Conditions in jails.

In America, jails are not prisons. Jails are where you would spend your time for a minor infraction or where you go when you've been accused of a crime and not yet tried/sentenced.

This means that most people in jail have not been found guilty yet. In Texas, over 50% of the people in jail have yet to be officially charged with a crime.

People have a problem with so-called 'nice' conditions and 'luxuries' in prisons, but jails are not prisons. And individuals who have not yet been charged & found guilty being punished is very akin to 'guilty until proven innocent'.

To clear up some misconceptions about how good they have it in jail;

In 2011, I was sent to jail for a crime I did not commit.

I was in jail for six weeks and the bed/lack of pillow was so uncomfortable that I was unable to move my neck properly for two. We had a television that got a few basic channels and the girls in my cell demanded it be on Jerry Springer way too much. The food was so bad I went from a size 9 to a size 0, losing around 30 pounds. It cost nearly ten dollars to make a fifteen minute phone call to my mother.

The luxuries I had were some writing utensils and the one book my mother was allowed to send me.

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So my question is... do you feel it is proper to treat people who have not yet been charged, tried, and convicted of a crime so horribly?

of dru's being.:

Jails are not prisons. Jails are where you would spend your time for a minor infraction or where you go when you've been accused of a crime and not yet tried/sentenced.

Oh, that distinction doesn't exist in Australia. I'm sorry if I've seemed ignorant/confused.

@ pravda.
Is that because you have less people incarcerated? I really hope that's the reason. We have too many prisons/prisoners here.

of dru's being.:

Is that because you have less people incarcerated? I really hope that's the reason. We have too many prisons/prisoners here.

I'm not sure why it is. Apparently we have 116 / 100,000, you guys have 715 / 100,000. You have 2,020,000 to our 22,500. Apparently. (per capita | prisoners by country)

There are probably other factors - like the availability of weapons, maybe? Gun deaths aren't even a statistic here, our highest killers are smoking and going outside (skin cancer).

Ed: Cool (old) stats. (2004)

@ pravda.
America has too many prisoners. We have stupid laws, particularly in regards to non-violent crime.

of dru's being.:

@ pravda.
America has too many prisoners. We have stupid laws, particularly in regards to non-violent crime.

My political science teacher pointed out that someone caught using a fake ID three times and someone who rapes someone can end up with the same prison sentence because of the three strike felony law.

A kid sneaking into a club is significantly less threatening and dangerous than a rapist. If you're a non-violent offender committing a victimless crime, you shouldn't be in prison.

I also think our prison system is based entirely around punishment rather than rehabilitation and teaching life skills. Even more upsetting is the fact that people seemingly don't care that it's only about punishment. When someone goes to prison, people joke about and take satisfaction in the fact that you will likely be raped, beaten or murdered in prison. Your court sentence may be five years in jail, but off the books its five years of mental and physical abuse and society as a whole feels good about that.

I definitely think they need to do something about the conditions in some jails, as well as the way they treat the people inside jail, especially considering most haven't even been convicted yet. I understand it's not supposed to be rainbows and sunshine (I mean, the whole point is they don't want you ever coming back), but some of these places are awful.

When I was seventeen, I was in juvenile detention while awaiting my court date and it was terrible. No television, music, or recreation of any kind, except one small shelf of books which were all at around a fourth grade level. The food was so bad it actually made some of us physically ill, but if we didn't eat it we'd get penalized. The beds were hard as a rock, we had no pillows, there were no windows in our cells, and the sheets were usually dirty (if we had sheets at all). Even though it was freezing cold, they wouldn't give us blankets. The staff also treated and talked to us like we were stupid second-class citizens, and some of the things they did and said were outright verbal abuse (not even exaggerating). We also weren't allowed to make phone calls, send letters, or see our families.

And this was in a place where the kids were as young as ten, and 90% of us hadn't yet been convicted of anything. If that's what juvie is like, I don't even want to think about the conditions in an adult jail.

@ chai latte
I was also lied to about what rights I had. I hate it when people assume I'm stupid and I either don't know this shit or won't take the initiative to figure it out. (I was also lied to about my rights when I was placed on psych-hold.)

