Sixteen, Alone, 23 Hours a Day, in a Six-by-Eight-Foot Box | Hacker News Reader

Sixteen, Alone, 23 Hours a Day, in a Six-by-Eight-Foot Box

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74 pointssgpl82 comments

I am a lifelong liberal but I did work for a year as a correction officer on Riker's Island (a decade ago, at ARDC which is the jail discussed). The "box" was referred to by everyone as the "bing".

This isn't an AMA, but I will say that many like much of law enforcement, there is a discretionary aspect. That is, though inmates can be thrown in the bing for minor offences, almost all were there because of an accumulation of violent activities. In other words, they really were "bad guys" (once again a lot could have changed in a decade).

I would say a bigger problem were the "schools" that the inmates went to in the jail - they were among the most violent places on earth. The teachers obviously could not control the classes and there weren't enough COs to help enough either.

But for the most part things things self-leveled. Inmates had an assigned classification which tended to bunch them together. Kids who honestly were good kids, would usually wind up in a camp-like environments called the "sprungs". And bad kids would wind up with other bad kids, and wind up doing bad things.

Another thing about that jail, was it was about 50% adolescents and 50% adults. The adults were usually sentenced but waiting for a bed available in a state facility.

Ok, here's a solution: Private prisons are corporations. To ensure that they act in good faith towards the goal of a better society, instead of motivated by sheer profit, let us make a laws that compensate private prisons, not by the number of bodies they house, but instead on the recidivism rates. We should not be paying these entities to house humans indefinitely. Instead, motivate them to rehabilitate and return these people to society.

The only (well not the only) problem with that is then they would have an incentive to just get people out as quickly as possible to get paid. We would have to set up some sort of standards for what it meant to be "rehabilitated" and that would be pretty difficult.

If the person re-commits a crime, then the prison must re-pay the government back. Perhaps we can do away with mandatory sentencing as well! Let the prison decide when a person has paid their debt to society.

Then you are going to get a lot of "accidental" prison deaths. Because the prisons won't house an inmate that they don't think they can make money off of.

Prisons could choose which inmates they take in. That is, prisons wouldn't be forced to house inmates who they don't believe have rehabilitation potential.

Yes, I can't see that being abused.

Difficult indeed. As they say "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Still, we could do better than paying by prisoners housed. Perhaps prison profits should be based on the income of released inmates.

Wow, that is a great idea.

I wonder how such a thing could ever get started. Perhaps as an experiment in one of the smaller states?

If only there was some sort of business incubator to pair moon-shot ideas, ambitious young professionals and the funding needed to succeed... hmmm, if only...

But the hard parts are all political.

Your proposed solution ignores the reality of the situation, where private corporation's goals are misaligned with the goals of the society.

Until there is a fundamental change in how much influence special interest/private corps carry in deciding law & regulations of industries, with little regards to best interest for the society, such tragedies will continue to unfold.

Or we could make torturing inmates illegal. Solitary confinement is torture.

I like the way you're thinking, but that's a little too easy to game unfortunately.

Here is my proposal:

1. Require something like 40% of the prison guards to have four-year degrees from accredited institutions, preferably in the humanities and the science.

2. Offer the prison a bonus for the academic achievements of each inmate.

3. Tie the bonus to the magnitude of the educational achievement so that going from, say, a GED to a bachelor's is much greater than going from a bachelor's to another bachelor's or even a master's. Also, publication in academic journals is eligible for the bonus, as are patent awards.

You are assuming a substantial fraction of prisoners are rehabilitatable. That's probably not true. We're talking about a lot of borderline retarded and very unhinged folks. You aren't going to run them through a class and find them jobs. I dare say you're naive about what the criminal underclass is really like.

You are assuming these prisoners should be prisoners in the first place.

In Norway, there are 71 prisoners per 100,000 population. In the US there are 716. This means that if the US had the same incarceration rate as Norway, 90% of the current prison population wouldn't even be there, never mind the need for rehabilitation.

