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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

I agree, it's pretty sick. I can see how this sort of behaviour can become normalised, hard to remove and in some cases part of what the public expect from the prison experience. Many people see prison as a place to be punished, so it's easy for them to rationalise any sort of demeaning or dehumanising treatment as part of the package - "well he/she should've thought about that before they broke the law..." etc

In addition if you're a politician you're not going to win votes by campaigning for better conditions in prisons, now matter how you spin it.

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Yes, but how is an inmate supposed to become 'better' in future if he (I assume this only happens to men) is treated this respectless? Maybe you are right with winning votes. But on the other hand I perceive the americans as quite human. And if voters (and politicians) want to reduce the likelyhood of inmates to slide back I think the conditions must be improved (if they really should be that bad - I somehow cannot believe this report, completly unthinkable in Europe (maybe we exagerate a bit towards the other end, don't know)

Female prisoners are definitely strip searched and given prison outfits on arrival as well. http://www.ravishly.com/2014/12/11/ultimate-humiliation-what...

I hate to come off as overly negative, but while Americans individually can seem like very nice people, that's not really our culture. Especially when it comes to prison -- very few people give much thought to rehabilitation. Prison is meant to be punishment, period. Anything that makes it more humane is perceived as making it like a vacation or something. This is why we don't put a stop to things like rape in prison, because we have completely dehumanized prisoners. We treat our pets better.

Which is why the inhumane treatment of prisoners by people like former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in AZ was not only tolerated but often condoned by the public. It's why he was re-elected, for being perceived as tough on crime.

While they might not admit it, some people want to know that these criminals are being mistreated. They like the idea, somewhere deep down, of a criminal being forced to wear pink underwear and being fed spoiled food. It's twisted, wrong even. But it's very much American. Like apple pie, or baseball.

It is a very important point to remember that Arpaio was in charge of the county jail. That means many/most of the people being fed rotten baloney sandwichs were awaiting trial. They hadn't even been convicted.

And there are people who have been in jail, awaiting trial for years, I think infamously there's one case in Riker's Island that waited 12 years to go to trial. Jails are every thing that is bad about prison made worse by constant flux, no one has to accept that these are the people they will have to spend years with.

> Which is why the inhumane treatment of prisoners by people like former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in AZ was not only tolerated but often condoned by the public.

Yeah but the tide has turned against him, he got booted out of office (http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/sheriff-joe-arpaio-booted-fr...).

About the only positive result from this years' election.

Another good result from the election: many states are legalising marihuana in some form, that's more money income from taxes and less spent on prisons.

It's still a long way from an evidence based drug (law enforcement) policy, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

alas, in many states law enforcement and other groups are finding ways to continue profiting from marijuana prohibition - legalization is regulation, and they make punishments stricter for some 'crimes' while legalizing other things. For instance, plant count. Some proposed laws do things like legalize growing 6 plants... while 7 remains a felony, and all while not defining a plant. Or in Colorado, while growing a few plants became legal, processing them into hash with solvents became a 2nd degree felony.

In my own experience, police in Oregon and Colorado have started enforcing DUI and public consumption for marijuana rather than possession - and those charges carry higher punishmebts than minor possession used to carry. My neighbor was raided by a swat team last year, fully armed, with emergency support, for alllegedly being over plant count (a municipal court type violation...).

So, things are moving sideways. The people addicted to making perverse profits are predictably not keen to let go.

Also see https://np.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2dgwkp/what_makes_am...

American Criminal Justice is particularly leaning towards the concept of Just Deserts: if someone does something bad then it is right that bad things should happen to them, without any concept of overall harm minimization.

It is a known, accepted meaningful contrast to rehabilitative justice (make the person stop being a criminal) and restorative justice (try to undo the harm that the crime caused). It isn't just a flawed overlooked system, it's a philosophical underpinning.

> American Criminal Justice is particularly leaning towards the concept of Just Deserts: if someone does something bad then it is right that bad things should happen to them, without any concept of overall harm minimization.

Why do many US Americans think this way (I'm German, so also by looking at Germany's history I think completely differently about all this).

It probably comes from America's largely Puritan upbringing. We have this intrinsic belief that how successful (in terms of power, money, respect, fame) you are is a reflection of how good a person you are, and if you are a bad person then you will get what's coming to you. And that these traits are basically innate, so someone who's bad is irredeemable, so we should minimize the harm they do to the good people, while if someone was good they wouldn't be in whatever bad situation they're in, or at the very least they would have already figured out how to get themselves out of it.

This is reflected in our means-testing for entitlements, for instance: if you can't find a job within a few months, you must be intrinsically lazy, and therefore don't deserve anymore handouts. So we cut off unemployment and food aid after a relatively short amount of time.

A lot of it I think is just sort of post hoc rationalization.

Following the civil war prisons were used as a back door replacement for slavery. There's a strong strain in America that My Money is worth more than Your Life which makes it intractable to spend enough to do prison "right". A general belief in a just world...

One day you wake up and realize what all this has lead to and because now the problem is so big you can only see two options: utter despair or figure out a way to pretend to yourself that this is what you want.

> Why do many US Americans think this way

It's certainly not specific to americans! I don't know about german jails, but in France they are notoriously bad and many people are totally fine with it.

No, the majority sentiment is to punish.

Then why not just shoot them (and spare the money for food and housing)? (For the record, I'm strongly against death penalty).

I cannot believe it. I would fire immediately all and every prison employee which act as respectlessly and irresponsibly (action --> reaction).

There was now a 8 year long Democratic administration and I have to read such stories. Is this also the majority-Democratic-sentiment? Or were they helpless against the Republican dominated congress?

Just looked up statistics (wikipedia): 1 in 3 black males will go to prison in their lifetime (and then be treated in this way). I think of my friends: 1 in 3! Absurd (even worse than I thought), someone has to fix this!!

"Then why not just shoot them"

One day I was doing some grocery shopping and a some guy comes up and asks me how my relationship with Jesus was. I'm an atheist and said so and he began following me around the store trying out various talking points in an attempt to get me to attend the youth outreach concert/thing they were having that night.

At one point he asks "What if some one were to rape your daughter and then shoot himself, you wouldn't care that he wouldn't be punished?"

Think about that for a second. This was a youth pastor, a man who theoretically instructs the children of the United State on ethics and morality, who did not believe death was a sufficient punishment.

ETA: and lest anyone think I might be exaggerating his stance, I actually called him on that several times. "Well I mean: he's dead, how is that not punishment" I asked immediately. I think 4 times we pushed at the sides of that point before he moved onto some other argument. Which is to say he was willing to defend the idea that death wasn't punishment enough.

Criminal justice in America is largely up to the States. Thus, having a Democratic President does not mean there will be a liberalization of policy.

That's perhaps one of the best smokescreens that has been pulled on the American people in recent times. The president has very little say in domestic affairs. On the other hand, thanks to various congressional outcomes, he can use the nation's military might abroad with virtual impunity.

You should ask someone who believes these things. As I said I think it is kinda sick. Personally I believe the Norwegian model is preferable.

> In addition if you're a politician you're not going to win votes by campaigning for better conditions in prisons, now matter how you spin it.

This is the root cause, and the political/policy effects are a symptom. There are places where this kind of treatment would be considered a scandal, but American culture doesn't agree.

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