Posted on 06/04/2012 10:29:30 AM PDT by presidio9
I don’t give a flying leap. Prison is supposed to be horrible.
I also don’t particularly trust psychiatrists. This is the origin of a significant portion of modern psychiatry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School
Tell ya what. Ask the inmates if they’d like to trade solitary confinement in the USA for General Population in, say, Mexico.
One day I explained to the class that I was no different than any of them and that I too have broke the law, but more importantly I had in me the same poisons, junk, perversions, anger, hatred, greed that any of them had. In fact I knew how to shoot, carried a side arm and could probably shoot better than most of them, and could kill too. After getting raised eyebrows and a few chuckles from the guys about my sins and insights, they went back to their school work and this troublemaker kid came up to me and asked me more about shooting as he liked guns.
The next day he was in the classroom very angry and was taking it out on the men, knocking things over, throwing stuff, etc. Rather than call the guards, I called him over to the desk and pulled out a chair and said lets talk. I didn't care about the class anymore but just him....I could tell he was in a crisis. He told me when he came to prison several years ago they put him in solitary confinement for months. In fact when the guards gave him food, he would wait and throw it back in there face.
He was a walking time bomb.
We must have talked close to half an hour and during that time I kept loving him. What else could I do? What do you tell a 19 year old who will be spending the rest of his life in prison. What do you say to this man.......you shouldn't have done it, serves you right, that it would get better, everything would be fine, have a great life?
Finally he asked me about his acne on his face. I explained to him it was actually a good thing as it met he was making a lot of the hormone testosterone and that met he was healthy. It would eventually clear up. He was so concerned that girls would not like his acne. I explained that when a girl loved him she would not see his acne but instead his heart.
You know, for just that brief time as he and I talked, the prison room was suspended and the two of us were not there anymore, we were somewhere else talking and sharing and liking each other with no thoughts of our surroundings or the fact that he was facing a life sentence with no girl ever to be in his life. We were so free in those minutes.....I will never forget it.
He thanked me and went back and settled down. I waited to catch him the next day as he went to another class and I asked him how he was doing and he said fine. He seemed less tense.
I just know that these men who are put in solitary confinement have so much repressed rage. I could see it in this young man, you could cut it with a knife it was so thick. I know it takes skills and knowledge to deal with this rage and how to release it both in these men and/or professionals who help. A good way is called a release technique. I was releasing in me and consequently he released.
Solitary confinement certainly gets their attention but it is not rehabilitative....AND...the REABILITATIVE PROCESS STARTS WITH ME, not the criminal.
There is a building next to the building used as a classroom. The guard told me it is for the worst of the worst criminals. They are let out of their isolation cells for one hour a day and when they take a shower, they are handcuffed. It's pretty bad in there. I look at that bleak building across the yard and ask God to help. Those men and the people they hurt badly, affect all of us. We are all like a comb (an example I read one time) depending on the angle you view the comb- from the tooth perspective we are each individuals, independent, isolated, row after row, but when you turn the comb around we all come from the same source.
Jane
Right, I forgot. You are the guy who loves cruel and unusual punishments meted out to others.
I am very grateful you are a contemporary, and not around during, or involved in absolutely any way, with the crafting of the Bill of Rights.
Good day to you.
Okay. Solitary worked for overnight. I have a perfectly attainable idea.
For those people who are too much of an animal to be in physical proximity to others, place them in solid metal cages with one side having a plexiglass window, in general population. Load em up in the evening from their existing isolation cells, move em to general for a few hours, they get their social time, and they can't do anything to people outside of the cube. You needn't do this every evening, just a few times a week, to stave off isolation psychosis. Of course, during the day, when other prisoners have their detail (work assignment) they would not be working, they'd be stuck in the cell.
Kinda enough of a compromise to keep them from psychotic reactions, yet at the same time, make it more unpleasant than a normal general-population prisoner has it.
You are an extremely spiritually advanced human being. It has taken me a lifetime of work to realize that there is no seperate ‘self’.
Nope. I’d be about the same place they were. Your interpretation of “cruel and unusual” vs. the founders view of “cruel and unusual PUNISHMENTS” doesn’t seem match up.
And, of course, I think its pretty good idea to leave a criminal alone contemplate his crimes and his punishment. Its probably a lot better that letting him participate in Crime U.
And a Good Day to you, too.
I read the article by the Mass. psychiatrist. I note in his cv that he is an expert that is used routinely by those on the defense side.
The horror of becoming mentally fogged because one does not have contact with another individual(except a guard of course).
Sorry I guess you have a bleeding heart for the incarcerated I do not. If they want mental stimulation then perhaps they should write or read or maybe even pray or sit quietly or pace. Plenty of folks in the WWII POW camps (particularly those run by the Japanese) went through far worse.
I guess you buy Amnesty’s argument that the US is horrible because it has prisons
But interestingly enough you didn’t bother to quote my whole response. This is the problem with too many you want to distort. Why not address the idea that studies may have a bias (and this particular one sure did) and that not all research is well modeled (note my comment on Kinsey).
Not to bother though, you obviously know everything
Incorrect.
Not one of the Founding Fathers would have said: 'Good. Punishment is useless if its not “cruel” and “unusual."'
I corrected your sentence for grammar and spelling.
Later today I will present to you a much larger pool of scientific experimentation and treatises that you can also ignore.
Most can’t, the chance is fine but we should remember that the primary goal of prison is punishment not rehabilitation. It’s nice to give them the opportunities but there’s a reason the recidivism rate is as high as it is, and it’s not because our prisons should be nicer.
Articles are written all the time that aren’t facts, just look at the cult of global warming. You don’t have any hard facts, I’m waving away at most soft science suppositions that don’t bother to take into account that most of these people had issues before solitary.
No. They would have laughed their asses off at you, and told you that if it isn’t cruel and unusual, it isn’t punishment.
no you did not ‘correct’ my sentence. You added information that the doc claims and the data do not necessarily support. As with most psychological evaluations when one is dealing with those in jail for drug dealing, murder, and other multiple violent crimes....you can depend on the subject to tell you the truth.
I am done discussing with you since you have already decided that somehow locking up criminals is a bad and terrible thing. Hope they all move next door to you
Incorrect. I'm even stridently for the death penalty.
I am, in turn, done discussing this with you because you hate the Bill of Rights.
Not even close to accurate
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