This guy is an intelligent, articulate ex-military-con who served time on drug charges and really did learn his lesson. While there, he worked in outreach and Narcotics Anonymous programs involving civilian prisoners. He strongly suggests that we should have separate systems for non-violent and violent criminals.
Edit: Although he's not sure how to make it workable.
It would be way more expensive, you'd need a shitload more guards, you'd need a way to prevent most of the people that apply to be guards in the first place from applying, but still get guys who were big enough to do the job. You'd have to find a way to crack down on the guards from bringing in the dope, from getting too close to the cons, you'd have to find a way to get around their unions to perform this crackdown. You'd have to tear down most prisons and build new ones- San Quentin was built in the early 1850's. Segregating prisons might be a good idea, a black prison with a black warden and all black guards; same for white, for latinos. It would cut down on a lot of violence and gang activity, although who knows, some of these guys would probably just start attacking the same race. If you did that you better make sure that conditions and privileges are the same, to avoid racism- there's enough racism in the system we have now.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2691832&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1Read the whole damned thing, if you have time. If you're not a member, you'll need to either buy an account or put up with the ads + anti-profanity word filter.
If you don't have time, here are the first two posts about the differences between systems. Afterwards, there are some more parts strictly on civilian prisons. He thoroughly explains why we'd do better off with a prison system for minor offenders modeled on the military prison system, and something completely separate for the violent hardcore scum. Maybe a third system for sex offenders too. (When the hardcore felons are knocking people's teeth out to make gang-oral-rape easier, I suddenly become much less inclined to condone it, even for sex offenders. It'd be more merciful just to shoot them.)
It's apples and oranges, honestly. Military prison is far more beneficial, but that's because they're run very differently and the staff and inmates are very different. For example:
In military prison you have a lot higher staff to inmate ratio, which means way less rapes and gang activity; everyone in there is a high school graduate or GED with at least some vocational training; programs are mandatory; and cleanliness and discipline are enforced. Everyone has at least a baseline of physical fitness so that there isn't as big a difference between the strong and the weak. Once military inmates get out, they have a chance at a life, because they have some education, some treatment, some skills, and the majority are white; so they don't have to face the quadruple-whammy of a record, an addiction, being unskilled/uneducated, and racism.
I do outreach and Narcotics Anonymous volunteer work with inmates at the state prison out here; in civilian prisons, especially state prisons, the conditions are atrocious. Cockroaches, rats, spoiled food, asbestos, no AC, lead paint, the list goes on and on. What's worse, a low guard/inmate ratio means that rape, murder, and assault are everyday realities; most guys have a 4th grade education at best; many are foreign nationals from Mexico that don't speak English- these guys have zero options when they get out and many turn back to crime. Programs are voluntary, which means many don't get the help that they need (the only reason I got clean was because I was forced to start a program); so when they get out they are still addicts, which means more crime.
Guards in civilian prisons are needlessly brutal, and many bring in dope and contraband to the inmates in exchange for money and favors, so you have people with active addictions while in prison- needles, etc which means HIV, and when you add that into the daily rapes and "consensual" sex you have tons of guys coming in for a minor crime with a 2 year sentence and leaving with an AIDS death sentence... now those guys have nothing to lose so what do you think they are going to do on the outside?
Working with inmates in civilian prisons is depressing and heartbreaking, but there are a couple guys who get clean and work their program and make it on the outside; that makes it worth it, but you always know that basically you are pouring 12oz bottles of Evian bottled water into the Pacific Ocean and hoping to make it not salty anymore... I guarantee that we will not see any improvement in our prison system or crime rate, our Wars on Drugs and Crime; unless we are willing to totally change the way we deal with criminals and poor people. I don't see that happening because I can't even imagine the amount of money it would cost to completely revamp our corrections, community relations, education and law enforcement attitudes- which is what it would take. It would probably be like 2 or 3 times what the Iraq war costs, at a minimum.
I don't mean to say all this to minimize the responsibility of the individual criminals for what they did; but they don't think like you and me. People get hooked on crack, on meth, heroin, whatever and they do what they need to do, and that's just real. People have dead-end lives and they want more and if there's no road for them with bright flashing signs and people flagging them toward it they're going to take the easy road and just take your shit; and that's just real. It's not right, and it's not an excuse, but that's the way it is and all the people saying "well they just need to be responsible and pull themselves up by the bootstraps," just don't get it- at all.
