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More proof of America's two-tier justice system: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/08/martin-erzinger-morgan-stanley-hit-and-run-_n_780294.html (Wealth manager for Morgan Stanley won't face charges for hit-and-run, because prosecutors don't want him to lose his job.)
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Nov 8, 2010 19:03
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Hobologist posted:My concern is more on the exhaustion of administrative remedies requirement. Plenty of opportunities for the state administration to "lose" paperwork, delay proceedings, and, of course, it is an invitation of reprisal from prison staff. Goro would know more about whether this is a severe problem, but the potential for abuse is there. Exhaustion of remedies is kinda bad (namely because there is no futility defense). That said there are PLENTY of jailhouse lawyers who know the entire administrative procedure and when I was defending corrections we didn't have a lot of defective filings. The main problem I saw is that there are usually strict time limits for filing appeals and considering the haphazard/terrible system of prison mail people occasionally get dismissed for failure to exhaust who shouldn't have been (although I've also seen judges ignore the time limits where the prisoner has some evidence that they followed the mailbox rule). On reprisal, it does happen BUT these cases tend to make it to jury trial a lot (summary judgment/dismissal is not appropriate for he said/she said). Also, most prison staff are not even aware that they are being sued unless the prisoner him/herself tells him (we actually got in trouble with this because we had a prison guard look like a skeeze in a deposition because he didn't know how many times he had been sued).
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Nov 8, 2010 19:53
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Sir John Falstaff posted:More proof of America's two-tier justice system: Huff post is a poo poo source, go deeper: http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20101104/NEWS/101109939/1078&ParentProfile=1062
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Nov 8, 2010 20:11
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Maarak posted:Huff post is a poo poo source, go deeper: http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20101104/NEWS/101109939/1078&ParentProfile=1062 Um, what's the substantive difference between those articles? And, how is the "Vail Daily" a particularly reputable source? Edit: A few other links: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/11/felony-charge-dropped-because-it-could-affect-wealth-managers-job/1 http://blogs.forbes.com/halahtouryalai/2010/11/08/wall-street-broker-escapes-felony-hit-and-run-charge/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327323/Morgan-Stanley-financial-adviser-escapes-felony-charges-hit-run-jeopardise-job.html I think my "favorite" part is: "Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession." Like they don't for, say, anyone looking to get or retain any job. Sir John Falstaff fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Nov 8, 2010 |
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Nov 8, 2010 20:48
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Sir John Falstaff posted:I think my "favorite" part is: I wonder how long it will take before the bankers become bold enough to start wearing crowns.
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Nov 9, 2010 01:34
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Frontline had a very interesting story 4 men who falsely confessed to crimes and the prosecutions desperate attempt to keep those confessions alive. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/
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Nov 11, 2010 07:19
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HidingFromGoro fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Nov 15, 2010 |
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Nov 15, 2010 05:19
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HidingFromGoro posted:[*]IL: Opponents & protestors stop Urbandale immigrant prison. This is actually in Iowa. Urbandale is a suburb of Des Moines, the capitol of Iowa.
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Nov 15, 2010 05:55
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HidingFromGoro posted:
This is the only thing that gives me hope about this disgusting situation. At some point it will become fiscally impossible to keep ignoring the issue and legislators might figure out that a social safety net costs less than incarcerating everyone. Of course bullets cost less than a social safety net, so it could go the other way (and we all know it has before).
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Nov 15, 2010 17:01
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Rutibex posted:This is the only thing that gives me hope about this disgusting situation. At some point it will become fiscally impossible to keep ignoring the issue and legislators might figure out that a social safety net costs less than incarcerating everyone. The fact the courts have pretty much said "Release 40K people now or else" indicates that at some point this poo poo is going to hit crisis. The problem is what does "or else" mean? *Im aware thats not the actual wording. My point is, the order is there, it just seems like its getting ignored. The question is, how will the courts enforce it, if they do at all.
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Nov 16, 2010 01:28
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duck monster posted:The fact the courts have pretty much said "Release 40K people now or else" indicates that at some point this poo poo is going to hit crisis. The problem is what does "or else" mean? It means sending the inmates to for-profit prisons in other states such as Michigan, where they will be incarcerated without government oversight. That's what it means.
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Nov 16, 2010 01:37
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Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement (98-page PDF)quote:The Sourcebook on solitary confinement provides a comprehensive single point of reference on solitary confinement, its documented health effects, and professional, ethical and human rights guidelines and codes of practice relating to its use.
