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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsExtended solitary confinement: not torture?
Anyone here think that?
Or that keeping people in prison forever, without evidence of wrongdoing, isn't torture? Or that ramming food down the throats of these people when they protest their situation, isn't torture?
I keep reading that America doesn't torture. I wish it was true.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)Mothers of numerous small children? Granted, they would be imposing it on themselves, but still.
Response to MannyGoldstein (Original post)
Post removed
99Forever
(14,524 posts)Autumn
(44,762 posts)Extended solitary confinement is just free time to ponder on the meaning of life and staying away from life's little irritations like family and shit like that.
Ramming food down the throats of these people when they protest their situation is kind of like Mom making sure you eat your veggies.
Keeping people in prison forever, without evidence of wrongdoing is kind of like free room and board for life! Justice is over rated anyways.
Lighten up Manny!!!! Look on the sunny side!!!!
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)the Reagan era.
Evil really isn't so bad if you just make the best of it! Just smile, and the whole world smiles with you!!!
Don't Worry, Be Happy!
Autumn
(44,762 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)"To hide from truth is to know truth. This is the First Precept of the Third Way." ~ Bodhisattva Goldstein
Autumn
(44,762 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)But I find that I am unworthy.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Thanks a lot.
Now the History of Buddhism folks will be following me around DU, noting my every transgression.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023359536
Most of the people never talk about solitary confinement unless they're trying to push the claim the U.S. tortures. That's the only time it ever comes up.
They never talk about the fact that prisoners have been subjected to it for decades in this country.
Prisoners were tortured during the Internment. Those were innocent people.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)Solitary has been proven to drive a person mad in a relatively short period of time. It might be the worst form of torture. Keeping people in prison without evidence of wrongdoing is akin to murder. Taking away a person's freedom should never be done lightly. When you do it, you are essentially taking away their life, because a life without freedom is no kind of life. Some people deserve it, no doubt, especially those who have to be kept away from society because they're too dangerous to be allowed outside. But holding a person in prison without just cause is evil.
America tortures people, and it makes me ashamed. Unfortunately, too many Americans just don't give a shit. A lot of Americans don't care about prisoners at all. Once people are locked up, they assume the prisoners are guilty and they deserve whatever happens to them. It's sick, but it's true.
malthaussen
(17,066 posts)It's becoming a portmanteau word. "Cruel and unusual" was how it was phrased in the Constitution, and it surprises me that isn't good enough to be going on.
Of course, the problem with "unusual" is that if it becomes standard practice, it ceases to be "unusual." The bottom line is that the government is gonna do what it's gonna do, and if no one holds them accountable, it won't take long before we as a country no longer recognize ourselves. We may indeed already be past that point.
The sad thing is that those of us of a somewhat ripe vintage grew up with a different set of expectations. What seems a novelty to us is standard procedure to the rising generation. "What's the big deal?"
It's an old, old struggle. Are you familiar with this document?: http://www.constitution.org/eng/petright.htm Was just re-reading that the other night, and Article III et seq gave me that feeling of deja vu all over again.
-- Mal
elias49
(4,259 posts)I wouldn't last a week in and 8X8 box. Fuck that. Please shoot me in the head.
JJChambers
(1,115 posts)Who are a threat to both the prison staff and the other inmates, if not in solitary confinement? Do the prisoners not have a right to be free from violent attacks by other inmates during their incarceration? I am pro-solitary confinement for repeat violent offenders.
treestar
(82,383 posts)It is easy to run a prison from behind a keyboard when you have no experience of actually doing it.
Solitary confinement is clearly not torture. Torture involves physical pain. This might cause mental pain and be overdone, but it's not torture. These are people who wish to argue Manning was tortured when that was not the case. They want to expand the meaning of the word so that we could hardly have prisons, as mere imprisonment is likely to be called "torture" next.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)What about inmates who become so mentally destroyed by solitary confinement that they eat their own body parts? Would yu count it as torture once they start eating themselves?
Should psychological services not be covered by health insurance?
treestar
(82,383 posts)than simply labeling all solitary confinement as "torture."
If there were such an inmate, they likely have some psychological issue. Hopefully this would be treatable. And we recall they did something to get there. What about the rights of the other prisoners not to be attacked, etc.? They are there due to refusing to follow society's rules. Some can't even function on that level in a prison.
But what of the claustrophobe who just can't stand prison? He ought to be released?
