I wonder if I am an outlier in that I have a massive paranoia about being thrown into jail randomly because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time or cops executing a warrant on the wrong house.<p>Maybe it's because I am mixed race and grew up in a poor minority neighborhood but it seems like the system is just eager and waiting to put everyone in it. Kind of like a low grade terror all the time.
> When the suit was filed in 2012, 500 of these inmates had been held for more than 10 years in tiny, windowless cells with virtually no human contact<p>That is just... horrifying... evil even.<p><i>10 years</i> in solitary confinement... it's just unthinkable what that would do to someone
"California will end indefinite solitary sentences. In all, the reforms are expected to reduce the state’s solitary population, which is now over 2,800, by more than half."<p>So they only ended indefinite solitary sentences. The definite sentences will stay. The main issue this opinion column raises is that it took several hundreds of inmates to form a class action for the change to take effective. The settlement will mean that the issue isn't being ruled as 'cruel or unusual punishment' so there's very little change that is making through the court system in the country.
The 13th amendment allows for slavery if a person has been convicted of a crime. It makes a lot of sense when you consider prison, especially America's take on it, just a continuation of slavery.
Another thing not mentioned in the article is the fact that a lot of small jails in the US have instituted a 23-hour lockdown policy, similar to super max prisons. So now socializing and free time out of your cell is rare, and lockup is the norm. I don't think they truly care too much about rehabilitation, so much as they care about control. Just my humble opinion.
The US is a country in which there are people and companies profiting off of the imprisonment of human beings. So I wouldn't expect this to change completely for the better for quite some time.
Does anyone seriously doubt that the use of prolonged solitary confinement will be listed in the history books alongside other examples of state-sponsored torture, slavery, and terrorism?<p>I'm not going to make any cliched remarks about karma here, but the United States will have to deal with the consequences of its actions eventually.<p>Ironically, our own history books are filled with such redemption stories, which forms the basis of the ludicrous exceptionalism that so infects rational discourse about most anything these days.
For those looking for more, there's a lot of data and reporting on prison privatization, and its impact on policies like solitary confinement, up here:<p><a href="https://www.muckrock.com/project/the-private-prison-project-8/" rel="nofollow">https://www.muckrock.com/project/the-private-prison-project-...</a>
Death sentence is considered harsher than imprisonment for life, right? It includes paying for your crimes with all your time and your existance.<p>What if, in the future, it becomes possible to serve a x year sentence in a chemically induced coma or such, in a way taking away your existance too temporarily? Wouldn't that be a milder punishment because the element of "serving time" is no longer there?
I would be interested in seeing the Supreme Court's rationale that solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The four principles guiding the court are as follows from Wikipedia:<p>The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity," especially torture.<p>"A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion."<p>"A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."<p>"A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."<p>The Eighth Amendment was copied virtually verbatim from the English Bill of Rights and wasn't actually used to proclaim a particular punishment was unconstitutional until 1910, 119 years after the American Bill of Rights was ratified. Since then, the principles of "proportionality" and "evolving standards of decency" are evolving to ascertain constitutionality questions. Neither principle appears to do the trick.<p>Of the four principles above, only the first seems to apply. So the Court will have to declare that solitary confinement is torture in order to stop its widespread use. As seen, the Court has historically been cautious in declaring punishments unconstitutional, waiting until the battle has already been mostly fought in the sphere of public opinion.<p>Given the stances the Court has taken concerning the death penalty, I predict that no sweeping, immediate prohibitions will take place, rather the Court will apply largely ineffectual provisions to the imposition of solitary confinement.<p>For example, the Court has ruled in 2002 that capital punishment is constitutionally cruel and unusual when applied to inmates with intellectual disabilities. Georgia promptly responded by making it virtually impossible to obtain a judgment.
I'm glad as a society we're starting to look at how we deter crime and how we manage convicted criminals. I hope we learn to not only take people who are danger to society out of circulation, but once incarcerated work to have them become useful when they reenter the general population.<p>For too long it has resembled third world punishment models. The objective should be mainly to improve safety and to that end reeducate, reform, inculcate, etc. in order to make reentry viable.<p>That said, if it's useful to monitor electronically to ensure compliance, I'm okay since breaking social norms come with consequences like incarceration, and reform, etc then electronic monitoring during the probatory period. But we should put great effort into making those people useful, rather than the traditional outcasts we've made them to be post release.
I don't think solitary would be that bad with Internet access and TV. Maybe the problem isn't solitary but that they don't get these things. Also I would prefer <i>not</i> to have a cellmate in prison.
Why am I hearing different stories? Some feel like prisoners are being treated too well, some feel like they are being mistreated... and isn't the fact being in a prison with all your freedom being taken away is cruel and all too usual, too? I'm so confused about this discussion.
Am I in minority to be the kind of person that would <i>prefer</i> serving something like a 1-5 years sentence in <i>solitary</i> instead of a regular american prison<p>(Yeah, probably at a 5 years limit or something like that it would be too much and it be psychologically impossible for you to come back to society...)
I don't often make these comments and trust the filtering to work but I really fail to understand why this is on HN front page.<p>It has no technology or startup confluences or flavor. It is not even a factual story but an "editorial" opinion piece with zero information content.