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Nov 16, 2010 02:14
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Are doctors complicit in prison torture? Maine tortures women, too. Screams from solitary: by dehumanizing prisoners, we dehumanize ourselves.
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Nov 16, 2010 02:15
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HidingFromGoro posted:It means sending the inmates to for-profit prisons in other states such as Michigan, where they will be incarcerated without government oversight. At a guess, in the long run this will cost the State more than building and running its own prisons but because the cost is spread out over time and there are no significant up-front costs they can massage it into the figures?
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Nov 16, 2010 02:19
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I have something of a guilty pleasure. I love reading websites and watching COPS style shows that are sort of the other side of this issue. You see someone get busted, noteworthy either because the person was enormously stupid and ignorant, or the crime was particularly heinous, and I find myself torn. Objectively, our system is a travesty, but psychologically, I do sometimes see people like that and I have a hard time finding sympathy for them. I'm talking about seeing videos of someone brazenly walking into a business, shooting someone without even asking for money, in front of innocent people and taking $37. I'm talking about seeing a meth head killing his girlfriend, then killing his own children as a form of revenge. Or the worst one I saw, hearing about a newly we couple get abducted, gang raped, mutilated, dismembered, and tortured to death over three days for literally no reason, a completely random crime. We're not talking about someone losing their temper, they just decided to torture this couple to death. Or this thing where some girl from the suburbs got abducted and sold into sex slavery, where she was drugged and repeatedly raped and these heartless pimps just brazenly sell these women over craiglist like a used couch. Its hard to think about this rationally when you see that many of these inmates, even if not a majority are evil evil people who have done unforgivable things, and not even as a crime of passion or poor judgment, but deliberately, heartlessly, and without conscience. The only thing that makes me hostile to the prison system, is that prosecutors, and the machine in general, seem to want to treat every single suspect, conviction, or evidence or not, like they are one of these people (provided they aren't a well connected white person.) Even if their crimes are really petty, like that starving homeless guy who steals $100 because he's starving and got several years. Not that I am OK with seeing one of these evil people tortured or raped, even if they deserve it but, its kind of hard to make the case, even for myself.
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Nov 16, 2010 06:22
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You're talking about the 1%ers. Or rather 1% of 1%ers. Why should the other 99(.9%) of people in there for random bullshit, mostly drugs, have to live through a fresh hell like what we read about in Dickens, or worse? The very poo poo we trump as a reason to go invade some random nation is the very poo poo we do here. The very poo poo we liked to use to bludgeon the rest of the world as being uncivilized her and you're trying to rationalize it. Even the worst of the worst is still a human being and WE should have our standards, not rationalize and justify a deterioration of prison conditions on our watch as "heh they deserve it" - not even if it was only the worst of the worst enduring it.
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Nov 16, 2010 07:02
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Fire posted:Not that I am OK with seeing one of these evil people tortured or raped, even if they deserve it but, its kind of hard to make the case, even for myself. I get the impression that what might be commonly called 'evil', may in fact be properly termed 'sociopathic'. People with broken processing of empathy that seem uncapable of giving other humans full equal status as beings worthy of moral consideration. It very well might be a broken-brain type thing. Most people, including criminals, don't necesarily see themselves as evil people. Most are in bad circumstances or misunderstand the rules of behavior society needs to function fairly. And theres a small percentage who see other people as meat. I do then wonder if sociopathy can be fixed. If it can't , well we have a problem, but if it can, I don't see why long term imprisonment is necessary for anything, assuming treatment is possible. self counterargument: See Clockwork orange.
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Nov 16, 2010 08:34
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duck monster posted:I get the impression that what might be commonly called 'evil', may in fact be properly termed 'sociopathic'. People with broken processing of empathy that seem uncapable of giving other humans full equal status as beings worthy of moral consideration. It very well might be a broken-brain type thing. Plus, how much of their psychological problems have roots in the lovely society we provide? Why aren't there such insane sickos at the same rate of occurrence in countries with high qualities of life across all income spectrums, strong social services, and more human prison sentences, and cops that don't otherize and shoot on site?
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Nov 16, 2010 10:50
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Fire posted:Not that I am OK with seeing one of these evil people tortured or raped, even if they deserve it but, its kind of hard to make the case, even for myself. There's your problem, you think some people can deserve to be tortured or raped. it's just my opinion, but i don't think any human being, ever, can deserve to be raped or tortured. No matter how heinous the acts, torture and rape (which can be considered a form of torture) are never warranted. Society disagrees with me, obviously, but the easiest way to account for that 1% of 1% who are completely "evil". if you can believe that even these people do not deserve to be tortured, you can easily reconcile the "bad" part of prison reform. No one deserves that kind of treatment. Not even someone who tortures and dismembers a person over the course of a month.