People live in straight up poverty or with a criminal mindset and they don't think like that at all. It's so alien it's hard to describe, I didn't even understand it as an ex-con until I got out of prison and started working with these guys in the state prisons... they come from another world, the only 2 things that are going to stop them from taking your stuff or selling drugs to your kids or killing or raping you is spending a lot of your tax money on fixing them and giving them handouts; or killing all of them. It's wrong and no one should have to pay for other people being stupid but that's just how it is. I hate to say it because I'm a big advocate of personal responsibility, I fixed myself up without a handout and I feel remorse every day for my stuff, but that seriously is how it is. It doesn't make sense to most people but there you have it. Plus I'm not ready to live in a world where we just exterminate hundreds of thousands of people for revenge, especially when 85% of it is nonviolent stuff.
It might work if there were two prison systems. One for theives, drug cases, minor stuff and one for violent felons. The military system works because there is a ton of oversight and and accountability on the system to make sure people are safe, programs are mandatory, gangs are not tolerated, and the guards rotate in and out of facilities so there is almost zero corruption. An even bigger factor is that the type of personality who is a straight up predator, gang leader, etc is not going to join the military or will be kicked out in boot camp; so you don't have those types in the military system.
On the subject of the hard-core criminals, these guys are either professional crooks that almost universally want to make money the illegal way no matter what or just straight predators. Those guys are like wolves, they're like tigers. 99% of the people in this forum including myself have almost no frame of reference for how these guys are. They don't live in the same world we do. They see other people as prey, as food. They're fundamentally broken- complete sociopaths who will kill you for taking the last chocolate milk, they'll carjack someone and kill them just because they're bored; for any reason or no reason at all. You don't just wake up one day and start raping people, or killing people. These are guys that either through mental illness or severe abuse as children become like this, and 99% of the time there's no changing them back without years of intensive psychiatric care and medication and even then it's a crapshoot.
That's why 2 systems might be a better idea- these guys that kill inmates/guards, the guys covered in tattoos for MS-13, Aryan Brotherhood, Nazi Low-riders, La Eme... these guys are impossible to control. They're not victims of an addiction or poverty (although many are addicts), they are predators- there's just no other way to describe them. They choose their life knowingly and willingly and we build these insane SuperMax prisons like Pelican Bay with 23 hour a day solitary lockdown just to try to keep them from killing each other or guards, and even that doesn't work all the time.
The system we have now puts the kid who stole a car or sold a bag of dope in with these animals, many of them become animals or bitches just to survive- they get broken too and the cycle continues. That's why sex offenders are hated so much, because of the cyclical nature of their crimes- a lot of the kids they rape get fucked in the head and go on to become SO's themselves.
I don't know for sure how to fix our system, I don't think anybody does. But I do know that the way it's set up now is self-sustaining. The system encourages and strengthens the system; it creates criminals, it enhances and worsens criminals which means bigger budgets, more prisons, more racism, more cops, more of everything. The private sector is in on it now too, with the private prisons where they just warehouse people and keep everyone so full of medication they're just zombies; plus being profit-driven means bye-bye programs and any semblance of decent medical care. I don't think it's ever going to stop because of how entrenched it is with industry, politics, unions, everything. There's a book called The Perpetual Prisoner Machine that goes into all of that more clearly than I can.
And here are some chunks dealing with strictly civilian systems:
Guard-on-inmate Violence and Corruption.
Tune ups in civilian prisons are vastly, horribly different. Inmates are tortured in civilian prisons. Inmates are killed. Guards will put a hit out on you, pay other inmates to kill you. It happens in every prison no matter what anyone says; just go to a bar where corrections guys hang out and listen to the stories. All those inmates that are supposed to be in PC and they get "accidentally" in the same area with a Mexican Mafia soldier... there are no accidents in prison. Guys getting cuffed to a chain link fence and used as pinatas is a reality of state prisons- a daily reality. Inmates are sexually assaulted by staff or turned over to predators as gifts. Yes, they are treated like straight up property by some staff members.
Many staff are stand up guys, some of them however were too sleazy to get on with the cops, sheriff, or military; so they wind up being guards. Imagine the most dickhead rent-a-cop you ever knew, and then imagine him working in a prison and having inmates throw shit on him for a couple years (yes, actual shit; plus semen, piss, blood, whatever) and then realizing he can do whatever he wants to these inmates with almost no repercussions. It happens every day and more than a few civilians are secretly happy about it "oh those bastard criminals, they deserve it! Why, one time a criminal even stole my car and I had to pay an insurance deductible!"
...