I'm not Norwegian, but I've spent about a year living there and I can tell you that it doesn't feel at all like there are criminals roaming the street. On the contrary, it felt very, very safe over there.

Here is an interesting article on what prison looks like in Norway: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/091017/norway-open...

Norway is for the most part full of Norwegians. I've been there and seen that. America is not full of Norwegians. If you failed to notice that in your year there or upon your return to America, I'm not sure what to say to you.

Are you implying that Americans are, by nature, more criminally inclined than Norwegians?

I'm not American either, by the way.

It's rather blatantly obvious, isn't it? Again, if you never noticed that I don't even know what to say.

I'm confused too. What do you mean? Surely their are 3 options here. America has worse behaved citizens, the system in the US is trying to imprison people, or a combination of both (most likely imho).

You are suggesting forgetting about people, real people, instead locking them up and throwing away the key. You are justifying it with some bullshit quip about them never changing since they're part of some TV psychology "criminal underclass". I am not going to suggest that you are locked up as a danger to society (as part of the "bit-twiddling overclass") since I believe you can change to recognize the errors in your ways. You should offer others the chance to reform after their mistakes, too. Let's not forget that the most important thing when growing in a new direction is environment.

Aside from the other problems that have been pointed out, this would provide an incentive for prisons to favor groups that have been statistically linked to lower recidism rates -- not only could it create some kind of favoritism, it would also probably favor those who perpetrated more serious crimes (thieves have by far the highest recidivism rates, much higher than, say, murderers [1]).

The American penitentiary system is fundamentally flawed and is in need of a deep reform; the real shocker to me is that stuff like this can happen before trial:

> Nazario first went to Rikers at 16, after an arrest on an assault charge. Before leaving at 19, he says, he had spent more than 300 days in solitary confinement — all before being convicted of a crime.

(on a side note, I was surprised to learn Rikers is actually a jail and not a prison)

[1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1134

How about making law which would compensate prisoners not prisons?

"Only the U.S., Somalia and South Sudan have declined to ratify the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits juvenile solitary confinement as a matter of international law."

Nice.

Never mind Russia, the US is the real evil.

If you're going to view the world through such a simple-minded lens, I've always preferred hearing us called 'The Great Satan'. At least that acknowledges our greatness. :-D

happyscrappy was being sarcastic.

How about both?

This is the kind pointless opining we get from too many abysmal contributors to the Guardian comment columns.

Did you bother checking what else it says and what the U.S.'s stated reason for not signing is? Or do you prefer to post ignorant sarcastic criticism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the...

Does that seem accurate? It reads as if the lack of ratification is basically an old political statement at this point and there's no real policy there they object to now?

Don't know about public opinion on life imprisonment for minors, but the death penalty still has support from a majority of polled Americans [1]. I'd say it might be 'old' just because the UN passed this almost 25 years ago but the public policy is [supposed to be] derived from where the people are at. Seems like its still a relevant statement.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/1606/death-penalty.aspx

And hidden in the middle there, 1/3 of americans don't believe the death penalty reduces murder, and 2/3 believe innocents have been murdered in execution of a death penalty, meaning that those agreeing to it just do so out of spiteful vengeance.

The death penalty and the death penalty for children are different issues. I'd bet you that if allowing death penalty for children was polled, it'd do a lot worse than regular death penalty, and be a minority view.

Also, note the poll question was terribly written and may dramatically understate US support for the death penalty. The question I mean is the top one, "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?"

This is ambiguous. My position is I'm in favor of the death penalty for SOME crimes, in some special cases, but NOT as a default for all murderers. I think the death penalty should be ALLOWED NOT OUTLAWED – I think it should be a possibility sometimes – but if I was asked that poll question I would say "no". I think MOST murderers should not be executed.

