Seems kind of strange that she could (presumably) be in court and sentenced and not immediately taken away to start her time.
> Holmes, 39, was expected to serve her time in at a minimum-security prison camp in Houston, Texas.
Minimum security prisons are the kind where you can leave during the day to go to work! None of that slave labor shit making license plates or filling in at McDonalds, either, like actually go to a regular job and earn money. They're called "Club Fed" for a reason.
I thought anyone with over a decade of prison time wouldn't be eligible for such white glove treatment but nope.
"Rules for thee but not for me" when you've got Kissinger on board
for far leas damaging crimes is the crucial part.
To be clear: I don’t support those conditions for anyone. When society meets out punishment, it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to terrorize people who are serving out their sentence. But that it happens to people who don’t even deserve it is horrifying.
Indeed, the three aims of punishment are retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. None of these entail malice, which itself is evil and degrades the malicious person.
Obviously.
> or subject to slave labor in prison...
Why not? We're not talking chattel slavery, but penal labor. The notion that it is somehow categorically wrong to sentence someone to labor as a penalty is absurd.
> theoretically the aim even for those in "worse" prisons should be to have them come out the other side able to function in society better than before, not worse.
Life imprisonment does not have that as a goal for obvious reasons which shows that rehabilitation is for the sake of the offender as such. And are you claiming that punishment makes people worse? It doesn't. It facilitates rehabilitation. Proportionate penalties enable the guilty to acknowledge the gravity of their offense; without acknowledgement, there is no rehabilitation. It allows people to suffer for their guilt. When people cannot suffer for their crimes, you actually deprive them of means to pay for their evil deeds. One has an objective moral duty toward justice; an injustice left unpaid will derange the psyche of the offender. Repressed guilt is at the root of many strange disorders and behaviors. Like projection and scapegoating.
Besides, rehabilitation is only one component of punishment. The other two are retribution and deterrence.
Because it creates a financial incentive to put people in prison.
Nobody should be profiting from prison labor and companies frequently do. Judges can own stock in companies that utilize prison labor, increasing sentences. It's ongoing and clearly an outrage to true justice.
That's why.
> Why not? We're not talking chattel slavery, but penal labor. The notion that it is somehow categorically wrong to sentence someone to labor as a penalty is absurd.
This is a false dichotomy. Penal labor should be paid.
Like if our goal is to actually build a better society, prison shouldn't be a lot worse than loss of autonomy. If you are going to release someone, do you want them to be in a worse state when you do that than when you took away their autonomy?
Of course we are collectively deranged, so oh well.
If you're leaving during the day, can't you eat then?
With that said, my favorite is the pay per day way to serve your sentence under house arrest[0]. Often used by the wealthy to avoid going to jail at all, even for serious "white collar" crimes
Or the fact you pay to stay in "fancy jail"[1]
[0]: https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/process/sentencing/hous...
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pay-to-stay-jails/?wp...
My experience is that this is seldom granted on request barring extenuating circumstances i.e. COVID, jail capacity, etc, and your convictions needs to be strictly non-violent otherwise. That said, at least in California the jails and prisons are very overcrowded leading to many unqualified individuals being offered house arrest after serving short stints in custody.
Wow, it really feels like everything has been productized already.
If at least half of the goal of jail/prison is rehabilitation, it makes sense to me.
EDIT: Apparently the feds have an 85% time served rate so it actually will be closer to a decade served.
This just makes me so angry. The amount of corruption, racism, and incompetence for this to happen is staggering and quite honestly incomprehensible. A, what appears to be non-U.S. citizen, person makes a bogus accusation against two black men who are U.S. citizens. The accusation has no consistency or accuracy, and not a single shred of evidence was ever presented. And the accusation was theft of a backpack. So the mere word of a foreigner sentences a man to prison for over three years, with no case brought to court, and several judges offering plea bargains. How did they even justify the plea bargains? "Oh, you're in prison for no reason so here's a plea bargain for random crimes we've made up?" If the district attorney's office is so busy, why does someone need to stay in prison for that? Like, you're supposably busy, but he has to stay in prison because you're busy?
Every single one of those judges, district attorneys, police officers, correctional officers, and prison administration should face penalties.
Edit: And it turns out that that place is not even a prison. It's a holding facility for people who are awaiting trials and other court actions, i.e., innocent people.
Although according to the ACLU [2], prisoners are used in McDonald's supply chain and in restitution centers in Mississippi (which is very different from Holmes' federal case, mind):
> Mississippi is the only state that still uses restitution centers to lock people up for an indefinite period of time while they work for private employers to earn money to pay off court-ordered debts. Hundreds of people a year are sentenced to be confined in Mississippi’s restitution centers, where they are required to stay until they pay off court fees, fines, and restitution. Workers are required to pay for room and board, transportation to their jobs, and medical care costs. They work slaughtering chickens, cutting catfish at processing plants, at Popeyes and McDonald’s franchises, and for auto mechanic shops, furniture companies, and meatpacking plants....
> ... Taylor Farms, North America’s largest supplier of salads and fresh-cut vegetables, paid over $2.2 million to Arizona’s prison industries program for labor contracts to employ incarcerated workers to cut and package fruit and vegetables for the company.371 Taylor Farms supplies some of the nation’s biggest fast food and grocery chains, including Chipotle, Costco, Kroger, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Ralphs, Safeway, Subway, Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods Market.
That's a hell of a list though. Costco, Kroger, Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods basically covers every consumer in the country
[1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/22/instagram-...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/2022...
The most they would do is put us for a few months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort!
How does that work? Kissinger (as well as lots of other very rich, powerful people with government connections) was one of the victims of the fraud.
A low security federal prison pretty much meets your expectations of what a prison is minus the gang activity.
Do yourself a favor and google image search for "FPC Bryan" if you want an idea of what her stay will look like.
But we don't live in an ideal world and as long as the United States justice system has a modus operandi, it should be applied consistently for the sake of fairness and equality. Otherwise it's just a big farce.
Frankly, the answer to how that works is less rich and more being highly adept at utilizing various levels of privilege to her advantage in almost calculating fashion.
> and more being highly adept at utilizing various levels of privilege to her advantage in almost calculating fashion.
She is a sociopath. We're discussing why she is behaving as she is. You've got cause and effect backward or you're trying to... I don't really know.
At least around here, it seems to happen a lot to violent offenders who aren't rich. There was a guy a few months ago who committed an armed robbery. Reached a plea to get it turned into an attempted robbery. He simply stopped showing up to court dates (both for the armed robbery and a separate theft case) and was out on his own for months, until he stabbed an innocent woman to death[1]. Just a few weeks ago one of the guys who shot a Washington Commanders player absconded, and it doesn't seem like anyone cares.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/04/ivy-city-... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/05/commander...
> The appeal automatically delays her reporting date, and she will now remain out of prison until a court of appeals rules on her request.
15% APR on all time served. If you tie your sentence up in court for 2 years you owe the general public an extra 33% jail time.
As a (former) lawyer my gut tells me this might be ruled unconstitutional, on account of due process rights and the presumption of innocence. But it's an interesting idea, and one I've never heard before.
More like, if you're rich you can afford to keep filing appeals (for a while). But it's no secret that the US justice system favors the wealthy.
It may not last for long, and in any case will merely delay the day she gets out. Her co-conspirator went the same route, was denied, and has started his sentence.
But ya, it sure feels like 'leniency for thee and not for me'
> [S]he is appealing [Judge] Davila’s ruling that she remain in custody while it is determined whether she should get a new trial... The appeal automatically delays her reporting date, and she will now remain out of prison until a court of appeals rules on her request.