@ of dru's being.
Same here. I was basically lied to the whole way through and treated like a dog. When I was first brought in, I also had to be strip-searched (bend over and cough, the whole nine) and watched shower and change clothes by a man, which, considering I'm female and was barely 17 at the time, I'm pretty sure was totally fucking illegal.

@ chai latte
Pretty sure that's illegal, yeah. Pretty sure it's illegal for an adult, too.

chai latte:

@ of dru's being.
Same here. I was basically lied to the whole way through and treated like a dog. When I was first brought in, I also had to be strip-searched (bend over and cough, the whole nine) and watched shower and change clothes by a man, which, considering I'm female and was barely 17 at the time, I'm pretty sure was totally fucking illegal.

God, that's disgusting. It's amazing what these centers can get away with, and they're dealing with youth. How they treat them is pretty well going to shape their lives with the justice system at a young age like that.

@ Kurtni
Exactly. And like I said, some of the kids in there were as young as ten, eleven, twelve years old. It also doesn't help that when you attempt to stand up for yourself they abuse their power further and basically force you to accept their abhorrent treatment of you. The whole system makes me so angry.

@ of dru's being.
Well, in the UK there are three levels of imprisonment: jail (which is very temporary, it's usually an overnight thing until you get bunged into the sheriff court the next day but may last to no more than a week. And in those it is a plastic mattress, a loo and a sink. The next level is remand which is where people who are up for more serious crimes are held but are not eligible for bail. This can last as long as it takes and according to some stats I've found, are generally worse than the actual prisons. Generally, the levels of depression and suicide are greater in remand than in prison and are not fully equipped with appropriate legal reference books or much else. Prisons are...well, prisons.

I don't think I have much issue with the jail side of things since that is mostly a temporary thing but from the experiences of a friend with very severe disabilities, the medical treatment and harshness of the environment exacerbated her pain (especially when they would only give her half of her pain relief medication). There obviously needs training at that level as well as better facilities to ensure that the brief stay is not too intolerable. As for remand...pfft.

Generally speaking, the whole prison service needs revamped. It is about punishment, yes, but rehabilitation is far more urgent. People who commit the worst crimes will have commit smaller ones before it and who knows who you could be saving by helping a low level criminal. I'm somewhat enamoured with the idea of making a prison somewhat self-sufficient with growing crops and all that sort of thing (lots of fresh air in a controlled environment). Additionally, lots of exercise opportunity would be available but not weight lifting or boxing or any of that. Different levels of cognitive behavioural therapy, access to vocational and academic education and qualifications and careers advice should be vastly encouraged.

But seriously. The state of it here is a joke and by the sounds of it, the American system fares little better.

I forgot to add a girl in jail went into labor (water broke and contractions) and since she was supposed to be out in a few hours, they didn't seek medical care.

@ of dru's being.
That's just insane. Even if you're the most selfish twat in the world, surely you would realise that if that happens and it goes wrong and the baby or the mother's life would be endangered, their balls would be booted out of the prison service so fast to avoid more shit sticking to it? I'm baffled.

@ The Master.
That's what I thought. I had so many plans to sue people when I got out, but once you get out, you just don't want to think about it anymore.

@ The Master.
That part about the medical treatment reminds me of something else from my experience. When I went in, I had pretty bad hypothermia due to what happened when I was arrested (which is a whole other horror story in itself...) and they refused me medical care of any kind until much later because they said I was "just drunk" (which I was not). Never mind that hypothermia can kill people, especially when they've been drinking. And another girl who was there had a really severe anxiety/panic type disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, and they refused her her medication.

of dru's being.:

@ The Master.
That's what I thought. I had so many plans to sue people when I got out, but once you get out, you just don't want to think about it anymore.

That's probably why nothing changes. Not blaming the victims, because I understand why they want to just distance themselves from it, but I wish organization like the ACLU provided more support to people abused in jails/prisons. If you've just been abused by the legal system and victimized, you can't be expected to take it on all by yourself, when you've seen first hand how corrupt it is.

@ chai latte
I was allowed to see a psychiatrist who prescribed me medication, but there was no follow-through on the plan. That medication is only available to people in jail and you're cut off cold turkey when you get out, which is incredibly unhealthy.

@ Kurtni
That and the fact that you have to pay someone to sue someone. I can't get a public prosecutor for free, only a defender. It's bullshit.