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Nov 16, 2010 13:14
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Fire posted:Its hard to think about this rationally when you see that many of these inmates, even if not a majority are evil evil people who have done unforgivable things, and not even as a crime of passion or poor judgment, but deliberately, heartlessly, and without conscience. Stop dehumanizing people just because they do bad things. It's this exact line of reasoning that lets people rationalize away any and all prison abuse: the belief that it's okay when the prison system happens to "bad" people, and the only issue is that a "good" person falls through the cracks and gets caught in it from time to time. What you've said here is little different from a prosecutor who rigs a trial to avoid letting an "obviously guilty criminal scum" go free for lack of evidence. Moreover, by objectifying criminals and then saying that it's okay for them to be abused, are you really that different from those guys who objectified women into something to be raped and sold? I'm being a little hyperbolic here, but that's because I'm trying to drive the point home hard and fast - once you decide "this group of people doesn't deserve to be counted as humans, so I don't care what happens to them", you're basically stating that morality has exceptions and loopholes through which you can shove the most terrible of tortures. Prison doesn't exist to abuse the evil, that'd just be plain sociopathic. Prison is intended to resolve the problems that render people unable to abide by the rules of society, and to keep them segregated from mainstream society until that process is complete. There's no such thing as a "literally random crime" - everyone does things for a reason, even if that reason doesn't make sense to you or to the reporters. Oftentimes, such "senseless" crimes are the result of mental illness or a more brutal worldview brought about by previous prison time.
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Nov 16, 2010 13:15
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Main Paineframe posted:Prison doesn't exist to abuse the evil, that'd just be plain sociopathic. Prison is intended to resolve the problems that render people unable to abide by the rules of society, and to keep them segregated from mainstream society until that process is complete. There's no such thing as a "literally random crime" - everyone does things for a reason, even if that reason doesn't make sense to you or to the reporters. Oftentimes, such "senseless" crimes are the result of mental illness or a more brutal worldview brought about by previous prison time. This is incorrect. Prison doesn't have any specifically defined goals, which is one it's major issues. People just project whatever they think it should be doing in order to justify it's existence. For the majority of people this means that prison is a place of retributive punishment, and therefor the more horrible it is the more effective. This is why prison reform is such a difficult issue, there is no common framework for people to work with. If it was found that halving sentences and giving inmates WoW in prison reduced recidivism by 75% that would be considered a failure by many because reducing recidivism is only a secondary purpose, suffering is primary. Rutibex fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Nov 16, 2010 |
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Nov 16, 2010 16:47
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Rutibex posted:This is why prison reform is such a difficult issue, there is no common framework for people to work with. If it was found that halving sentences and giving inmates WoW in prison reduced recidivism by 75% that would be considered a failure by many because reducing recidivism is only a secondary purpose, suffering is primary. Safe-sex is one example. Since sex can spread disease, lead to unwanted pregnancy, and cause social ills like domestic abuse, you should just stop having sex. In reality, you can prevent disease and pregnancy, and protect against domestic abuse. But no, that would be wrong, because sex is clearly the source of these miseries.  Another example: needle swap programs (fresh needles for used ones). They hate these programs because they think it will lead to more harm as more people are encouraged to abuse intravenous drugs. Rather than go with the activity that produces the most good (preventing needle sharing) they stick to the theory of "if you can't do the time (being infected), don't do the crime (DRUGZ)". That, of course, spills over into incarceration. They firmly believe that consequences should never be mitigated, never recognizing that doing so is sometimes better. Our prisons now are just engines for recidivism and recurring crimes. Small-timers go in; hardened criminals come out. But, as I said, too many people would rather stick to their ideological guns, even in the face of more societal good from other methods.
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Nov 16, 2010 17:15
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The date on the article is yesterday and I checked the last couple days of posts here first, but apologies if the story is a repost: A New Jersey man gets seven years for being a responsible gun owner. http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/15/brian-aitkens-mistake/ A summary: A man moving from CO to NJ with 3 or so handguns (registered, locked, unloaded, secure in the trunk, etc) was detained by police for non-criminal reasons, they searched his car, found his guns, arrested him and the judge/DA railroaded his trial and now he's looking at 7 years unless the conviction is overturned. This is due to a mixture of very strict gun laws in NJ (which it sounds like he followed), slightly overzealous police, and a judge (at least as the article paints him) who didn't let the jury become aware of the evidence that he transported those guns under a legal exemption of gun laws (transporting from residence to residence). This might be more of a stupid laws / stupid trial / gun control topic, but one hand washes the other and all that. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Nov 16, 2010 |
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Nov 16, 2010 17:57
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anonumos posted:(Christian fundies, mostly) Pretty much. quote:By 1839, the Protestant reformers who backed Auburn’s chaplain had no idea that the minister supported the warden’s move toward expanded use of physical punishments. At the same time, prison officials across the state argued that chaplains had a duty to uphold the state’s disciplinary interests, not sentimental, humanitarian ideals. Both Quaker and Calvinist reformers were appalled when investigations late in the decade revealed institutions racked by violence while some chaplains stood by.
