DOJ finds conditions in Alabama's prisons to be "unconstitutional."

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VenomJockey

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Worst prison system in the U.S. I don't believe in coddling prisoners, But I also don't believe prisoners should be held in inhumane prisons, either. When an entire state prison system is declared "unconstitutional" by the Department of Justice it is a pretty good indication the prisons are in horrible shape, and suffer from incompetent staffing from top to bottom.

 
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It was a good story on on the Alabama prisons but bringing in the southern poverty law center to make the case for this story weaken the case and took a great deal of credibility from the story in my mind. I don't feel much for the prisoners especially rapist/child abuse etc.. but it does sound like they need to add more guards.
 
There is the term 'separation of church and state' (even though those words never appear in the Constitution). Well, we need to raise the term "separation of feds and state".

This is an example where the state of AL should have the absolute right to say "butt out feds". I have no problem if the state completely ignores the feds & their ruling. There is a dying "Right" called "State Rights". Each State can choose all of their systems. And if the people there don't like how it's being done, they can vote people out and vote in people who will do things the way they want. Does everybody get what they want? Nope. Welcome to reality. But if it's a big enough issue, just get 51% of the people to vote for a different governor/Mayor/etc. Whoever has the power to change the things you want changed. If the people of AL are satisfied overall with lousy prisons without cable TV, so be it. If Californistan wants to put in 4-star hotels for prisons, so be it.

And for anybody who doesn't like the rules in their State, great, move to another State that does things as you like. In the pathetic example in the video, I have no mercy for the guy who raped a girl and cried in prison and ended up dying in prison. Not one tear. The guy was mentally handicapped? It was still rape, do the time. If the mother wanted better things for her son, she should have moved to New York where he'd get turn-down service at night in his cell. She failed her son, not the State of Alabama. Next.
 
Like many here, I don't believe in coddling criminals. I don't believe that prison should be a country club, and I'm very much against things like cable T.V., swimming pools, conjugal visits, and so on.

At the same time, I expect the government to follow it's own rules. The constitution exists for a reason, and the rules apply to everyone. If we ignore these rules for people that we don't like (ie: criminals), then we set up a precedent where we select and choose where we apply these rules, and soon.....totalitarianism.

At least that's how I see it.

Prison reform needs to take place. Not for the sake of the criminals, but out of respect for the Constitution and for ourselves.
 
If Alabama prisons are better than the OLD YUMA territorial prison, then they are good enough. Prisons do not rehabilitate, they are there to house prisoners. Making it uncomfortable and miserable is a good thing.
I don't disagree with you....I only say that we should follow the Constitution.....even in circumstances where we disapprove.

If the prisons in Alabama are unconstitutional, then the situation should be rectified to the point where Constitutional requirements are met.

Again, I say this is out of concern for everyone because of the "slippery slope" (although I'll point out that I've challenged the slippery slope as a fallacy in other posts).

I--quite honestly--don't give two shits about convicted criminals, but I care very much about the Constitution, and I care about everybody else. I also care about people who have been wrongly convicted.

It is in this spirit that I support the push toward prison reform.
 
Kevin, Please help educate this old fart and show me the part in the constitution regarding the prison system. If you are referring to the part about "Cruel and Unusual punishment" then that is open to interpretation. My interpretation is any condition above the "Old Yuma"Territorial prison condition, is not cruel or unjust. I can't remember reading any prison specification in the Constitution. Maybe I am old and slipping.
 
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I don't think the founders of this country envisioned convicted felons having rights beyond the right to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment. By "cruel and unusual punishments" they meant things like being drawn and quartered, impaled, burned at the stake or gibbeted alive. Flogging was not considered cruel and unusual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_corporal_punishment#United_States
The Founders believed whipping and other forms of corporal punishment effectively promoted pro-social and discouraged anti-social behavior. Two later presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, advocated judicial corporal punishment as punishment for wife-beating.

A little know fact...

Judicial corporal punishment has never been held unconstitutional in the United States.
 
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Kevin, Please help educate this old fart and show me the part in the constitution regarding the prison system. If you are referring to the part about "Cruel and Unjust punishment" then that is open to interpretation. My interpretation is any condition above the "Old Yuma"Territorial prison condition, is not cruel or unjust. I can't remember reading any prison specification in the Constitution. Maybe I am old and slipping.
I don't feel that you're slipping.

Yes, cruel and unusual punishment is open to interpretation.

But again, I agree and also disagree with some of your points.

Yes, the founders of our nation probably had being burned alive at the stake, getting drawn and quartered, and so on when they mentioned cruel and unusual punishment.......and they probably didn't think that substandard housing, overcrowding, solitary confinement, and so on were cruel and unusual.

Yet this doesn't make a difference, in my view, and doesn't mean that such practices aren't cruel and unusual.

To explain why this is so, let me suggest an argument from the medical field, which is where I work.

In the 1770s, it wasn't known that bad water, dirt, insects, and filth can spread disease. We know this now.

