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[entremet]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/u...n-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Damn shame.

NEW BOSTON, Tex. — The inmate, dressed in prison whites with a shaved head and incongruously tender eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, entered the visiting room with her wrists joined as if she were handcuffed. At 31, she had spent her whole adult life behind bars, and it looked like a posture of habit.

She introduced herself: “My given name at birth was Joshua Zollicoffer, but my preferred name is Passion Star.”

A transgender woman whose gender identity has been challenged by Texas authorities, Ms. Star herself is challenging Texas’ refusal to accept new national standards intended to eliminate rape in prison, which disproportionately affects gay and transgender prisoners. Last spring, Gov. Rick Perry declared in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that Texas had its own “safe prisons program” and did not need the “unnecessarily cumbersome and costly” intrusion of another federal mandate.

After decades of societal indifference to prison rape, Congress, in a rare show of support for inmates’ rights, unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003, and Mr. Perry’s predecessor as governor, President George W. Bush, signed it into law.

“The emerging consensus was that ‘Don’t drop the soap’ jokes were no longer funny, and that rape is not a penalty we assign in sentencing,” said Jael Humphrey, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, a national group that represents Ms. Star in a federal lawsuit alleging that Texas officials failed to protect her from sexual victimization despite her persistent, well-documented pleas for help.

But over 12 years, even as reported sexual victimization in prisons remained high, the urgency behind that consensus dissipated. It took almost a decade for the Justice Department to issue the final standards on how to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse in custody. And it took a couple of years more before governors were required to report to Washington, which revealed that only New Jersey and New Hampshire were ready to certify full compliance.

With May 15 marking the second annual reporting deadline, advocates for inmates and half of the members of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a bipartisan group charged with drafting the standards, say the plodding pace of change has disheartened them despite pockets of progress.

“I am encouraged by what several states have done, discouraged by most and dismayed by states like Texas,” said Judge Reggie B. Walton of United States District Court in the District of Columbia, who was appointed chairman of the now-disbanded commission by Mr. Bush.

Some commissioners fault the Justice Department for failing to promote the standards vigorously. Others blame the correctional industry and unions for resisting practices long known to curb “state-sanctioned abuse,” as one put it. All lament that Congress has sought to weaken the modest penalties for noncompliance, and that five governors joined Mr. Perry last year in snubbing the standards.

 

[weekend_warrior]

I'd rather kill myself then spend a year in prison.

 

[JDSN]

I think some very influential people see this as a feature rather than something to fix.

 

[The Technomancer]

People don't care about prisoners. At all. Its awful as fuck, and hard not to see as one of the seedier sides of American "moral self-determinism"

 

[entremet]

I think some very influential people see this as a feature rather than something to fix.

Well yeah. Prisoners deserve to live in subhuman conditions, only eat bread and water, and suffer mightily for their crimes!

 

[Kinyou]

I think some very influential people see this as a feature rather than something to fix.

I think generally there are a whole lot of people who see it that way.

 

[Rhomega Beta]

Well yeah. Prisoners deserve to live in subhuman conditions, only eat bread and water, and suffer mightily for their crimes!

Justice is really all about hate and revenge, right?

 

[Dalek]

Yeah I think there are those in power that see this as a crime deterrent, so there's no need to Fix it.

 

[entremet]

Justice is really all about hate and revenge, right?

You really don't want to read about prison conditions in the 18th century.

Horrific stuff.

Sadly, prisoners are the last to receive meaningful social reforms as it starts trickling down in society.

Solitary confinement, for example, still used today, is especially cruel.

http://io9.com/why-solitary-confinement-is-the-worst-kind-of-psycholog-1598543595

Indeed, psychologist Terry Kupers says that solitary confinement "destroys people as human beings." A quick glance at literature review studies done by Sharon Shalev (2008) and Peter Scharff Smith (2006) affirms this assertion; here are some typical symptoms:

• Anxiety: Persistent low level of stress, irritability or anxiousness, fear of impending death, panic attacks
  
• Depression: Emotional flatness/blunting and the loss of ability to have any "feelings", mood swings, hopelessness, social withdrawal, loss of initiation of activity or ideas, apathy, lethargy, major depression
  
• Anger: Irritability and hostility, poor impulse control, outbursts of physical and verbal violence against others, self, and objects, unprovoked angers, sometimes manifested as rage
  
• Cognitive disturbances: Short attention span, poor concentration and memory, confused thought processes, disorientation
  
• Perceptual distortions: Hypersensitivity to noises and smells, distortions of sensation (e.g. walls closing in), disorientation in time and space, depersonalization/derealization, hallucinations affecting all five senses (e.g. hallucinations of objects or people appearing in the cell, or hearing voices when no one is speaking
  
• Paranoia and psychosis: Recurrent and persistent thoughts, often of a violent and vengeful character (e.g. directed against prison staff), paranoid ideas (often persecutory), psychotic episodes or states, psychotic depression, schizophrenia
  
• Self-harm: self-mutilation and cutting, suicide attempts

We're social animals through and through.

 

[The Technomancer]

Justice is really all about hate and revenge, right?

It has to be when you have to believe that criminals are "bad people" so you can safely put yourself in the "good people" bucket

 

[Laconic]

Justice is really all about hate and revenge, right?

Foucault wept.

 

[chronic_archaic]

Rape is not justifiable. Prison is not an exception.

 

[Kid Kamikaze10]

Just a taste of how fucked up the US Prison system is.