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Nov 16, 2010 19:19
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21stCentury posted:Society disagrees with me, obviously, but the easiest way to account for that 1% of 1% who are completely "evil". if you can believe that even these people do not deserve to be tortured, you can easily reconcile the "bad" part of prison reform. No one deserves that kind of treatment. Not even someone who tortures and dismembers a person over the course of a month. I agree with you but, for the sake of argument, how do you know they are only 1%? Its not like the statistics distinguish or are objectively capable of distinguishing between murder 1 committed by someone who was at the end of their rope because her husband was abusing her, someone who is pressured into confessing to something they didn't do, someone who committed what a sane court would consider to be crime of passion against someone they knew, and some complete monster who committed murder 1 against a total stranger so that he could eat their soul by cooking them and eating their flesh. Same goes for other crimes, you can't look at the numbers an objectively tell the difference between the monsters and people who made mistakes to conclude that monsters are only 1%.
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Nov 17, 2010 01:21
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Fire posted:I agree with you but, for the sake of argument, how do you know they are only 1%? Its not like the statistics distinguish or are objectively capable of distinguishing between murder 1 committed by someone who was at the end of their rope because her husband was abusing her, someone who is pressured into confessing to something they didn't do, someone who committed what a sane court would consider to be crime of passion against someone they knew, and some complete monster who committed murder 1 against a total stranger so that he could eat their soul by cooking them and eating their flesh. My point is, no human being, ever, deserves to be tortured. No exceptions.
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Nov 17, 2010 01:27
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21stCentury posted:My point is, no human being, ever, deserves to be tortured. No exceptions. Ok, no human being, ever, deserves to be tortured. But how do you know that the One-Percenters really are "one-percenters?"
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Nov 17, 2010 01:32
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Fire posted:Ok, no human being, ever, deserves to be tortured. But how do you know that the One-Percenters really are "one-percenters?" I don't. That wasn't exactly my point. That was flux_core's point. Even if it's 10% of all criminals or, hell, 100% of all criminals who are "absolute monsters", they still wouldn't deserve to be tortured. 21stCentury fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Nov 17, 2010 |
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Nov 17, 2010 01:36
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Fire posted:Ok, no human being, ever, deserves to be tortured. But how do you know that the One-Percenters really are "one-percenters?"
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Nov 17, 2010 01:51
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s0meb0dy0 posted:It's irrelevant. You can't tell who deserves such awful punishment, so no one should get it. It's pretty easy to tell who's in the 1%, they wear patches on their cloths to that effect  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_motorcycle_club#One_percenter
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Nov 17, 2010 02:15
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Bhaal posted:The date on the article is yesterday and I checked the last couple days of posts here first, but apologies if the story is a repost: If the judge ignored or misinformed the jury, that ought get turned over in a higher court, assuming he's got the $$$ to pursue it (Which can be a hard call when your rotting in a cell) Careful though. Reason Mag is a libertarian publication, so you'll want to treat it with a degree of suspicion. duck monster fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Nov 17, 2010 |
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Nov 17, 2010 03:25
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Fire posted:...or the sake of argument, how do you know they are only 1%? Its not like the statistics distinguish or are objectively capable of distinguishing between murder 1 committed by someone who was at the end of their rope because her husband was abusing her, someone who is pressured into confessing to something they didn't do, someone who committed what a sane court would consider to be crime of passion against someone they knew, and some complete monster who committed murder 1 against a total stranger so that he could eat their soul by cooking them and eating their flesh. "Completetly evil" and even "sociopathic" (in a cultural, rather than clinical sense) are very subjective terms, so you're never going to get a truly objective determination of either. On a more objective level, when I did trial work I met 10-15 new clients every two weeks for five years for crimes ranging from marijuana possession to capital murder. I had lots of clients who would be clinically sociopathic, but that's not a very good metric because lots of 'successful' business people are similarly clinically sociopathic. Out of those 1500 or so clients, exactly two were "completely evil" or "sociopathic" in a cultural (as well as clinical) sense. Neither of them were death penalty clients, or even murder clients. On the other hand, my jurisdiction of about 450,000 sends about 10 people to prison each day, every day. In prison, the funds for treatment programs have dried up, there haven't been rehabilitation programs for over a decade, and the staff is 20% below minimum safe levels. Rehabilitation is a farce, as is general deterrence. Specific deterrence while incarcerated works by definition, but with no treatment, no rehab, and next to no supervision, a person comes out of prison worse in every way than when they went in. That leaves retribution. And voters love retribution and they love awful punishment and torture of people in prison. As a legislator, you can't go wrong ignoring awful punishment and torture and voting for more retribution.
