Case study: American Prisons
December 14th, 2007
Being an ,,addict'' to Documentaries in my free time I found something ,,interesting'' again in the web.
This time its about the American prison system and particularly with focus on north Carolina's high security detention ,,Alexander Correctional Institution''. (presented on National Geographic)
Why does this matter at all, its just a prison right?
Well American prisons are notorious as the most sophisicated ones beside the fact that Amercia is actually a very violent country. Statistically speaking over 2/3 of all serial killers come from the U.S. and hate, drug or other crimes are happening at a terrifying scale. Especially the new trend to lock up everybody in single isolation for 23 hours a day seems to be a handy but cruel method to control prisoners. Lets take a closer look:
Criticism on the Documentary
Like most TV shows its important to get a lot of viewers. In this spirit this TV documentary is glorifying this prison and their inmates in both directions - good and bad. Mostly they ,,try'' to keep a neutral documentation but often the viewer (or specifically I) got the feeling that a lot of things were emphasized or exaggerated. A good example is e.g. the pepperspray incident, or the fight which an inmate and an officer had. These events were glorified and emphasized - even reenacted for the camera.
Some random things
- A lot of gangs operating within (in this prison - 6 gangs)
- There is a lot of drug activity inside the prison (drug rings)
- Every ,,gangster'' is classified from 1 to 3, where 3 is the highest threat. This high threat is met by harsh restrictions like single or isolated detention (23 hours a day in a 5 by 5 (?) meter steel cage or cell)
- There is a special unit against gang activity inside the prison which tries to keep track of everything gang related.
- Very high Video surveilance
- Tatoos and all body markings/brandings are photographed catalogized
- Every gang member (especially level 3's) have to go to gang-reeducation. (Need to rennounce the gang)
- Trash is searched (90% of all infos)
Security areas
- All doors stay locked and paper numbers need to be flashed if they want in or out (to/of a cell)
- One guard manages the opening and closing of all doors for an entire block (huge board with a lot of switches plus alot of displays)
- The prisoners have the advantage in the open or day room (big place with chairs, tables etc) on the ground floor. The ratio there is 200 Inmates per 8 officers - that is 25:1
- Most dangerous for inmates is if they are rapists (especially children related). They can easily get killed because of this in prison (they are on the ,,hitlist'').
- Outside in the Yard (freeground) the officers are outnumbers 75:1, this is even more dangerous than inside
- In the yard two inmates have sort of a bit agressive conflict (no hurting, no pushing, just pretty loud talking/agressive attitude etc.) for this they got detained in isolation for weeks. This is called the ,,no compromise rule''
- The fench outside is electronically wired, touching it will tell the guards (via an electronical system) immediatelly where this occured. Automatically cameras point to this zone so that an immediate reaction is possible.
- Signals go to PPV (Perimiter Patrol Vehicles, encircling the area 24h a day) to react (huge trucks with Officers who are heavily armed.)
- a 357 Handgun
- a small gauge shotgun 12mm
- an M-14 Assault Rife
- There is a "internal" mail system by the janitors who pickup trash and transport it to another place. This method ensures that letters can be transported from A to B inside the prison (,,trash UPS'').
- Guards actually piece together trash (ripped apart letters) to figure out what is going on behind bars.
Example case:
Highest threat levels (threat level declines the lower in the list)
- Chow hall (Lunch) (Many blocks intersect during this, 300 Prisoners in one room)
- At free time at the yard
- Open Room gatherings
Lunch
- Everybody gets a designated seat
- The segreated inmates: They are still very dangerous even though they are locked up and only a small trap door is opened for the food. The officers get grabed, feces thown at them and any other imaginable thing can happen.
Gangs
- Largest gang in Alexander is the "Bloods"
- Drug related is M.O.B., Men of Business
- approx. 250 USD per 30g drugs
- oxycontin, ritalin, xanax, marujana, etc.
- Often gangs kill ex-members after they complete the gang reeducation therapy
Tactics to counteract drug and other smugling activities
- suprise searches at 4 A.M. on a huge scale (hundrets of officers) Officers call this the ,,fun part of the job''
- official term ,,shake down''
- Dogs are utilized to find drugs or more specifically ,,suspicious cells''
- Procedure:
- inmates are strip-searched
- after that they will open the door (not before)
- two officers search, a third one watches the prisoner
- inmates store
- maybe to many possetions (this is removed)
- dangerous materials
Methods of hiding things
- thin metal threads hold a small piece of glove which in turn holds contraband this is attached to the inside of the toiled and flushed down
- Drugs are (told to be/currently there suspected to be)
- sold by the Canteen (food suppliers seems to deal) (hidden in bags of chips)
- smuggled by visitors - mothers, wifes all kind of people bring drugs inside regularly
- Women put it in their bra
- tampon shaped drug strings (,,suitcasing'' - hiding in a. cavity)
- brought in by school teachers
Some methods of weapon creation
- Plastic is broken off a tablet etc. and put in a microwave, reformed, sharpend and utilized with a handle as a knife. Attacked happens by hitting the spine or throat and breaking off the plastic inside.
Psychological aspects
- Inmates are able to display cold blooded violence and are most of the time fully aware of the fact that they are killing a person
Criticism by prisoners
- Isolated detention or normal detention itself does not re-educate the prisoners. They are not getting ,,better'' but just more angrier. (,,retalliation'')
- Quote: ,,There is a whole lot more than you see'' (not only just the things currently infront of the camera)
- Working together with Officiers will get you killed.
