On Being Jewish in State Prison (2009)
splcenter.org
splcenter.org
It's probably naive, but one thing I would do if I was in charge would be to aggressively break up any kind of hierarchy or authority among inmates - not least to prevent prison from turning into a "crime school".
Edit: some people suggest these gangs arise due to the size of prisons and the large inflow of new inmates [1], whereas in the old days (-1950s) prison used to organize itself according to some kind of convict code.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/end-prison-gan...
A few years back I took a tour of the main prison in Amsterdam. The warden actually talked about this and said they specifically organize their prisoners into as diverse blocks as possible to avoid any sort of gangs/groupings from starting. He claimed it made the prison significantly safer, as everyone was looking out for only their own wellbeing. The prison was safe enough for us to walk around among the prisoners (who were not cuffed or restrained in anyway), so I think it was working quite well for them.
I'd be careful reading too much into that. Wardens in the US would say the exact same thing; the actual effects of it obviously don't bear out. As for being handcuffed or restrained: in most prisons in the US, prisoners generally aren't actually cuffed or restrained unless they're being punished.
Maybe I wasn't very clear, this was while we were walking around among them and talking with the prisoners. I don't think any US prisons would allow students (this was for a study abroad class) to walk among and interact with unrestrained prisoners for safety reasons.
No, they definitely do.
Controlling the gangs would require an investment in policing and education, something the prison industry and our politicians are in no way prepared to do.
When a person is sent to prison they are essentially remanded to the state and the state should bear any and all responsibility to ensure their safety. People in authority, especially the prison staff should be held personally liable for this. They are not except in extreme cases and then only rarely.
Prisons are treated as a means to simply house and profit from society's dregs and in many cases its most vulnerable. In addition these troubled, and oft petty criminals are trapped with the most violent. How someone is expected to emerge from prison and become a productive member of the society that put them there is beyond me.
That's definitely not the case for prisons in France.
France definitely is not better than the US in this regard.
I am very confident the type of people working in SV could make a huge impact, if only running prisons was like software development.
But the goal of US prison is not to solve difficult problems. It is simply to benefit the US prison-police-state-complex.
The other problem is it would be like when designing, your functions, or people, don't do what they're supposed to do and have a mind of their own. For example, an HBO documentary on death row inmate Troy Kell noted he was being punished for heroin overdose[1]. Thing is, he is in solitary. How does a guy in solitary become a heroin addict? Well, like the article mentioned, the drugs come in through the guards. Sometimes this, and things like Abu Ghraib, the Stanford Prison Experiment and regular police killings make me wonder if the authorities here are any better than the guys inside.
> But the goal of US prison is not to solve difficult problems. It is simply to benefit the US prison-police-state-complex.
See, that's why they couldn't make a real impact. The whole system is set up with the wrong incentives. From the SV/startup perspective, it's like one of your suppliers being the nephew of your biggest investor and a stipulation of the investment. Sucks to be you if they do a shitty job and cost you money, or make it hard to achieve goals. They know they have leverage over you, so you're stuck.
Prisons could kill large amounts of people that enter them, and release people as sexually molested PTSD wrecks that have little normal economic recourse and new ideas and connections about how to make money in extra-legal ways, and society still wouldn't care enough to change things. This is obvious, because that's what prisons do in the U.S. and we haven't changed jack-shit.
I don't have high hopes for change. A decade ago there was a lot of media attention and articles about how California used to be the shining example of the U.S. prison system (in the 1970's), with extremely low recidivism rates, and inmates leaving prison with a skill or craft they learned inside and able to find gainful employment. Nothing came from it during two terms of a Democrat president after that, I doubt we'll get change from a Republican one now, especially with his particular rhetoric on crime. Until we as a society get past "Justice == punishment" and focus quite a bit on rehabilitation, we're cutting off our nose to spite out face.
I dare someone to deny me service or try to lynch me. I will sue using the courts and physically defend my house and family through the glorious protection of the second amendment.
Can you expound on this?
Still, I would rather meet communists with words, rather than throw them out of helicopters. Don't you see how that's more reasonable?
If Nazis or Communists are actually taking action like fighting/murdering/jailing, then I will join in the fight against them. But while they only use words, even though their words are disgusting vitriol, using force against them only helps their cause and cheapens our own.
On the subject of fighting Nazis, I'll leave you with a quote from Hitler himself, perhaps the pre-eminent expert on Nazis: "Only one thing could have stopped our movement – if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement."
It's an existent issue.
Out of all the diverse groups of people in the prison, only the racist whites (Nazis) would tolerate and give protection to this person - yet this person's entire write-up is predominantly against this same group of people.