Civilian prison is different- there are relationships of all kinds, up to and including staff members being full members of prison gangs. You'll have male staff in female yards with inmate girlfriends (never vice versa though, any time a female guard lets herself get alone with an unchained male inmate she gets badly hurt or killed- just the way it is). Civilian staff will work at the same prison for 20 years, so there's opportunities to make friends or (worse) get in debt gambling or something; in the brigs staff transfer every 3 or 4 years. I've said it many times, but it bears repeating- staff members are the primary way drugs get into the prison system. Weapons too, but why bring it in when you can just look the other way while the guy makes his own. You will have staff members involved in hits, involved in sending messages out of the prison, things of that nature. They're not all bad, it's just that they have less oversight and accountability than say, a police department, and even police have bad apples, corruption, etc.
Prison Rape:
Civilian prison, once again, is vastly different. If you're out when you go it you will be victimized, and run the risk of being killed (usually as a result of gang-rape related trauma). In the civilian joint, you're only gay if you're on the bottom. Guys will fuck other dudes in the ass or get blowjobs from dudes daily for their whole bit and get out and be straight as an arrow. Sometimes you see relationships develop, like husband and wife type thing, the wife cleans up the cell, irons, cooks, etc; and the husband kills people that try to rape the wife. When one gets released or killed the other one is affected just as deeply as they would if was a real marriage. Again, these guys get out and are 100% straight. Most of them have a real wife on the outside too.
You have a lot of guys turn punk for protection, see if you're a "free agent" so to speak you're fair game. So that means 15 Crips might gangbang you until you die or go to the hospital; a bunch of Aryans might knock your teeth out to make fucking your mouth easier- that's just real. That's the world we send teenage dope boys into. So some guys get wise to this and basically become a blowjob machine for a bigger guy, in exchange for the Daddy stabbing anyone that might try to fuck the girlfriend. It backfires a lot because if Daddy needs ramen noodles or hot chocolate he's going to give another inmate and his celly a go with his girlfriend in exchange for those noodles. Yeah, you read that right.
Hepatitis, AIDS, you name it... they practically shower these guys with free condoms to try and slow the spread; but if you're an alpha male and you're positive what the fuck do you care if you infect some punk? Also the alpha guys are the ones that think "it'll never happen to me" so they don't worry about any of the bitches being positive. A lot of the punks get their minds just shattered- imagine a football team raping you nonstop for four hours. They become like zombies, they just submit, open their mouths, etc... I know a couple of punks that are trying to get clean and you look in their eyes and there's nobody home. Nothing at all.
It's disgusting and depressing that we passively encourage this kind of treatment of our fellow human beings.
On Racism:
Racism in the civilian system is rampant, some joints are over 80% black so if you're a white guy good luck. Some, especially in the Southwest are primarily latino, same deal. This is what causes white guys to join supremacist gangs. A lot of it isn't "let's get together because we hate blacks," it's "let's stick together so we don't all get killed alone." Racism is the most deadly between different types of latino gangs, the foreign nationals stick together and hate the American citizens of latin descent and vice versa; not realy "race" based per se, but it feels, looks, and acts like racism. Funny anecdote, there are almost as many Mexican members of the Nazi Low-rider gang as whites. Mexicans with swastika tattoos and skinheads dressing like cholos with hair nets (on their shaved heads)... takes a little getting used
Question: Inmates often times can get attacked by other inmates for mundane things in jail like using the shower of a different race?
That's just real. You'll also see attacks for a Norteno (American of Mexican descent) using a Sureno (Mexican citizen) shower in AZ and California, and they're the same "race," also black-on-black violence (Crip in a Blood shower), etc.
I'd say it speaks for itself.
Edit: I
HAD to add this.
On the death penalty, I say yeah, sometimes a con needs to die. I also think the way we do it is totally fucked and executions ought to stop until we clean it up (which will never happen). Forensic guys lie, fingerprint experts lie, and everyone knows cops lie all the time. Juries don't know what the fuck, judges are misanthropes (you would be too if you had to deal with douchebag cons all day). Evidence is lost or intentionally destroyed, witnesses silenced, you name it. This is done to bolster the taxpayer's faith in the system. Plus who gives a fuck about a con, he wouldn't be on trial if he wasn't a criminal, right.
A lot of states that don't have the death penalty have LWOP (pronounced El-Wop), which is Life Without the Possibility of Parole. Think about that for a minute. Your whole life, without even the *possibility* of your ass ever even seeing a parole board. You're 19 when you go in and you are going to die at 70 in prison. This however is good for cons because DNA tests come back and innocent guys get released all the time. After 18 years or whatever in maximum security so their mind is fucked but at least they get out.
Unless and until we can clean it up, let's temporarily pause executions and just do LWOP with mandatory and expedient DNA testing if available to make sure we don't have the wrong guy. Remember, each time they lock up the wrong guy with their bullshit lies and ineptitude, the Real Killer is out there killing your co-worker, your neighbor, your kids.
