| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
|---|
Medium Security or Maximum Security? | | | In Supermax facilities and Admax, the opportunities for violent interactions between inmates are substantially lower than in medium-security prisons. Inmates are isolated as far as staffing and capacity allow, so there is very little interaction between inmates. In a special unit used as a disciplinary measure, the cells are soundproofed and there is virtually no human contact at all, not even with guards. | |
<
< | Although prisoners are safe physical violence, long term incarceration in what essentially amounts to sensory deprivation chambers tends to induce psychosis and other psychological problems. This is exacerbated by the lack of medical attention, since many prisons contract out their health care needs to private companies that provide cursory service. Even in Admax, where mental health is overseen by a director at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, interviews are conducted through videoconference and brief examinations take place through cell doors, where inmates must whisper to keep from being heard by neighbors. | >
> | Although prisoners are safe physical
violence, long term incarceration in what essentially amounts to sensory deprivation chambers tends to induce psychosis and other psychological problems. This is exacerbated by the lack of medical attention, since many prisons contract out their health care needs to private companies that provide cursory service. Even in Admax, where mental health is overseen by a director at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, interviews are conducted through videoconference and brief examinations take place through cell doors, where inmates must whisper to keep from being heard by neighbors. | | | Legal Action | | | The Outlook | |
<
< | An encouraging trend is that higher courts are increasingly interest in prisoner rights issues. The Supreme Court of California recently upheld a overruling by the Court of Appeals of a trial court’s dismissal of a prisoner rape case. In particular, the legally accepted doctrine that guards have no responsibility for the welfare of their prisoners will be tested as the action moves on to trial. Non-governmental organizations may be responsible for the minor shift in judicial opinion, like Human Rights Watch, which takes issue with both the physical and psychological conditions in American prisons. However, popular attitude about the abuse of prisoners is one of the biggest obstacles to substantive reform. Until that change takes place, it is up to lawyers to petition on behalf of their clients, even without high expectations for relief. | >
> | An encouraging trend is that higher courts are increasingly interest
in prisoner rights issues. The Supreme Court of California recently upheld a overruling by the Court of Appeals of a trial court’s dismissal of a prisoner rape case. In particular, the legally accepted doctrine that guards have no responsibility for the welfare of their prisoners will be tested as the action moves on to trial. Non-governmental organizations may be responsible for the minor shift in judicial opinion, like Human Rights Watch, which takes issue with both the physical and psychological conditions in American prisons. However, popular attitude about the abuse of prisoners is one of the biggest obstacles to substantive reform. Until that change takes place, it is up to lawyers to petition on behalf of their clients, even without high expectations for relief. | | | | |
<
< |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line:
# * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, JenniferLi
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of that line. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated list | >
> | I don't see how the
comparison of medium- and high-security prison conditions from the
point of view of the inmate makes sense. Incarceration conditions
are determined by prison systems on the basis of inmate
characteristics. Ultra-high-security lockdowns like Marion and
Florence are infinitesimal in their capacity, and they hardly deserve
half of any discussion of the nature of prisoner's rights litigation
on the basis either of the volume of issues or the likelihood of
relief.
What puzzles me most
about this essay is that it seems so static, presenting a position
(one to which I'm certainly sympathetic) in terms that seem to me
barely to have changed since I was in law school, and certainly
hardly moved over the last decade. Given your obvious interest in
the subject, it's hard for me to believe that anything here was a new
idea to you when you wrote it down; the essay reads like a
compilation from documents long since released by the Sentencing
Project, Stop Prisoner Rape, and so on.
But enormous changes are
about to happen, and you don't discuss them at all. The bill is
about to come due for our unsustainable incarceration policy. State
budgets will collapse next year when the stimulus money runs out, and
the cost of maintaining overbuilt, overguarded, overcrowded
facilities warehousing enormous numbers of people whom it would be
cheaper to send to Harvard can no longer be paid. The guards'
unions, like other public employee unions, will be losing clout and
scrambling to preserve as much of their existing deals as possible
amidst the fury of taxpayers who are underwater in homes on which
they pay high property taxes and who are losing jobs on which the
income tax base depends. California is already talking about
releasing more than 100,000 unnecessarily incarcerated people, and
that is only the beginning.
In this setting, the
alternatives available to those who do not admire the American habit
of incarcerating as many people as possible, and young
African-Americans particularly, will significantly increase.
Imprisoning the underclass is a luxury so expensive that no other
society has been able to afford it and we can't either. How we move
away from the high-water mark to whatever we can afford in the near
future will have enormous consequences for the whole political
economy of imprisonment, compared to which the last fifteen years of
piecemeal constitutional tort litigation, or even the restructuring
litigations of palmier days, will seem pretty small. Opportunities
for new ideas from new people in a new generation will abound, and
I'd like to see your revision begin to take those opportunities
seriously. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
|