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Nov 17, 2010 05:37
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joat mon posted:Rehabilitation is a farce, as is general deterrence. Specific deterrence while incarcerated works by definition, but with no treatment, no rehab, and next to no supervision, a person comes out of prison worse in every way than when they went in. That leaves retribution. And voters love retribution and they love awful punishment and torture of people in prison. As a legislator, you can't go wrong ignoring awful punishment and torture and voting for more retribution. quote:Prison violence, it turns out, is not simply an issue of a few belligerents. In the past thirty years, the United States has quadrupled its incarceration rate but not its prison space. Work and education programs have been cancelled, out of a belief that the pursuit of rehabilitation is pointless. The result has been unprecedented overcrowding, along with unprecedented idleness—a nice formula for violence. Remove a few prisoners to solitary confinement, and the violence doesn’t change. So you remove some more, and still nothing happens. Before long, you find yourself in the position we are in today. The United States now has five per cent of the world’s population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.
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Nov 17, 2010 05:44
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joat mon posted:Out of those 1500 or so clients, exactly two were "completely evil" or "sociopathic" in a cultural (as well as clinical) sense. Neither of them were death penalty clients, or even murder clients. On anothe anecdotal level, I know some US prosecutors that have been doing this for over 20 years. Both agreed that they could only think of one person that they prosecuted that could be called "evil". And I saw their case files. Good or regular people can do some horrific things.
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Nov 17, 2010 06:25
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Bhaal posted:A New Jersey man gets seven years for being a responsible gun owner. quote:she said she works with children who have mental health problems, and she has always been taught to call police as a precaution when someone appears despondent and shows any sign that he might harm himself. Stop calling the drat cops for every little thing and being shocked when the person you called the cops on gets arrested. Maybe this isn't how it should be, but it is the way it is.
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Nov 17, 2010 06:56
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nm posted:This is the problem, right here. This is the problem? Really?
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Nov 17, 2010 07:56
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Woozy posted:This is the problem? Really? Well, its part of the problem, people have a rose tinted view of the police. The police are not your friend. Their job is to arrest and gather evidence to prosecute you. They only "serve and protect" the interests of the elite.
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Nov 17, 2010 12:11
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Fire posted:Well, its part of the problem, people have a rose tinted view of the police. The police are not your friend. Their job is to arrest and gather evidence to prosecute you. They only "serve and protect" the interests of the elite. Is that more a commentary on the state of the police or the populace? The myriad of laws in the US today means that literally everyone is a law-breaker and most are felons if the letter of the law is maximally adhered to in all instances. As in many other areas, the US citizenry has given up various freedoms for the claim of security. This happened slowly, with a volume of laws of which the totality can scarcely even be wholly known by a single human, let alone abided by. Whether you are heavily fined or go to jail in any given LEO interaction is practically based on the whims of the individual officer(s) you are interacting with. I've seen in our own SA cop thread open bragging about nailing people that merely annoyed the officer with obscure statutes. Even while on direct camera footage (that is lost with an amazing frequency in claims of police abuse), your life is in their hands. The only thing separating you from wanton brutality and various false charges is the integrity of the officer(s). Knowing this and knowing that the police are supposed to blindly enforce the law, who in their right mind would ever call the police except in the most egregious of circumstances calling for their attention?
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Nov 17, 2010 12:43
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I'm starting to wonder... When will Americans, you know, do something? You look at pretty much every part of American society and you can see it's full of bullshi. From a party with a platform that's basically "Disagree with the other guys" to a legal system where a cop who doesn't like you can beat you up and convict you as a rapist. I mean, how long can Americans stand for the 1% who own 90% of everything?
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Nov 17, 2010 14:14
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21stCentury posted:I mean, how long can Americans stand for the 1% who own 90% of everything? Forever
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Nov 17, 2010 14:33
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