...
Social services cost a ton of money and there's more waste and corruption that there is with the cops, and that's saying something. Education might help but hen agin, it used to be all you needed was high school, then everyone could get that now you need a bachelor's. Even now, bachelor's is so easy to come by you need more than that a lot of time. A guy explained it to me with market forces, all that; I don't know too much about that, I'm no college dude, I'm just a con. But still, in the ghetto, on the street, mf'ers can't read. The school system has corruption and waste and bullshit like the cops. Clean that up, give people a shot at a life, maybe things will change. It's still hard to get a job with companies using outsourcing and illegals to fill the entry-level jobs. I'm not bashing illegals, it's 100% the corporations and government's fault about the illegal immigrant situation. Sure illegals do a lot of crimes, but without the corporations and government bullshit they wouldn't be here.
Nobody is going to vote to give extra tax money for ghetto people to get social services. They'll whine and bitch about "welfare queens" and such, and never know what it's like, never know a real crackhead or whatever. Never know poverty.
People in ghettoes live in essentially a third-world country. Politicians with mansions talk about "2 Americas," they're more right than they know, even if they don't give a fuck about the ghetto folks; and believe you me, none of them give a fuck.
Race plays a big issue; some races commit crimes at a disproportionate rate, nobody gets into why, they either make excuses to avoid being labeled a racist or they use it to justify their own racism. Something like 60% of all black men are in jail or in the system somehow, that tells you something is wrong. Blacks are treated like dogshit in many parts of the country, also they commit a lot of crimes, so they will get profiled. Where is the line between profiling and racism? I don't know. But I do know that there is a ton of racism from everybody, especially cops. I know some cops, remember.
Consumerism plays a big part, I'm no AdBuster type of dude, but even I see how it is. You're told you need the Escalade, you need the shoes, the Xbox. Mf'ers that ain't got shit want it just as bad, usually they want it more because they feel like second-class citizens, they know the ghetto situation they're in and they think having this stuff will make them less like douchebags; so now they're taking your Escalade, they're killing you for your shoes... they are slanging dope to get that Xbox. Everyone else points and shakes their head and talks about Them Darkies and Those LowLifes, because they have their Xbox, they have their Escalade and It's Never Going to Happen Here; not behind the fence of our gated community, no sir. Not in our suburb. Then they get all surprised and butt-hurt when their car gets stolen, or their kid buys drugs at school. The thieves aren't going to steal cars in the ghetto, they're going to the 'burbs where the nice cars are. They're selling dope to the white kids who have more money so they can overcharge and not worry about getting jacked.
Everything is connected, the Drug War, the consumerism, the racism, the cops, prisons, and schools. It might be a coincidence, I don't know; all I know is that everything feeds of everything, everything sustains and reinforces everything else. This doesn't happen in other countries, at least not like it does here. There are two and a half million guys in prison right now. We have more guys locked up than China. Fucking China, with 400% more people than us, plus it's pretty much a Communist dictatorship for Pete's sake. Nobody knows how many are on probation/parole/supervision or whatever. There are statistics for parole/whatever, but they're bullshit, the only numbers you can trust are the knuckleheads line up and get counted, and that only happens in prison. They lose track of parolees all the time, they lose track of SO's who are supposed to register. They're overworked, they're swamped, and many of them are dumb or straight-up corrupt.
...
Sentences for nonviolent drug/theft stuff are totally out of control. Racial disparity is totally out of control. You will get the same sentence for 500 grams of powder cocaine as you will for 5 grams of crack rock. Same drug, but different races are dealing them. Lawyers and Assistant Vice Presidents are fucking with that blow, black dope boys are moving rocks. This is the type of covert racism that underpins many aspects of the system- they're not saying blacks get in more trouble, they're just picking and choosing drug packaging types based on racial preferences *that they knew about beforehand when they came up with the fucking sentencing guidelines.* You'll get more time for some drug beefs than you will for like aggravated assault, for manslaughter sometimes. Hey you might have crushed some dude's face or killed him, but at least you weren't moving drugs, right? Statistics for interracial crime are altered or buried, in order to further hate crime laws; white on white or black on black is underpunished. Natalie Holloway disappeared and we heard about for months, years; poor folk get killed, who gives a fuck. They catch that guy who did that and they will throw the book at him, a black guy that pulls your basic kidnap/rape/murder (the "hat trick") on an average looking black woman will get less, you won't hear about it on TV. Your white that pulls a hat trick on a white girl will get less than that black guy in most cases. Tangents, but you get the idea. It's impossible to talk about one part of the system without getting into the other parts that feed and strengthen it.
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