I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Kaus should be in prison. His hackery is criminal.
All this country stands for anymore is corporations getting filthy rich and screwing people.
Your 72 hours are up, Luskin-defamer!
The Calling, from Talk, is actually a pretty good tune. A little obscure, however.
Your posts have forced me to whip out a bunch of Yes albums last evening / this afternoon; it has been quite a blast to read your headlines.
More importantly, however, is the fact that very few Americans care about the conditions in prisons. While the 'penitentiary' was initially designed to rehabilitate inmates, our reactionary leaders gave up on this construct long ago, and convinced a great many to follow suit. Perhaps the clearest example of this is that prison rape is essentially an accepted byproduct of the punishment. Of course, our criminal justice system is not just intended to deal out retribution, is it???
Your 72 hours are up, Luskin-defamer!
Jeffrey J. Upton, Esq. | 11.01.03 - 5:56 pm | #
Jeffrey,
phone home.
My thoughts exactly, Steve. Prisons in the US now practice torture, usually done by other inmates (rape/assault), condoned and abetted by guards, who themselves are known to be sadistic at times. The phone rip-off is as well known to prisoners and their families as it is unknown to the public.
I worked as a telephone operator for AT&T for several years while trying to keep the rent paid/make college tuition money. Prisoners are allowed collect calls only, which often have 15 or 30 minute timed cutoffs. Cutoffs can happen if call waiting is triggered. Expect the call to be monitored.
I find it funny that all the folks who bark and bray about prison being such a cakewalk never even so much as visit prisons. Granted, there isn't much to see, but a trip to a maximum security pen can be an eyeopener.
If anyone reads this, I recommend a trip to Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, during the months of April or October. A rodeo featuring prisoners as cowboys occurs every weekend during these two months. Additionally, arts and crafts are for sale, and you can speak--briefly--to folks on the inside. I think folks who go will emerge with a different idea about prison.
Additionally, there is a small museum just outside the grounds, open every day of the year but Christmas Day.
OT for prisons but relevant to the corporate--
This is an update from the Cali grocery strike (from a citizen's eye-view)
Three (?) weeks ago we had a pretty good discussion on this blog about the Cali grocery strike. Since then, I haven't been in a major grocery chain store. So last night, the Union called picket lines off the Ralphs grocery chain in order to pressure Ralph's to break ranks and start negotiating, among other reasons. Ralph's is one of the chains who LOCKED OUT the grocery clerks; they were NOT being struck.
Anyway, I took the opportunity to go to Ralph's this a.m. in order to 1) support the union tactic, 2) replenish my shelves with emergency rations, and 3) take a look inside and see if things were as rosy-keen as Management was alleging, despite the massive fresh food give-aways in LA by the major chains.
Well, heh. There were five quarts of milk on display. The deli, the meat counter, the fresh fish counter, the bakery, the plant section were dark and empty. There were two pathetic stock persons trying to move items on poorly stocked shelves to the front. There were spectacular bargains for anything with caffeine (Soda, coffee, why, I can't say) The few pieces of meat were whitish and ugly, my stomach churned, but I pressed on. The bread aisle was pretty pathetic, a couple of loaves green with mold. Frozen food section in chaos, looked like a basement-bargain table. at KMart. The household item aisle was nicely stocked though...
The whole place was dirty and empty and felt under seige. If you've ever been to a store near bankruptcy where no one seems to care any more, this was it. Few people, lots of security guards, they didn't even open their doors til after 7 AM. No smiles, no greetings, desultory looks.
So I took the few items I bought, thinking how very valuable these workers really are to a major grocery store, how little I notice when aisles are clean, shelves are stocked, items marked and fresh and lined nicely in a row.
I was curious whether scabs or management would be wo/manning the check-out. It was management. One aisle open, no waiting. I held them to the same standard as any checker, unforgiving when they didn't ask Paper or Plastic? (Hell, no! I won't be patient during the current situation!)
Got the hell outta there as fast as I could, feeling creepy. Yep, the strike/LOCKOUT has them reeling, I was pleased to see. I sincerely hope, however, the union has a good strike fund. However these corporations are hurting, the workers are truly suffering, badly. More power to 'em!
NPR had a jaw dropping story about a small rural town whose budget was entirely prison--and prison phone call derived. they tried to change the deal with ATT to make the calls less expensive for the prisoners--all of whom were out of state prisoners shipped there by illinois, so all of whom were dependent on the telephone for family connections--and att cut them off and the prison moved!
Good "Mother Jones" artical this month on Faith Based Groups giving perks to entice prisoners to praise Jesus. Accepting Christ alone is supposed to cure a lot of bad behaviors, and allows the states to cut off funding for programs that really work. Part of the funds to pay for Faith Based program come from overcharging general prison population for the phone calls.
steve - the US gave up totally on the idea of rehabilitation decades ago, and the whole system is geared toward retribution now, with some outstanding exceptions.
