Hacker News Reader

Comment by chatmasta | Hacker News Reader

That is seriously medieval. I cannot believe that people in 21st century western civilization are subjected to this sort of torture, by the hands of private contractors no less.

The emphasis on retribution over rehabilitation is a serious problem in modern society. Unfortunately the victims of an often over zealous justice system are granted a severely muted and underrepresented voice. The people most motivated to change the system are unable to do so. I'm glad that a forum like Prisontalk exists to give them some semblance of a voice. It seems like if this system is going to change, somebody else is going to have to step up to the plate and take charge of changing it. Hopefully the internet will help to disseminate stories like this to the public and motivate people to push for change in what is a seriously backwards prison system.

America should be ashamed.

Edit: I post a lot of unpopular opinions... I sure didn't expect this one to get downvoted!

View on HN

> The emphasis on retribution over rehabilitation is a serious problem in modern society.

This is by design. That type of incarceration leads to more recidivism. We have a for-profit prison industry that wields a lot of political clout. When those driving policy have a financial interest increasing the number of prisoners, policies like mandatory minimums, voting suppression, the war on drugs and the traumatizing experience that you observed look less like problems and more like conscious decisions designed to increase profits.

What gives you the idea that any of the people involved in this are private contractors? This is for Federal prison, and as far as I can tell, everybody involved in it is an employee of the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the Marshalls.

And calling it torture strikes me as ridiculously over the top. But then, I've come to think lately that the word torture isn't very useful at all. The only real use is to allow people to make inflammatory claims that compare some practice of the prison system to racks and thumbscrews. If you object to a specific practice, call out that practice explicitly. If it's actually unnecessarily bad, then no inflammatory rhetoric is required to get people to object. Suggest something more reasonable to accomplish the same goal instead. Making vague claims of torture makes me think that you're reaching in an attempt to make something sound worse than it is.

Retribution should happen quickly -- do hell a hell week / hell month for prisons, too. Once everyone got that out of their system, focus on rehabilitation. Best if done in separate facilities, too, that way prisoners that passed the retribution hurdle have an incentive to be rehabilitated.

I guess if you want to go full 1980s movie, you could do something like Thunderdome in the first sort of facilities.

Did I miss a paragraph in there that involved torture? What specifically are you referring to?

Try to define torture in an abstract way that includes the things you think of as torture (whips, the rack, waterboarding, cramped isolation, et cetera) and excludes this. You won't find it easy.

What is "this?"

The part where they don't help you use the bathroom and you defecate on yourself in a con-air. This is both cruel and unusual, and a psychological pain.

I don't see this anywhere in that thread. The one person who mentions being helped says they did help.

In modern western democracries like Sweden etc, the conditions under which they transfer people as described in the post, is like the mafia operates, not an actual civil service, like law enforcement.

What specific conditions are you referring to?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com