Using Prisoners As Unpaid Firefighter Squads
Cities and towns from coast to coast are straining under the weight of budget shortfalls, so what are they to do? Lay off essential public employees and replace them with slave labor by prisoners — it’s what Camden County, Georgia is doing in regards to firefighters. Will the next step be unpaid prisoners teaching your kids?
Making Everyday Objects Deadly: The Art of the Shiv
I’ve also heard them called shanks, the word itself, “shiv” or “shank,” intuitively sounds like their intended use, further relayed with these photos from this article by William Drenttel in Design Observer:
A shiv is a weapon crafted from the limited resources of a prisoner’s closed world. Crudely constructed from such things as spoons, shoelaces and upholstery tacks, shivs lie somewhere between the graceful and the grotesque. They’re primitive, too — like outsider art, but produced deep on the inside.
The individual parts that make up a shiv tend to be everyday objects, innocent things furtively reconstituted as lethal weapons. Each design choice is essential, but what’s particularly notable is that shivs, at their core, are not so much evocations of minimalism as they are symbols of survivalism. A shiv is all about masked utility: it’s an innocuous object with improbably toxic intent (whether used to attack others or to protect oneself…)
Prisoners Help Build Patriot Missiles
File this in the “in case you missed it” news cycle. Why should the government not hire unemployed Americans to do this …? Noah Shachtman reported back in March on the excellent WIRED’s Danger Room:
This [past] spring, the United Arab Emirates is expected to close a deal for $7 billion dollars’ worth of American arms. Nearly half of the cash will be spent on Patriot missiles, which cost as much as $5.9 million apiece.
But what makes those eye-popping sums even more shocking is that some of the workers manufacturing parts for those Patriot missiles are prisoners, earning as little as 23 cents an hour.
The work is done by Unicor, previously known as Federal Prison Industries. It’s a government-owned corporation, established during the Depression, that employs about 20,000 inmates in 70 prisons to make everything from clothing to office furniture to solar panels to military electronics.
One of the company’s high-tech specialties: Patriot…
The Architecture of Control
Architecture and design made specifically to control and easily subdue populations is nothing new; architects and urban planners have long recognised the inherent ability of design to affect mood, temperament, and even the physical and social properties of people. Prison design is one such exercise that directly engages the dialogue between space and social control. Via Web Urbanist :
Should architecture be used as a punishment in itself, made as harsh and cruel as possible in a bid to make inmates sorry for what they’ve done, or should it uplift and rehabilitate them, showing them that there’s more to the world than a life of crime?
While some architects boycott prison design altogether so as not to participate in what is often seen as a corrupt and immoral system, others produce (often controversial) designs that revolutionize prisoners’ relationships with their environment, each other and the world at large – for better or…
Which Is Better: Execution By Needle Or Electric Chair?
That’s the choice given to prisoners in Virginia. Guillaume Decamme reports for AFP:
JARRATT, Virginia — Behind a blue curtain, the electric chair patiently waits its turn to take a life, but on this night in a chamber of a Virginia prison, murder convict Jerry Jackson dies by the needle.
“Fifteen days prior to execution, the inmate is asked which execution method he chooses,” explains David Bass at the Greensville Correctional Center.
“He may choose between the electric chair and the lethal injection.” For the most part, Bass says, “they prefer the injection.”
The man in the dark suit, speaking in a soft southern twang, is all too aware that most of America’s death row inmates pick the poison over the pulse of electrocution.
Of the various execution methods currently in use in the United States — electricity, firing squad, hanging, lethal injection and lethal gas — injection has become the standard.