I can't understand how they can be so short-sighted. If you treat people like animals, well...
I saw a great report sometime in the last year or so about a max security prison in New York, I think, that has instituted a program in which prisoners are given dogs to train to be companions to the disabled - seeing eye dogs, etc. The program has had an astounding effect on the prisoners - problems dropped off to next to nothing. Well, duh - people need to feel like they have something real to do, they need some pride and dignity - something to make them feel human.
Our prison system mainly is good for one thing - making meaner, better prepared criminals. It's a disgrace for a supposedly civilized nation.
I once went to a tour of an excavation of a 19th century prison. The rooms were closets, they had almost no light, and all prisoner's were in solitary. They had the warden's diary, which was filled with puzzled observations about how all the men seemed to go insane within about 6 months.
The the question really is, "does MCI make any legit money?"
At this point, I wouldnt be shocked if it turned out that they were a laundering opperation for some drug cartel.
At my local prison, inmates pay about $2.75 for a local call. But that's used to finance daily upkeep of the prison. It's extortion, but it could be worse. They also ran an ad in the local paper recently looking for prison guard volunteers. Imagine the kind of applicants they'd get.
I don't know whether this is the state or federal government, but Indiana prisons are screwed. Prisoners sleep on the floor in the common areas.
"If anyone reads this, I recommend a trip to Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, during the months of April or October."
It - well, it and Gary Tyler - are the subject of Gil Scot Heron's "Angola Louisiana." Great song.
"But injustice is not confined
To Angola Louisiana
It can walk in your living room..."
John Isbell - If prisoners are sleeping on floors, they need to get up and file a federal lawsuit. Texas prisoners were able to get federal oversight on the Texas system, and some changes were made. Texas prisons are still god-awful, but they used to be god-awfuller.
To a man, every single person I was appointed to represent on appeal who had not yet been shipped to prison out of county jail asked me to file a motion to get them transferred. Our jails are unbelievably bad in this country - far worse than the prisons.
Damn:
Atrios, don't you get it? This is what "compassionate republicanism" is all about! Let the corporate evildoers wallet get fatter at the "lucky duckies" expense. Love, Pichiflay
Thanks, Tena, I'll tell the person I know on the prison commission. I see her Monday.
My stepson was in jail and my husband and I had to jump through all kinds of hoops to be able to get collect calls from him at some outragious fee since our long distance carrier didn't have a billing contract with the company that the prison did. We had to buy money orders and pay in advance for any calls and the per minute rate was ridiculous. We had the time and the money to take care of it but our hearts bled for the guys who's families couldn't work it out. He was in a local jail in Virginia but alot of the prisoners were there on contract from the DC area and unable to call their families.
There is a strong correlation between keeping straight and having a strong family connection. The boneheads who came up with this plan idea are idiots.
The Calling is tragic track off a desperately awful album. It's Yes throwing away the last shred of everything that Union had failed to deliver.
Things are looking up, though. Magnification had more hits than misses, and that hasn't happened since Drama.
Tena, it's the same in Alabama. The county jails are by and large horrendous. Inmates had much rather be at the state pen. In any case, we have the same problem with "private pay phones" here. The rates are excessive and there is no workaround. A well intentioned company wanting to bring down rates is a company wanting to bring down prison profits. Profits are sacrosanct.
Atrios,
Saw something on the Supermax in Calif -- Pelican Bay? Some name like that. Prisoners are kept behind glass, lights on 24 hrs a day. A high percentage of them end up playing with and eating their own shit. The more things change...
Judge Thelton Henderson in Madrid vs. Gomez, 1995:
"Dry words on paper cannot adequately capture the senseless suffering and sometimes wretched misery that (Pelican Bay State Prison) unconstitutional practices leave in their wake.
Westword has many "must read" stories on supermaxs, the prison industrial complex and violence in prisons. It's really the first place to go for information, but be warned that some of it is very graphic.
We should be ashamed of our prison system.
There is a strong correlation between keeping straight and having a strong family connection. The boneheads who came up with this plan idea are idiots.
Are they?
Convicts who remain disconnected from their family support structure are more likely to re-offend. And, thus, more likely to be imprisoned again. And (wait for it) more likely to be a revenue source for the privatized prison company.
The companies running the prisons have a definite interest in people committing crimes.
This is from one of the Westword stories, "Marked for Death"
...After supper on January 17, Araiza-Reyes got into an argument with his latest cellie, Frank Melendez, a cocaine dealer from California. Melendez suffered blows to his head, chest and knees; then he was strangled.