So the poll question is really really badly done. The only saving grace is that a lot of people will ignore the question wording and hear "death penalty: pro or con?" and give their general political stance using their pre-existing knowledge of what the actual issue is.

> Does that seem accurate? It reads as if the lack of ratification is basically an old political statement at this point and there's no real policy there they object to now?

The policy that is objected to, inasmuch as the US political opponents of the treaty object to policy, is that the US has to answer, or even report, to any one on what it does. It doesn't matter that the substantive requirements are little different than what the US does, what matters is the idea that anything but what the US chooses to do at the time matters.

For cultural context, i live in germany.

Are you american and really think this is a sane path of action: "The Convention is unlikely to be ratified in the near future because it forbids both the death penalty and life imprisonment for children [...] threatening national control over domestic policy"

To be honest, to me this sounds exactly like immigrants to germany claiming a right to honor slayings because it's part of their culture.

If that's not the statement you tried to make, please clarify what exactly you think is the US' stated reason for not signing it.

Since 2005 Supreme Court decisions found juvenile executions unconstitutional as "cruel and unusual punishment"[50][51][52] and that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders.

So the US already can't execute or imprison children. So that's not the reason for not signing it.

Note that the US can still given juvenile offenders life sentences, it just cannot be a mandatory punishment for a crime.

Thanks for this. For anyone interested, here is a list if US executions of juvenile offenders since '76. I was sure that I had read of recent cases, but I must be getting old, as that list ends in 2003. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_juvenile_offenders_ex...

Actually I think the US's inclination towards local authorities controlling things, and not being controlled much by broader authority, is very good. It's a more decentralized approach that allows for diversity.

The thing about strong central authority is when it makes mistakes they are much harder to deal with. And mistakes are inevitable from all authorities.

Being in this sort of shitty company is pretty common for the US when it comes to human rights treaties.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/17/america_the_e...

There isn't a "US's stated reason for not signing". Instead, there's lot of "yeah that'd be great, we'll get on that later" from the various administrations, and what sounds like paranoid whining from religious conservatives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Conventi...

> On 16 February 1995, Madeleine Albright, at the time the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, signed the Convention. However, though generally supportive of the Convention, President Bill Clinton did not submit it to the Senate. Likewise, President Bush did not submit the Convention to the Senate. President Barack Obama has described the failure to ratify the Convention as 'embarrassing' and has promised to review this. The Obama administration has said that it intends to submit the Convention to the Senate, but there is no set timeline for it.

That's interesting. It's hard to tell what the actual reason is, which is bad. I'm skeptical of UN treaties in general, but I think if the US doesn't sign it should say why, clearly and proudly. It's tricky, though, because I imagine Bush and Clinton have different reasons for reaching the same conclusion of not signing.

As noted in GP: the US did sign in 1995 -- it is therefore impossible to give a reason for not signing it. It hasn't been submitted for ratification, likely because there have always been more than a 1/3 of the Senate that could be counted on to vote against it making it unratifiable.

Did you? Have you got anything to say other that an attack on the person rather than an exposition of fact?

Trust me, it is not normal to handcuff 6 years old children. You have "dangerous criminals" rest of the world has "children".

“You’re giving all of these young people to us, and we have to determine what’s wrong with them,” he says. “You can’t do it. It’s impossible.”
...Of the teenagers in solitary, almost three-quarters had diagnosed mental health problems.

“We don’t have the experience to deal with a person with psychological problems,” Seabrook says. “We’re not doing enough because they shouldn’t be brought to us.”

I wonder how much this has to do with the involuntary commitment legal developments of the 1970s.

Once the mental institutions were closed incarceration rates increased dramatically. It's fairly safe to conclude we're treating the mentally ill as criminals. It reminds me of The Onion article, '15 Years In Environment Of Constant Fear Somehow Fails To Rehabilitate Prisoner': http://www.theonion.com/articles/15-years-in-environment-of-...