So, if prisoners were given dirty water to drink and they died from disease, it wasn't cruel and unusual punishment because the consequences of drinking dirty water weren't known.

Nowadays, we know the consequences of drinking dirty water......so giving dirty water to a prisoner today would be cruel and unusual punishment now, even if it wasn't considered cruel and unusual punishment in the 1770s.

This is what I mean when I say it's impirtant to follow the spirit of the Constitution as well as the letter of the law.

And again, I don't advocate coddling convicted criminals. I think it's awful when a rapist gets out on good behavior, and promptly commits a rape/murder.

People should serve their full sentences, there should be less plea bargins that put criminals back on the street, and violent criminals should be kept in for life.
 
Prisoners should have a job to do from sunup to sundown. They should be so tired when they get off work they don't have energy to get into trouble. When they get out, they will be in the habit of working all day every day, and they will have a marketable skill that they learned in prison.

When Mississippi did this at Parchman Penitentiary, it was called unconstitutional.
 
And I might add...

Parchman was completely self sustaining and didn't require any money from the state to operate. Every prisoner had to work all day six days a week...off on Sundays. Some prisoners worked in a machine shop making tools for the prison. Some made clothes for the prisoners, some made furniture, some grew food and tended livestock, etc. After the liberals got though screwing it up it was no longer completely self sufficient. The "reforms" were led by liberal governor William Waller in the 1970s. I think he was the last liberal Governor Mississippi ever elected, LOL.
 
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Prisoners should have a job to do from sunup to sundown. They should be so tired when they get off work they don't have energy to get into trouble. When they get out, they will be in the habit of working all day every day, and they will have a marketable skill that they learned in prison.

When Mississippi did this at Parchman Penitentiary, it was called unconstitutional.
I can see positives and negatives with this.

I have the impression that most criminals don't have a work ethic. If someone has a work ethic, I accept on faith that they don't need to rob and steal (but perhaps I'm wrong).

If these prisoners have jobs and get a work ethic indoctrinated into them, then I'd imagine that they would be better able to fix their situations on the outside, and--perhaps--be less likely to re-offend.

On the other hand, I have a problem with slave labor. I'm not an economist, but I wonder if prisoners working on a road crew chain gang takes jobs away from citizens who may need those jobs. I worked construction when I was kid, for example, and I enjoyed it and made good money. It was good for me.

So, I wonder if free--or almost free--labor hurts job prospects for decent people who may need these jobs.
 
Kevin, Please help educate this old fart and show me the part in the constitution regarding the prison system. If you are referring to the part about "Cruel and Unjust punishment" then that is open to interpretation. My interpretation is any condition above the "Old Yuma"Territorial prison condition, is not cruel or unjust. I can't remember reading any prison specification in the Constitution. Maybe I am old and slipping.

The Alabama prison system needs to meet Constitutional standards...beyond that I could care less how they treat the prisoners. The point is that Alabama's prisons don't even come close to meeting Constitutional requirements against "cruel and unusual punishment." Bring the system into compliance wityh Constitutional requirements and go from there. There is a difference between not coddlinbg the prisoners and flatly inhumane conditions. Alabama's prison system is so bad that an escapee doing time for murder found sanctuary in another state, and that state ruled, after an investigation of his claims, that Alabama's prison system was so bad that "merely being incarcerated in the State of Alabama constitutes 'cruel and unusual punishment'" and the sanctuary state (Michigan) refused to extradite the escapee back to Alabama.
 
The Alabama prison system needs to meet Constitutional standards...beyond that I could care less how they treat the prisoners. The point is that Alabama's prisons don't even come close to meeting Constitutional requirements against "cruel and unusual punishment." Bring the system into compliance wityh Constitutional requirements and go from there. There is a difference between not coddlinbg the prisoners and flatly inhumane conditions. Alabama's prison system is so bad that an escapee doing time for murder found sanctuary in another state, and that state ruled, after an investigation of his claims, that Alabama's prison system was so bad that "merely being incarcerated in the State of Alabama constitutes 'cruel and unusual punishment'" and the sanctuary state (Michigan) refused to extradite the escapee back to Alabama.
I agree 100%.
 
Want to bet the Alabama prisons were better than any in Mexico? Again, all in the interpretation of Cruel and Unusual. Yes we don't give the prisoners impure water but we also don't need to give them internet access, TV. or any other non-essential extra's. They can also get college degree's free, which is more than many solid American citizens can get. If prisons were so bad and cruel in Alabama, the criminals would all move to California and be incarcerated in the lap of luxury (as prisons go).
 
I'm not an economist, but I wonder if prisoners working on a road crew chain gang takes jobs away from citizens who may need those jobs. I worked construction when I was kid, for example, and I enjoyed it and made good money. It was good for me.

So, I wonder if free--or almost free--labor hurts job prospects for decent people who may need these jobs.
The jobs they had at Parchman were supporting Parchman. So they didn't have to take money away from the taxpayers to support the prison. Recidivism was much lower than normal.
 

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