to be off the streets, sometimes permanently, but savaging them is not what healthy societies do. It doesn't work, and it's sick. Civilized societies seek
rehabilitation, not
retribution.
I was surprised to come upon
a recent column by George Will on the subject - Will seems to be positively Left Wing compared to some on DU with regards to solitary confinement:
When solitude is torture
“Zero Dark Thirty,” a nominee for Sunday’s Oscar for Best Picture, reignited debate about whether the waterboarding of terrorism suspects was torture. This practice, which ended in 2003, was used on only three suspects. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of American prison inmates are kept in protracted solitary confinement that arguably constitutes torture and probably violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.”
Noting that half of all prison suicides are committed by prisoners held in isolation, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) has prompted an independent assessment of solitary confinement in federal prisons. State prisons are equally vulnerable to Eighth Amendment challenges concerning whether inmates are subjected to “substantial risk of serious harm.”
...
Federal law on torture prohibits conduct “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” And “severe” physical pain is not limited to “excruciating or agonizing” pain, or pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or even death.” The severe mental suffering from prolonged solitary confinement puts the confined at risk of brain impairment.
...
In 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court said of solitary confinement essentially what Dickens had said: “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide.” Americans should be roused against this by decency — and prudence.
In most circumstances, people who commit serious crimes are
defective. Torturing them will not make them better people, and it certainly doesn't make
us better people. It makes the criminals
more defective, and
deadens our souls.
I know I'll receive a ration of shit for this post from the "They deserve to rot in Hell, they're just getting what they deserve" crowd, but so be it. Nobody should be tortured in our country, neither al Qaeda nor pot smokers. Nobody. That's not who we are.
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