Or the process of releasing those in need of treatment during the 80's. Its amazing how we're capable of so much as a society but can't get it together to help those most in need.

(Interesting piece from the time on how it came about that the mental hospitals started being emptied: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-men...)

Well as I understand it there has been a pendulum swinging problem. Some people were getting locked up in the loony bin merely for being eccentric. Obviously we've gone too far in the other direction and psychotics are roaming the streets homeless.

Jeez, how much longer until we can codify into law that solitary confinement is cruel and unusual?

Young and cynical me would say when and if justice is served to the children of the rich and famous.

Old and wiser me would say when people stop asking such fake questions and take heart going into careers of law or public administration.

What is the emoticon for "What you just said made me throw up in my soul?"

American justice does serve the rich. American justice does discriminate against all manner of individuals. And I should not have to pursue a career in criminal law to point out that these conditions are useless, wasteful and absolutely barbaric.

You're misreading alaskamiller, who is saying that change will only happen when the children of the powerful suffer. 'Justice served to the rich' and 'justice serves the rich' have significantly different meanings.

Ok, I did misread. But having justice served to the rich is an excellent place to start fixing the problems of crime in this country. That's not a cyncial or naive opinion at all- it's downright righteous!

Disclaimer: partially just playing devil's advocate here.

There are circumstances where you need to keep someone in solitary, whether it's for their own safety or for the safety of others. You can't well put a hated prisoner in with the general population without expecting that they'll be murdered. On the other hand, you have prisoners who have made a living out of murdering prison guards.

What do you do with Thomas Silverstein[1]? Terry Nichols? Members of the mafia? Caught spies? They'd likely either kill or be killed. I don't really see a better option than isolating them. These aren't people who are there to be rehabilitated.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Silverstein

I suspect you have listed a teeny tiny subset of the general prison population.

While it's true that those people need protection I'm not sure it's true for everyone else.

Fair enough. But this article is about children being encaged en masse by a bloated bureaucracy, not a judicious selection of individuals that must be protected for their, or our own, safety.

No, it's not about 'children'. It's about 16-year-olds. Teenagers. The actions in the article are not applied to people below 16. Absolutely no-one calls 16-year-olds 'children' unless they're trying to load their language to make a political argument.

The one exception is parents comparing offspring, where 'children' applies to your offspring regardless of age - ask an 80-year-old about his children, and he'll talk about 60-year-old people.

This doesn't mean the actions aren't inhumane or don't need evaluation or correction, but please avoid the inflammatory language.

How about this: Teenagers are citizens who do not have the full rights and representations of a full citizen.

Cant vote, cant smoke, cant drink, cant fight in the military. People keep trying to speak on your behalf, and waive your rights without asking them.

I'm only for punishing 16 year olds as adults IF they are also given the rights and responsibilities of adults. At least start with representation (voting).

Sure. Call them minors, because legally they are - they don't have full rights. But when the term 'children' is used for mid- to late- teenagers, it's being used an an emotive term.

Perhaps the solution is the creation of a legal area of 'semi-responsibility'? That between young childhood and adulthood there is a period where you're considered responsible, but at a reduced rate. This concept is clearly already in place - for example in my state, you simply cannot try someone under the age of 10 for murder, so you get 'minors under 10', 'minors over 10', and 'adults' - but it appears to be an administrative hodge-podge managed differently for different laws. Perhaps making an interstitial 'semi-responsible' range more codified might assist when making laws?

I honestly don't know - IANAL, let alone one that deals with juvenile law.

There is some incremental responsibility already. (In the US) You can drive a car at 16. You can vote and buy tobacco at 18. You can buy alcohol at 21. Not to mention, there is such a broad range of maturity in people at different ages. It doesn't surprise me that we have a bit of a hodge-podge.

Then lets cut right to the chase then.

We don't treat animals that bad. Putting people, at whatever age, in small boxes and throwing away the key for an arbitrary amount of time IS TORTURE.

