The Sheriff Joe Arpaio Memorial Prison Reform Thread

[Aresen]

Screens are now being placed over the inmates' windows to keep them from holding up signs.

The repression state at it's finest.

[Warren]

where is that?

[Ellie]

Screens are now being placed over the inmates' windows to keep them from holding up signs.

The repression state at it's finest.

Seems like it would be less cost and effort to just give people tampons than install screens on windows, but what do I know about running a jail.

where is that?

Southeast Tennessee.

[Warren]

Screens are now being placed over the inmates' windows to keep them from holding up signs.

The repression state at it's finest.

Seems like it would be less cost and effort to just give people tampons than install screens on windows, but what do I know about running a jail.

Jail isn't suppose to be a vacation resort where you just call up the concierge and have them bring up toiletries you forgot to pack Ellie.

[Aresen]

I'm not counting on the end of Sheriff Joe until I can dance on his stinking grave.

Joe Arpaio loses Republican primary for sheriff to his former chief deputy

[Warren]

I'm not counting on the end of Sheriff Joe until I can dance on his stinking grave.

Joe Arpaio loses Republican primary for sheriff to his former chief deputy

I don't think he's a danger to anyone anymore. And he can't pass from this world of sin and pain soon enough for me. But he should have died in a cage. Fuckin' Trump.

[D.A. Ridgely]

Do we have any reason to believe his former deputy wasn't a protege?

[Warren]

Do we have any reason to believe his former deputy wasn't a protege?

Who is this?

[Aresen]

Do we have any reason to believe his former deputy wasn't a protege?

One article I read said the former deputy he ran against promised to do everything Sheriff Joe did, but not be as loud about it.

[Ellie]

[Aresen]

Oh noes! The fire-fighting slaves are diseased!

[Jadagul]

Ellie, don't you mean the "prisoners with jobs"?

[Hugh Akston]

This is why we need to vote Biden/Harris. They'll get the covid under control so we can get them slaves back out in the field.

[Warren]

You are a very naughty duck

[Ellie]

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[Hugh Akston]

Really interesting video that goes beyond the design and into the philosophy of Norwegian prisons.

tl;dw The four principles broadly are

• Normality: letting inmates approximate a normal life by watching movies, wearing what they want, shopping for and preparing food
• Humanity: Treating prisoners like human beings
• Dynamic Security: basically means well-trained CO's who are expected to interact with and take responsibility for the wellbeing of a handful of inmates each, so they create trusting relationships
• Re-integration: preparing inmates from day 1 for re-integration into society

[Aresen]

Hugh: In light of today's news about the POTUS, I was hoping your post had something to do with the titular sheriff and COVID-19.

[Warren]

Really interesting video that goes beyond the design and into the philosophy of Norwegian prisons.

tl;dw The four principles broadly are

• Normality: letting inmates approximate a normal life by watching movies, wearing what they want, shopping for and preparing food
• Humanity: Treating prisoners like human beings
• Dynamic Security: basically means well-trained CO's who are expected to interact with and take responsibility for the wellbeing of a handful of inmates each, so they create trusting relationships
• Re-integration: preparing inmates from day 1 for re-integration into society

I don't know that we'll every be able to go full Norway*, but we should certainly be moving in that direction. Criminal Justice Reform is moving to the top of my Policy Priority List. Perhaps edging out Ending the WODs, which held the top spot for many decades, though I note the two have a good deal of overlap. CJR itself is a long list of proposals. Bringing down our abhorrently shameful incarceration rate would be my primary focus, though making prison less inhumane may well be easier to achieve.


*Going Full Norway needs to be a thing.

[Pham Nuwen]

You never go Full Norway, man.

[Ellie]

• Normality: letting inmates approximate a normal life by watching movies, wearing what they want, shopping for and preparing food

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books are set in Sweden, not Norway IIRC, but anyway I remember being completely, smoldering-skull-crater mindblown at the beginning when the journalist is getting ready to go to prison and packs his laptop so he can work on writing a book while he's serving time.

[Hugh Akston]

Reuters has a new database tracking deaths in county jails, beacuse apparently no one else will.

Hill’s is one of 7,571 inmate deaths Reuters documented in an unprecedented examination of mortality in more than 500 U.S. jails from 2008 to 2019. Death rates have soared in those lockups, rising 35% over the decade ending last year. Casualties like Hill are typical: held on minor charges and dying without ever getting their day in court. At least two-thirds of the dead inmates identified by Reuters, 4,998 people, were never convicted of the charges on which they were being held.

Nearly 300 died after languishing behind bars, unconvicted, for a year or more.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics has collected inmate mortality data for two decades – but statistics for individual jails are withheld from the public, government officials and oversight agencies under a 1984 law limiting the release of BJS data. Agency officials say that discretion is critical because it encourages sheriffs and police to report their deaths data each year.

The Justice Department has grown more secretive about the fatality data under the Trump administration. While BJS never has released jail-by-jail mortality figures, it traditionally has published aggregated statistics every two years or so. The 2016 report wasn't issued until this year.

And, a Justice spokesman said, there are “no plans” to issue any future reports containing even aggregated data on inmate deaths in jails or prisons.

It's a long read punctuated with plenty of infuriating anecdotes about innocent people being killed by the banality of evil.

[D.A. Ridgely]

It's probably true that withholding specific jail fatality figures increases the likelihood sheriffs will provide honest data.

I'm not siding with the state and local penal systems here, but those numbers do need to be put into more context. What are those fatalities as a percentage of all those jailed? What's the breakdown between pre-trial inmates and those serving typically less than 1 year sentences? (That's usually the break point between serving a sentence in a local jail or being sent to a penitentiary.)

Moreover, it isn't the sheriffs' fault that the courts are overwhelmed or that, given the current bail bond system's impact on the poor, many of those arrested are encouraged by their lawyers to seek to postpone trials as long as possible.

To be clear, again I'm not defending the status quo and I certainly do want the data compiled, released and analyzed as well as used to identify misfeasance and malfeasance, etc., etc. Just saying raw numbers aren't all that useful.

[Hugh Akston]

Prisoners are using TikTok to show what life is like on the inside, and their families on the outside are using it to show what life is like when a loved one is incarcerated.

Naturally, the idea of prisoners being portrayed as human beings worthy of dignity prompted two of the worst fuckers in Congress to introduce a bill allowing prisons to install cell phone jammers.

[Ellie]

I'm linking this here because it is probably excellent reporting but I am absolutely not reading it because the headline alone makes me want to jump off a bridge from despair.

IMMIGRANTS DETAINED BY ICE SAY THEY WERE PUNISHED FOR REQUESTING COVID-19 TESTS
When detainees at an Alabama jail got sick — or simply asked to be tested — they were put in solitary confinement.

[Hugh Akston]

Yeah I'm not clicking on that