As an employee of the…
‘Kids For Cash’ Judge Gets 28-Year Prison Sentence
Pennsylvania Judge Mark Ciavarella jailed teenagers for minor offenses (e.g. satirizing a teacher on Myspace) in return for over $1 million in kickbacks from the area’s for-profit youth prison. Mother Sandy Fonzo alleges that Judge Ciavarella is only “the tip of the iceberg” in a practice that is occurring across the country. Fonzo’s star-wrestler son, whom Ciavarella sentenced, committed suicide after spending six months imprisoned among violent offenders as punishment for being caught with a marijuana pipe. In her words, “Judge Ciavarella is proof that for-profit incarceration cannot happen.”
The Kids For Cash scandal involved more than 30 state and local government officials and contractors, says ABC News.
Iranian Activists Accuse Government of Handing Out Condoms So Political Prisoners Can Be Raped
Photo: Ehsan Iran (CC)
“If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will be certainly raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out to them by the guards at first place” … Saeed Kamali Dehghan reports in the Guardian:
Prison guards in Iran are giving condoms to criminals and encouraging them to systematically rape young opposition activists locked up with them, according to accounts from inside the country’s jail system.
A series of dramatic letters written by prisoners and families of imprisoned activists allege that authorities are intentionally facilitating mass rape and using it as a form of punishment.
Mehdi Mahmoudian, an outspoken member of Iran’s Participation Front, a reformist political party, is among those prisoners who have succeeded in smuggling out letters revealing the extent of rape inside some of the most notorious prisons.
Mahmoudian was arrested in…
The Art Of Guantanamo Bay Prisoners
Curious as to what sort of art one makes when experiencing sensory deprivation halfway around the world? Since the beginning of the Obama presidency, inmates at Guantanamo Bay have been given art classes as a reward for good behavior. The BBC has a sampling of their works, many of which touch on themes of isolation or fantasies of home:
Although the prisoners can’t see the sea from the jail — which is located just a few meters away from the coast — nor the Caribbean vegetation that surrounds Guantanamo, many of their works depict islands with palm trees. Others recall their villages or meals reminiscent of home.
________________
Secret CIA Prisons And Counterterrorism Sites In Somalia
There has been news recently of CIA operated secret prisons in Somalia, as well as sites with counterterrorism training for Somali intelligence agencies. Have these secret sites been funded by US tax payers? Via AlterNet:
Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents…
Margarita Island: Venezuela’s Party Prison
Suppose prison was fun? Venezuela’s San Antonio prison houses 2,000 convicts, including many foreigners from around the globe, mostly convicted on drug charges. They can do anything they want, except leave — there are pool halls, dance parties, swimming, drugs, guns, gender mixing and unlimited visitors. Crazy, yes, but is it any worse than what we have here? The New York Times reports:
Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples.
Prisoners barbecue meat while sipping whisky poolside. In some cells, equipped with air-conditioning and DirecTV satellite dishes, inmates relax with wives or girlfriends. (Venezuela, like other Latin American countries, allows conjugal visits.) The children of some inmates swim in one of the prison’s four pools.
Luis Gutiérrez, the warden at San Antonio prison, refused to discuss the prison he nominally oversees. Renowned on Margarita Island…
Chinese Prisoners Forced To Play World Of Warcraft
Ironic — when I was a kid, being locked up in a Chinese prison and “forced” to stay up playing video games all night would have been my dream. The Telegraph reports:
A 54-year-old prisoner at the Jixi labor camp in the northern province of Heilongjiang said he was forced to play games on the internet in order to build up credit that was traded by his guards for real money, a practice known as “gold-farming”.
In an interview with the Guardian, the prisoner said online gaming was a far more lucrative activity for the managers of the labor camp than the physical labor the inmates were forced to do. “Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor,” he said. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn…
Suboxone: The Hottest Drug In American Prisons
I have a feeling that very few people outside drug addiction recovery programs and prisons have ever heard of Suboxone, let alone the fact that it is sweeping through the U.S. prison system at epidemic rates. Abby Goodnough and Katie Zezima report for the New York Times:
WINDHAM, Me. — Mike Barrett, a corrections officer, ripped open an envelope in the mail room at the Maine Correctional Center here and eyed something suspicious: a Father’s Day card, sent a month early. He carefully felt the card and slit it open, looking for a substance that has made mail call here a different experience of late.
