A place like this does not happen by accident.<p>It is this way because the people responsible to operate it deliberately choose to keep it this way. It is infested with rats because they want it infested with rats. Prisoners are denied medical treatment because they want prisoners to be denied medical treatment.<p>The individuals responsible for torturing 800 people at a time are clearly much worse than anybody held there. They have names, and homes, and could be arrested in them by New York police on New York warrants, if New York law enforcement could be persuaded to enforce New York law.<p>The Federal government also has laws covering the behavior of the individuals torturing inmates there. Federal prosecutors have a responsibility to prosecute them. Yet, they are not.
In the US we really need to figure out what our prisons are for. Are they for punishment or rehabilitation? Do we just want to impose pain on people that have done bad things, or are we trying to change them into people that wont do those bad things anymore? Punishment might feel good to some people on a visceral level, but what good does it do?
Why was Epstein not under suicide protection, even though he attempted suicide already, and his testimony was so important to finally outing the orange cheeto? Was the camera outage really coincidental?
Prison reform issues always make me feel so contrasted. On one hand, a lot of the people held there did awful things. The article mentions El Chapo, mobsters, drug dealers, etc. as some of the people held there. It's extremely hard to feel any sort of sympathy for those people. They've done extreme amounts of damage to communities and have done far worse to other people.<p>But on the other hand, no one should be sexually assaulted and beaten to death.