Redwaterlilly’s take on the CRI prison violence report. Just go there and read it — tell her what you are thinking about this.
And when you are done, go read Steve Newton’s post on CRI’s effort and RWL’s post. Both, I think have done a great job in advancing this discussion beyond whatever political damage CRI is intending to inflict by this.
No one here is going to endorse the kind of violence that pretty routinely goes on in prisons and certainly all prisoners must have access to adequate medical care. But RWL gets at the real conundrum of the system — that the kind of neglect shown in the CRI report is a feature of the system, not a bug. From overcrowding, to excessive demands on staff because you can’t (or won’t) hire more, to cutting corners on services, prison systems all over the US have become warehouses for people that society no longer wants any part of. And since society now expects its pound of flesh, we have an entire system set up whereby politicians are rewarded for how tough they can be on prisoners. So we send them off to abusive, violent (perpetrated by the inmates and some guards) institutions with little real possibility at the kind of self-improvement or rehabilitation that might help them stay out when released. What these institutions do offer is plenty of opportunity to hone your skills as a predator — and everyone is complicit.
It is a given — at least to me — that CRI is in this to try for as much political embarrassment as they can get out of this. But some of the real embarrassment ought to be found in the privatized medical services that never delivered on its promises or its service. They probably made their margin targets, though. The other real embarrassment ought to be for a political system that has demagogued the whole Law and Order business enough to have created an electorate who not only expects that prisoners will be treated harshly, but that they won’t have to pay for the “country clubs” that they’ve been led to believe these places are. Now they are getting queued up to demagogue the horrific treatment and conditions of the same prisoners they previously tossed aside.
Other than Senator Jim Webb, there’s no real leadership anywhere to advocate for the kind of systemic change that would make prisons more functional and certainly safer. And when do we talk about the one thing that would provide immediate relief to the entire problem — an end to the War On Drugs? Or how about we return judicial discretion to our justice system and end mandatory minimums? If CRI were a true nonpartisan organization, these questions would be asked. It is not and they are not.