A further explanation is provided to the reader that picks up on this: while these Natzi-people must truly hate him, they only truly protect him because there exists an even deeper more-menacing underlining racism within them.
All the other groups, are just fine, nothing more than a structured response to the racism.
While low on details, the story ends with the realization that while white discrimination is an evil unlike any other discrimination, it does allow the strong to find their true roots.
This story would be told quite differently if this person went to prison in a Muslim country.
This prison culture exists but his view is tainted by being a total outsider to it, and it appears, a desire to gain sympathy by exaggerating.
He sounds like a rich kid in prison getting manipulated and bullied because he’s not able to defend himself or attract allies.
The fact that he claims to have dealt with nazis in America outside of prison makes me think he’s a huge liar.
There are no nazis in America. There are racist poor idiots in prison and outside that wish they were nazis. The few that try anything violent get locked up in prison like the common criminals they are. Other violent crime is a massively bigger problem.
Trust me, I’ll be the first one ready to fight if anyone starts killing Jews.
That tiny tiny tiny rally in Virginia was organized by agent provocateurs probably from Russia.
My first memory of Jewishness in America was my local synagogue being burned down, with swastikas spray painted on the sidewalk out front.
In JR High I was mocked for being a Jew - for my people having killed Jesus. Also for being chubby and smart, but Jew was easy to throw into the mix. My uniformly Catholic teachers pretended not to hear it.
Russian provocateurs may have organized the rally, but it was Americans that showed up to carry torches and chant about blood and soil.
When I spent a summer in Raleigh NC, one person told me I could not be a Jew, obviously, because I had neither horns nor tail.
You’re welcome to play No True Scotsman, but if you think anything short of throwing people in a gas chamber is nothing but bullshit you need to pull your head out of the sand.
Were those Nazis that committed those acts, or wannabes? I think that is parent's point. How many of those "Nazis" can name a single plank of the Nazi platform? (And I'm sure that more than one can do just that, but not even a majority.) In other words, are they Nazis or more like the character Otto in the movie A Fish Called Wanda?
Otto West: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.
But at the end of the day, IMO, it's all just semantics. Some people irrationally hate Jews, some have a distaste for blacks. Whether or not they fit a particular label or not is a distraction from the fact that there are violently hateful people out there, and there weren't Jews they'd find someone else to hate that isn't like them.
I'm pretty sure a wannabe means they want to be, and not only that but they'll transform their behavior to mirror that which they want to be.
"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."
As a person with relatives and ancestors from Germany who were persecuted, killed, and hurt during the Holocaust, I'd say any idiots who try to even act like the Nazis of that era should be labeled as such, lest we allow that behavior to fester.
Does it matter? If you throw up a symbol of the Nazis while burning down a synagogue (that is to say, performing one of their most memorable policies), what distinguishes a wannabe from a real Nazi? Enumerating the policies which Hitler campaigned with?
That's my underlying question. There was more to the 30-40s era Nazi platform than just hating non-white Christians. But now it's "don't like Jews? Nazi!" and the haters pick that up by spraying symbols, and then we all play along by pulling out the fainting couch. Do we do anyone a service by acting like dealing with ignorant, hateful white people is the same as defeating Hitler himself? Personally, I think we'd do everyone a great service by ditching the labels, a label the wannabes hope you pin on them, and just call it like it is: un-American white people who don't buy into the melting pot ideal that has made the country what it is.
Fair enough. My perspective comes from growing up in Indiana, probably one of the last places left that still had the occasional KKK rally. And frankly were it not for what they advocated, it was kind of pathetic. A dozen or so middle-aged rednecks pissed off about how it's not 1954 anymore, wearing Halloween costumes. The protesters would outnumber the participants. And there frequent calls to just quit protesting. Let them have their little get-together with an audience of...no one. I think that would be a lovely idea.
Keep an eye on them, that's for sure. If they commit a crime, investigate it, prosecute them. But otherwise quit giving them press, quit giving them labels that they like. Because calling them Nazis gives them credibility they don't deserve, IMO. They're surrounded by people that think they're assholes, so they only have the power we choose to give them. They can't pass any laws, they'll never get anywhere near a majority (underlying racism in the current political system is a long way from these nutters). Unlike the U. S. South of last century, the police generally aren't on their side. So keep a close watch, keep them contained, keep the amount of press proportional to the participation. If it's the "million Nazi march" on the Mall in D. C., then the NYT and WAPost should most certainly report. But if it's twelve sad, old guys in funny outfits, could we not make it tomorrow's headline?