And because of some retro-ed, selfish, puritanical reason, many Americans are fine with it.

 

[YoungHav]

Every rock you look under, you find that the U.S. is a backwards 3rd world country. Prison reform is several centuries away, at the earliest. The more humanity stripped the higher the recidivism rate.

 

[Averon]

Not surprised. The US justice/prison system isn't about rehabilitation or helping convicts to turn their life around. It is about punishment and exacting revenge. Even when you leave prison, US society deems ex-cons as untrustworthy, dangerous, and unhirable malcontents that don't even deserve to vote.

And people wonder why recidivism rates are so high?

 

[OldAsUrSock]

Every rock you look under, you find that the U.S. is a backwards 3rd world country. Prison reform is several centuries away, at the earliest. The more humanity stripped the higher the recidivism rate.

3rd world means how a country relates to the US since the US is the US it is not 3rd world.

 

[GameGuru59]

Not surprised. The US justice/prison system isn't about rehabilitation or helping convicts to turn their life around. It is about punishment and exacting revenge. Even when you leave prison, US society deems ex-cons as untrustworthy, dangerous, and unhirable malcontents that don't even deserve to vote.

And people wonder why recidivism rates are so high?

Yup, yup, and yup. Absolutely right. The US prison system is about revenge. Not justice (what is justice anyway?), nor protecting the community.

 

[Valhelm]

I think some very influential people see this as a feature rather than something to fix.

Pretty much. When I was twelve, this was the main anti-drug argument given to us by the guidance counselor:

"If you get caught with an illegal substance, you'll be thrown in jail with a 300-pound skinhead named Bubba. Bubba's gonna call you Mary, and you're gonna be his bitch every night."

 

[GaimeGuy]

3rd world means how a country relates to the US since the US is the US it is not 3rd world.

The US is a 3rd world country in many ways, with a first world banking system and military

 

[GraveHorizon]

I hate how nobody in support of prison rape (by not being against it) addresses the logical contradiction of "prison rape is a punishment": Who do they think is doing the raping? It other prisoners, and even guards. Even putting aside the facts that rape is inherently wrong and unjust, and some people are innocent victims that clearly don't "deserve it", letting rape continue to happen benefits rapists. You may as well be slapping a convicted rapist on the back and giving him a highfive for doing what he does when you say "Well, don't drop the soap, hehehe!"

 

[Trurl]

I'd rather kill myself then spend a year in prison.

A best friend of mine did just that.

 

[Marion Cobretti]

Gotta love America man. We definitely have our shit together.

Fortunately the next generation has made it pretty clear they're all about ignoring issues cause they're "post raciscm".

 

[SliceSabre]

Considering a massive amount of people in this country consider men getting raped by each other in prison amusing and actually think they deserve it, it is not a surprise that progress is slow.

People forget that these people are humans and rape is still a crime even in prison against against other lawbreakers.

 

[The Technomancer]

Also, to be fair I don't know what her crime actually was, but barring something like cold-blooded murder I feel like "her entire adult life", i.e at least a 13 year sentence given to presumably an 18 year old, might also be part of the fucking problem

 

[entremet]

Considering a massive amount of people in this country consider men getting raped by each other in prison amusing and actually think they deserve it, it is not a surprise that progress is slow.

People forget that these people are humans and rape is still a crime even in prison against against other lawbreakers.

I always wondered why MRAs never took this cause instead of just antagonizing feminists ad nauseam.

 

[NastyBook]

How does something like this lose steam? How does wrongful imprisonments not play a sustaining factor?

 

[entremet]

How does something like this lose steam? How does wrongful imprisonments not play a sustaining factor?

Prisoners don't vote and most cannot vote after being incarcerated--in some states at least.

 

[Tabris]

3rd world means how a country relates to the US since the US is the US it is not 3rd world.

The US is a 3rd world country in many ways, with a first world banking system and military

The definitions of 1st world (Western Countries), 2nd world (USSR / Old Eastern Bloc), 3rd world (Non-aligned Countries). It's a post-WW2 / cold war term that has been mis-appropriated to describe poor vs rich countries.

But the sentiment is right. The US has a long way to go to catch up with the Western Europe, Scandinavian, Canada, Japan, Australia, etc of the world.

 

[Siegcram]

3rd world means how a country relates to the US since the US is the US it is not 3rd world.

Given the cold war is over, that's not really true anymore.

It's now a designation describing the status of societal and economical development. And the US is laughably behind the times in a great number of issues, including the prison system, which is nothing short of archaic.

 

[YoungHav]

3rd world means how a country relates to the US since the US is the US it is not 3rd world.

I know it's technically wrong. I'm using it in the current slang sense. You would expect such barbarism from some backwards theocratic country, yet we act like we're all high and mighty over here.

 

[Marauder Shields]

I think generally there are a whole lot of people who see it that way.

Pretty much. Just look at any reaction when a pedophile is sentenced to prison. It's almost like people view the rape, that individual is going to receive, as a positive result.

 

[Monocle]

Human rights for CRIMINALS? *chortle*

I'm not saying anyone deserves to be raped, but I do believe in payback. Wait, no, I mean justice. Can I start again? I think that came out wrong.

 

[NoMoreTrolls]

The prison system in the US has a long way to go. It's absolutely unacceptable that prisoners are at risk of bodily harm during their incarceration, and the fact that rape is so commonplace in our prison system is backwards and abhorrent.