Or one who threatens suicide, like Manning. If they do something about it they are blamed and if they don't and he kills himself, they are blamed too.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Do you believe that she was treated properly?
Of course, given that the prison psychologist did not think Manning was a suicide threat, there's also the question of why he was considered one.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/29/15545923-bradley-mannings-psychiatrist-says-his-recommendations-ignored-by-quantico-staff
http://www.chelseamanning.org/news/quantico-psychiatrist-bradley-manning-treated-worse-than-death-row-inmates
This is a sickness.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Back in the 1840's, the Quakers set up a system of confinement for their crooks and criminals They truly thought that they could put people in isolation, who would then lead lives of prayer and meditation, and who through that prayer and meditation would then be able to reform their lives.
Their was one big problem with the theory - the inmates who were treated this way ALL went insane.
It hasn't gotten any better over time. Human beings are by nature social animals. Without the interactions of others, they go nuts. I remember a few years ago, writers at "Law and Order," the TV show, decided to bring the issue to light. They did a show in which their detective, Elliot Stabler, voluntarily submitted to being incarcerated inside a NYC prison for three days.
His friend who had put him there came back 72 hours later, and Stabler was already succumbing to insanity. He thought he had been there for several weeks.
Our solitary confinement is not only used on the worst of the worst, but just about anybody, as this Rolling Stone article attests:
https://betweenthebars.org/posts/10568/magazine-article-rolling-stone-slow-motion-torture
Remember, the huge maxi security prisons cost the tax payers billions and billions of dollars. If reserved for only the worst of the worst, these jails would not have to be built so often and the privatized prison industry would have a small drop in their profits. That would be unacceptable, so even mid level burglars get bumped into solitary confinement status.
treestar
(82,383 posts)who harm other prisoners?
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)be denied a radio or TV or reading materials? (The radio and TV can have their volume controls pre-calibrated so the volume does not interfere with others.
Please explain that before me having to explain that we could simply go back to what we always did - maximize the guards when someone has to leave their cell.
There are for instance very very dangerous people on death row, yet they are not taking up spaces inside our very expensive prison-for profit Maximum Security Institutions.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, forcing someone to witness the torturing of another, depersonalization, and mock executions don't have to involve physical pain.
They did a lot of those to me and the other students that went through SERE together, and even though it was done in a controlled environment, I still can't sleep naked or watch movies with torture scenes.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)But an OP about your experience would be enlightening.
I mean, I don't even know what SERE is.
Maybe you could have someone else write it and post it? (If not able to do it yourself.) I am so ashamed of the fact that people are in jail for protests. Among the very protesters who had their eyes sprayed by the evil UC Davis security or the police, I believe some of them are still in prison!
Oh and pls PM me if this ever gets put up as an OP - I would not want to miss it.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)I agree that others shouldn't be jeopardized. But we have an obligation, in those instances where inmates would harm others, to do the least possible harm to them as is reasonable.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)-Carl Jung
"Cruelty disfigures our national character. It is incompatible with our constitutional order, with our laws, and with our most prized values ...there is no more fundamental right than to be safe from cruel and inhumane treatment. Where cruelty exists, law does not."
-Alberto Mora, former general counsel of the United States Navy
When we torture we are departing downward from humanity
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness so close around us... We are called upon to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)To say about our fascist society.
As far as Mora, he would never be allowed to be active in the Navy these days.
Solzhenitsyn was allowed to be glorified, as he was a chip in our propaganda about how terrible Soviet Russia was. Between our spying and drumming children into prison, simply for disrupting others in second grade, we are fast catching up to Soviet Russian's totalitarian status.
Martin Luther King Jr we shot.
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Shouldn't have.
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)I almost went insane in military arrest - 6 days in a single cell, no other prisoners at the time, 1 hour a day to walk the yard but even then no one to talk to, though while I was outside I could at least hear other people. The only sound I heard inside was from the guy who brought my food (without ever speaking a word).
Worst experience of my adult life.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)I simply can't.
Chelsea Manning got months in solitary. Others get decades.
It is a bad, bad sickness that our country has.
Vashta Nerada
(3,922 posts)But apparently, anything that's for-profit in this country can get away with human rights (and environmental) abuses.
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)I think the Hague court agrees with me. Without researching it I am pretty sure the international war crimes tribunal has authorized force feeding of war crimes defendants.