Hacker News Reader

Comment by testplzignore | Hacker News Reader

Not being able to talk to a lawyer is insanity. How is that legal?

The carceral state in the US is totally out of control. It is entirely common that people are denied human rights in jail/prison, even prior to trial.

Effectively no one holds prisons or guards or medical staff in the US to account for these incredibly common and widespread human rights abuses. The parallels with US policing are clear (as is the systemic racism: the system is working exactly as designed).

It even happens to innocent people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline

Well its normal that they denied human right's, maybe the most important of it, it's called 'freedom'.

But i know what you mean.

Having private prisons is also a big NoNo i think, its like every single one state service is corporation driven ;)

Private prisons are a red herring. The vast majority of prisoners are not in private prisons, and states have been moving to get rid of them. In many big states, like New York and Illinois, private prisons weren’t legal to begin with. Rikers, the NYC jail famous for its abuses, was public.

People make private prisons to face of prison abuse for tactical reasons. In reality, the story of the American prison system is the story of the government: voters who demanded “tough on crime” laws; brutal publicly run police; harsh publicly operated prisons; all tied together and supported by public unions.

This 100%. Private prisons are used to create a contrast statement for corporate suppliers of prisons and lobbyists to "show" how cheaply operations can be done. They are a conference booth to lure states in regarding shredding prisoner QOL for a 6% revenue increase can work without increasing the inmate death rate too much.

The Industrial private prison complex owner group don't want to operate, they want to sell support, training, equipment and materials to public prisons not operate (like a defense contractor), because a prison is very complicated management problem and has little public reward over budget efficiency sadly (things are changing but slowly).

This is a misunderstanding of "human rights". Think of them as the fundamental rights that society declared everyone has as a result of being a human.

Unqualified "freedom" is not generally regarded to be a human right, and nowhere does the existence of those rights include the right to not be imprisoned. They do, in most cases, provide the right to a fair trial, and the right to freedom from unlawful imprisonment.

I know this seems like a pedantic point, but it's really important.

>Think of them as the fundamental rights that society declared everyone has as a result of being a human

Like Freedom?

And what society your talking about? In Europe its clear that everyone has at least the right to life, not so in the US (death-sentence), free-speech? No not in many-many country's.

In prison do you have free-speech, freedom or the right to life (if you have the death-sentence)?

No you don't...so talking about human-right's in prison is completely wrong.

EDIT: Having prisons is just a trade-off of human rights for protecting the life of 'free' citizen's

We're on a slippery slope to being disappeared whenever it's convenient for the US government, by the loss of habeas corpus. I first noticed it being undermined in the 2000s under the George W. Bush administration:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/04/killing-habeas...

Right now habeas corpus is mainly being suspended for non-US citizens, but more authoritarian-leaning elected officials keep trying to undermine it domestically:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...

Unfortunately we're vulnerable right now because the public is easily distracted by straw man arguments. For example, they might feel that it's ok to deny an antifa demonstrator habeas corpus (since antifa was deemed a terrorist organization by Donald Trump), without realizing that in order for habeas corpus to work, it must apply to everyone regardless of criminal accusation.

I'm seeing this fallacy constantly right now, so if there is a better word for it, please comment because it would be good to have a name for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com