For four days, no one noticed. According to the paperwork kept by the staff in the SHU, Melendez went through numerous counts, received several meals, was taken to showers and to the exercise yard -- all while he was lying dead in his cell. The incident sparked an internal investigation of procedures in the SHU and statements by BOP officials that prisoners in the 23-hour-a-day lockdown unit would be monitored more closely.
"The notion that they protect the inmates from each other is a complete absurdity," says Araiza-Reyes's attorney, Philip DuBois. "On paper, the victim was present and accounted for something like twenty times after he was dead."
...Some prisoners go to great lengths to get removed from the general population without being labeled a snitch. They drop an anonymous note for the guards to find, declaring that a certain inmate is in danger and should be placed in the SHU, or they start a fight with a cellmate, or halfheartedly stab a stranger. But these "check-in moves" are usually transparent.
"I don't care how you check in -- it's always found out," said Paul Chartier, a career felon who's spent close to thirty years in state and federal prisons. "It's going to follow you. You get messed up. You get killed."
...Last October there was another murder in the SHU at Florence. The killing and gutting of Joey Estrella, convicted bank robber, took considerable time and resolve.
The Estrella slaying is remarkable not only for its savagery but for the complete absence of any staff intervention in the slaughter -- despite the increased monitoring of the SHU that was promised after the Melendez murder two years earlier; despite the supposed cleanup of the unit that was supposed to be a result of the Justice Department investigation into staff corruption and abuse of inmates...
Estrella was butchered by his cellmates because he'd been identified as a check-in...
"That was intense," Taylor said. "Mexican dude came to the hole. Owed a little bit of money to some people. They put him in a cell with a savage -- this dude and his cousin -- right across the hall from me. Dude hollers to me, asks for some cigarettes. I slide them over on the line, see them drinking wine, playing cards. After a while, the word comes down that this new guy is no good.
"Ten o'clock count comes around. The Mexican dude says to the cop, "Hey, man, you got to get me another cell.' Cop laughs, says, "Who's winning?'
"Midnight count rolls around. Dude's liver is thrown on the window. Dude's intestines are hanging on the clothesline. His heart i
"Marked for Death" continued:
"Midnight count rolls around. Dude's liver is thrown on the window. Dude's intestines are hanging on the clothesline. His heart is on the table. Dude's dead."
Taylor was wrong about some details. Estrella's heart was still in his body, which was reportedly discovered around three in the morning, not midnight. But the prosecution didn't even bother to challenge the skinhead's account. Given the indisputable evidence of Estrella's corpse -- the blunt trauma to the head, the gaping wounds in the neck, the exquisite force and razor sharpness of the instruments required to invade his belly, ripping through a tattoo of the Virgin Mary to tug at the sacred mysteries inside -- who could argue the point?
I looks like the link got haloed. Here try cutting and pasting this:
http://tinyurl.com/tb7t
Seraphiel, Atrios ran a post on the CA prison guards union about a month ago making exactly your point. Of course Davis wasn't planning to touch this. Bustamante might have; I see no reason to expect the Gropenator to do so. So we'll have more stories a la Patriotboy.
IIRC NE and AZ are also unusually bad. US prison population doubled under Clinton to 2 million, one of three things I don't forgive him for (not sex).
steve - I'm in the same boat. All these Yes references even drove me into my old tapes...a live obscurity called, naturally enough, 9012Live. Lovely version of "Soon" on it.
Consider the extension of this:
These are reverse calls, where the callee must accept the charges. In other words, if the prisoner doesn't have a home phone (quite likely due to his loss of contributing income), no phone contact at all can be made from him to his family.
Just one more way for the Rabid Right to remind all of us that they will find ways to screw the blacks no matter what laws we pass. Until we pass laws that put their own in jail as often.
P.S. I'm white.
Tena: Yor indignation is correct, but in order to file any kind of lawsuit over prison conditions, one must first have reasonable (even if limited) access to legal help outside of the prison. These phone charges and how they are structured make this all but impossible.
I was once held for 57 days without ever know the charge against me, and I am not talking about the rotten South. A fellow prisoner who knew more than I, seeing my frustration, finally broke through for me and handed me the phone. Seven days later, I was released without further court action pending. The judge that released me said that I never should have done more than 7 to 10 days on my charge.
There is a conspiracy within the prison-industrial complex that seeks to humiliate and subvert the efforts of even their best prisoners. They believe that they must "make up for" the courts in this "tough on crime" mode that we are in, and though the actions these staffers take are themselves criminal, try bringing charges.
We've gone over in this country; way far over.
test
242.77
Uptown, baby.
Bush is going down, baby!
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Thanks a lot.
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