Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanhobson/3656135868/sizes/l/in/photostream/
An epidemic of incarceration. A prison system that provides neither retributive justice nor rehabilitation. Is this America's moral catastrophe?
More than six million people are under "correctional supervision" in the US – more than were in Stalin's Gulags. Why so many? This superb account suggests there's been a serious failure of common sense and humanity
Eye-opening account details growing use of prison labour for commercial purposes. Huge, captive workforce; pay rates about 20 cents/hour. Some states even considering replacing public sector workers with prison labour
Incarceration rate highest in US, triple Iran's, seven times China's. Most prisoners are in privately owned prisons. Prison profits help pay for law enforcement. Strong chain of incentives for local sheriffs to keep prisons full
Shocking assessment of for-profit prisons. "It’s an industry that wants people in jail, because jail is their product. And they have shareholder expectations to meet." Should we let companies specialise in the denial of freedom?
On the importance of “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” by William Stuntz, which reveals "how justice is administered by prosecutors who have every incentive to threaten defendants with the harshest possible sentence"
Anyone still think for-profit prisons are a good idea? Well, this should change your mind. Horrifying account of a children's prison out of control. Drugs, weapons, beatings, rapes commonplace. Often with prison staff complicit
The photos that persuaded the US Supreme Court to downsize California's overcrowded prisons. Vast makeshift dormitories, concrete cells for prisoners on suicide watch, tiny cages for those awaiting mental health care
Documentary maker steps inside brutal confines of Miami jail system where inmates unconvicted of any crime await trial, sometimes for years. They live 24 to a cell, with one shower and two toilets, fighting for snacks and all else
Profile of Burl Cain, "a man with a near-mythical reputation for turning Angola, the bloodiest prison in the South, into a model facility". Runs it "with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other". Except when he drops the Bible
Terrifying account of life and death inside "One Main, House Of Pain", most dangerous block of New York juvenile prison on Riker's Island. Teenage inmates pretty much run the place. Like "Lord of the Flies" with more weaponry
Wide-ranging conversation about history and purpose of American penal system, punishment, torture, with Caleb Smith, Yale professor. Interesting—and depressing— throughout
What visitors try to sneak into Rikers Island jail, and how prison staff spot and stop the trade. "This week: six cellphones, three canisters of pepper spray, eight blades, two forks, two pairs of scissors and a needle"
Disturbing report on US prison service. Incidents of sexual abuse may be as high as 25 per hour. "Overall, most victims were abused not by other inmates but by corrections staff: agents of our government, paid with our taxes"
America's prison system as moral catastrophe. More African Americans incarcerated than were enslaved in the 1850s. More rapes inside prison than out. A society that allows little way back for ex-cons. Provocative remedy proposed
Prison culture explained, by ex-politician who spent a year inside for voter fraud. Rule one: Don't eat the Snickers bar that's waiting on your bed when you get to your cell. If you do, you're asking to "get your windows tinted"
In 2004 Yassin Aref was caught in an FBI sting in upstate New York. He was about to become the latest inmate in a secretive prison called a Communication Management Unit, where an estimated 70% of the inmates are Muslim
Former prisoner in Arizona tells of gang violence, overflowing toilets, food green with mould. And a horrendous anecdote about an asthmatic cellmate and a cockroach
US war on drugs is waged almost entirely in ghetto communities, where war on poverty has been abandoned. Resulting mass incarceration of African-Americans is inhumane, unfair. It would never happen to whites. A powerful polemic