Mr. Barrett and other prison officials nationwide are searching their facilities, mail and visitors for Suboxone, a drug used as a treatment for opiate addiction that has become coveted as contraband.
Suboxone pills. Photo: Supertheman (CC)
Innovative smugglers have turned crushed Suboxone pills into a paste and spread it under…
Do Students Eat Like Prisoners?
Good Magazine looks at the similarity between prison meals and children’s school cafeteria food — both rich in starch-y/milk-y goodness, and costing around $2.65 per day to provide. It should also be pointed out that both children and prisoners are daily confined to small spaces and given little opportunity to burn off these massive calorie counts. I suppose school is intended to be practice for where the kids will eventually end up?
Immigrants For Sale
This powerful animated video exposes how our immigrant community is being sold to private prisons for obscene profits.
Top three facts to know about private prisons (via immigrantsforsale.org):
- The victims: Private prisons don’t care about who they lock up. At a rate of $200 per immigrant a night…
“Invisible Beam” Weapon To Be Used In Prisons (Video)
Amy Dusto writes on Discovery News:
Prison guards could soon stop fights with a harmless tool that shoots a laser-like beam, video game-style, down into a room where trouble is brewing. The Assault Intervention Device (AID), funded by the National Institute of Justice, is still large and unrefined but will soon be installed for trial in at least one prison, the Pitchess Detention Center in Los Angeles County.
The AID directs an energy beam, which is in the invisible millimeter wavelength, that penetrates just deep enough beneath the skin to make the target’s pain receptors shout. The sensation is a burn like touching a hot stove or an iron. It only lasts up to 3 seconds — the AID controls automatically shut the beam off to prevent shooting for longer without resetting the trigger finger. The beam can hit a target about 100 feet away, and is about as wide as a CD.
According to Raytheon, the device’s manufacturers, it causes no actual damage to nerves or skin. This video shows the sharp reflex caused by an AID hit, and the unscathed hit receivers.
Why Legalizing Drugs — All of Them — Is the Only Forward Path For Black America
Interesting article from John McWhorter in the New Republic:
This should change, as I have argued frequently over the past year (listen to part of a speech I did on this here). Of the countless reasons why this revival of this Prohibition that looks so quaint in Boardwalk Empire should be erased with all deliberate speed, one is that with no War on Drugs there would be, within one generation, no “black problem” in the United States. Poverty in general, yes. An education problem in general — probably. But the idea that black America had a particular crisis would rapidly become history, requiring explanation to young people. The end of the War on Drugs is, in fact, what all people genuinely concerned with black uplift should be focused on, which is why I am devoting my last TNR post of 2010 to the issue. The black malaise in the U.S. is currently like a…
LA Prisons To Use Burning Heat Ray On Unruly Inmates
As if beatings from wardens and guards weren’t bad enough… from Salon.com:
A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious injury and is “tantamount to torture.”
The mechanism, known as an “Assault Intervention Device,” is a stripped-down version of a military gadget…
The Modern Day Marshalsea
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
In modern times, the poorhouse isn’t the same Dickensian debtor’s prison of the 19th century — such a thing, even in its worst and most inhumane forms, would be considered a socialist abomination in Fox News’ America.
Today’s poorhouses and debtor’s prisons are individual cycles of one financial tragedy after another, where a lost job, bad decision or medical ailment follows us around for years or decades, creating new fiscal problems and perpetuating debt.
Most of the time, this follows us — from early adulthood to death — in the form of our credit score.
Stephen Fry And Friends Slam U.S. On Prison Population
British comedian/actor Stephen Fry and his pals ham it up on British TV show ‘QI’, making some very salient points about the ridiculously high levels of incarceration in the United States. You might think they are being anti-American, but listen more carefully: they are actually anti-human rights abuses.