I don't care if you stole a loaf of bread. I dont care if you assaulted a classmate. Nor do I care if you raped and murdered multiple people. Torture is NEVER an acceptable answer to committing crimes. If someone's that bad, file for a capital case and attempt to have the state murder them.

Plenty of people treat animals that badly and worse. Battery chickens in particular are generally socially acceptable.

In any case, solitary is not a judicial punishment. The court doesn't say "shove this person in solitary for 90 days, then a regular sentence for the next 180". Solitary is punishment for not behaving yourself once you're in prison. It's not pleasant, but it's one of the few options available to control inmates without resorting to physical violence (which is also torture).

If you're going to take away solitary, you need to come up with a viable mechanism for ensuring the good behaviour of prisoners. And given the overcrowding in the US system, it has to work without a lot of resources. I agree with your sentiment - I'm a rehabilitation-not-prisons guy - but solitary serves a function that still needs to be performed if you take it away.

As I say above, the first step is to simply just not put as many people in prison to begin with - fewer inmates means fewer people in solitary from a straight numbers perspective, and I imagine it'd drop again due to reduction in overcrowding.

If they are not children, why do we give them no say in the laws they are incarcerated for violating?

I was unaware that the general public's working definition of "children" was "unable to vote". I guess that means that the severely mentally disabled, felons, and visiting foreigners are all children?

Even in those extreme cases (which I hope we all agree are the exception rather than the norm), I would still consider putting someone in a few-square-meter box "cruel and unusual punishment" by any reasonable standard.

There's many options between general population in 1970s style block prisons and supermax style solitary confinement. At the very least, those that fall in the first case (for their own safety) don't need to kept in the punitively isolating conditions of the latter.

Solitary confinement is cruel, but it's not unusual. If you read the article in full, you'll see that it's also one of the only ways you can threaten someone already incarcerated, to try and keep them behaving well. If there was nothing to threaten them with, then there's nothing to keep violent inmates in line. Is it overused? That's the question.

But really, if you follow your 'five whys', the solution to this problem is not treating the symptom that lies at the very end of the chain. Measures that stop people even being incarcerated in the first place are what should be supported. This article is describing one of many of the foul symptoms of the US having a ridiculously high incarceration rate.

And I'm not using that adjective as a throwaway - the level of incarceration in the US truly deserves ridicule. It is a national disgrace.

On a slight tangent, that was an amazingly well-written article, with very professional illustrations, photos, good research, no typos I could see, etc.

How come this is on Medium rather than on, say, the NY Times?

The New Yorker actually wrote a wonderful article on solitary confinement that's a must-read for anybody who cares about the subject.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...

Couldn't agree more, the illustrations alone convey a great deal of isolation and despair.

Who runs this Medium site? Does it use its own engine? My Wappalyzer only recognizes Typekit.

I've heard of this site only recently and I would like to use a design like that for my writing prompt site.

Medium was founded by Evan Williams (who also founded Twitter and Blogger.com): https://medium.com/about/9e53ca408c48

Oh, so I guess its' design might be not exactly up for grabs?

Not to diminish the content of the article in any way, but I couldn't help but be amused when I read the headline and thought "Oh god, stuck on a two dimensional plane, how horrible!"

Jeez, junior programmers should get better work conditions. Oh ..

Surely there can be some middle ground between giving people who murder 70+ people their preferred gaming system and putting troublemakers in solitary.

If you want a middle ground, you can start by not arguing from outliers. Out of the several million people imprisoned in the US, how many of them in total "murdered 70+ people"? How many of them murdered even 10?

Why base your argument for moderation around such an extreme outlier?

Do you claim that most juveniles are in solitary in the US?

> "How many of them murdered even 10?"

Even that is extreme. How many committed acts of violence at all? How many are "three strikes" or prohibition victims?

I find it hilarious that those people are old enough to be locked into box, but can not legally drink or have a sex.

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