Criticism by officers
- Often some officers work together with the inmates (they "tip off" the prisoners before a search etc.)
- Officers get often life threats, this causes additional psychological pressure. Not only threats but actual assaults can cause extensive trauma beside severe injuries. Sometimes fights among prisoners are faked to attack together one or many guards.
- Officers become sometimes suspected to act as drug suppliers (,,dealers'')
Criticism by me
- Segrated prisoners often stay long (from 40 days up to many years) in isolation this can cause severe psychological damage. They hurt themselves to get out of single detention as they slowly go crazy.
- Not only inmates get psychologically damaged but particularly officers in my opinion as well. They often act and feel over-powerful, this expresses in extensive agressivness and arrogance.
- Are inmates treated as humans ? Particularly in single detention (for years ?)
- Security camera footage of the assault incident on the officers was not release to public. If there clearly would be nothing to hide, why is this not released ? Abuse (beatings) often happen in the prison which then is played down by the authorities. Often eleborate methods are used to make beatings invisible. (occluded spots on the body)
- As a preventive measure against a new plague outbreak the year before nearly 40.000 dogs and 80.000 cats were killed as it was believed that they were transmitting the disease. This was a deadly misassessment as the real cause were the fleas and the rats.
- As soon as somebody got sick, the whole family got locked up together with them for at least 40 days. This caused most of the healty family members to get sick too.
- Nearly no plague hospitals were created for London at that time - only 2 were built and they only had space for around 900 people. That was less than <1% of the infected population. This situation was different on the continent, which greatly helped.
- The lack of hygene and the terrible housing situations of the poor greatly contributed to the disaster. Hunger and malnurishment also greatly decreased the strength of the people to withstand sicknesses.
- All people were imprisoned in the city and could not pass outside unless they had a ,,certificate of health''. This law cost especially the lifes of poor people who could not afford such a certificate.
- Uncertainty what the actual cause for the plague was caused many weird potions and cures to emerge. This reached from opiate cocktails to drink, arsenic metals to put on the skin, burning of infected skin, smoking and chewing of tabacco up to burning of special herbs. One other craze was that other serious sicknesses can prevent infection of the plague (so many people actually tried to get seriously sick).
- ....
Final thoughts
Crime, especially capital crimes need to be severely punished. Though we should never forget that the people inside are still human they have to be controlled. Many academic and non-scholars argue which method is the most promising. Isolated detention is a convienient way to handle difficult people but statistics show that this is not resolving anything. Are the human rights treated fairly in such a system ? Amnesty doesn't belive so.
What do you think ?
1 comments »
Case study: Yersinia pestis
December 6th, 2007
During the last weeks I unfortunatelly glanced with absence of postings - sorry for that. Due to plenty of work to be done and deadlines to be kept, there was really no spare time for blogging anymore. So now that I have a bit more time at hand, I do what I like most.
Read, watch and ,,absorb'' information about all kind of topics.
By coincidence I stumbled across a documentary about the Yersinia pestis or better known as the ,,Great Plague'' outbreak around 1665 in London. Its a pretty serious topic actually and has even relevance up to today.
(Wikipedia)
I constantly try to refresh my knowledge or to learn something new (which doesn't always need to be around a Computer Science) and here was a good chance to learn more about the Bubonic-, pneumonic- (airborne) or septicemic (blood poisoning) plague.
Beside that fact that this gruesome sickness is a nightmare there are many facts which can at least be learned from it. The main causes for the many casualties in London were:
Throughout history there were three great plagues. The first one also known as the Black death took a toll of over one to two third of europes population around 1340 (worldwide about 85 Mio. people). The second one in the 16th and 17th century in London, Marseille, Vienna and Moscow killing again million casualties. The lastest mass plague was during the 19th and early 20th century taking 12 Million deaths.
Interestingly in the discussion what transmitted it there are quite many theories ranging from the already mentioned ,,blood clot blocked fleas'' to brown and black rats. Origins of this bactieria currently seem to be pointing towards central asia where apparently the first sicknesses occured.
Reading into the medical signs and symptoms makes me just sick. Ranging from fever, headaches, painful aches, nausea, cough, blood-tingled skin spots to much much more.
From all this history now back to a more modern viewpoint. The lastest outbreak was in 1997.. So much for you thinking I am just a history nut.
The scary fact is that since the second world war we had something to effectively fight it but now it seems that the strains out there seem to get multi-drug resistant (PDF). The one from 1997 in Madagascar showed that behavior at least to two of the five possible medications.
Here is another article about this incident.
(Wikipedia)
This quote from the above link summarizes it easily:
Human plague is considered to be a re-emerging disease. From 1980 to 1994, 18739 cases of plague occurred worldwide, and 1853 deaths were reported to the WHO by 24 countries in Africa, the Americas, and Asia.
This article is not ment to be complete in any sense, it is just my way of writing down some insights I learned so far. Especially current occurances and multi-drug resistancy of some strains give me a cold shiver and a dreadful reminder of our more and more useless antibiotics (yes, even the new stuff, but thats another story).
Stay healty and informed !
Comments about this article and pointers to more information are highly welcome. 1 comments »