On Jun 16, 2005, at 2:12 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
At 01:25 PM Thursday 6/16/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
[snip]
But all of this is apart from prison rape, which doesn't seem to be
about social bonding; it seems more like a way of enforcing
superiority on others, doesn't it? So the procreative aspects of
sexuality are completely abrogated here; it's the social enforcement
aspects of penetrative intercourse that are coming into play.
Yes. Right now, we have a prison system where the inmates are in
charge and do pretty much whatever they want to other inmates. How do
we get things back(?) to where the ones who should be in charge are in
charge, and the weaker inmates or those who happen to be the wrong
color or who don't belong to the right gang are protected from the
other inmates?
For some reason it seems castration isn't considered a viable response.
That leaves us with more intense enforcement and control on the parts
of guards; and possibly with some kind of counseling or therapy
sessions attended by the prisoners themselves, I suppose.
Reducing crowding would probably help too; crowding can cause stress,
and that gets vented in lots of unhealthy ways. And of course doing
away with Draconian federal guidelines regarding mandatory minimum
sentencing -- particularly on drug charges -- might also be of merit.
How to deal with ex-cons socially is probably another factor. What do
we do for them on release to help ensure they don't offend again? Those
caught in the stupid overzealous web of drug hysteria can't even get
federal student assistance for higher education, which helps ensure
they end up with fewer future options. That doesn't make much sense to
me, nor does the way ex-cons are required to expose their histories
when applying for jobs. At what point do we decide it's OK for them to
aim higher than dead-end minimum wage soul-sucking employment?
Frankly the mess is probably intricate and sourced in several problems.
Without really having a background in the way prisons are run and
operated, I don't think I can comment in depth about how to fix
anything. All I've got are vague notions, and that's not really enough
to base serious suggestions upon. I have a sense that increased
awareness might help; I have a sense that reducing the number of
incarcerated might help as well. But that's about it.
Some time ago I somehow got the idea that it might be useful to set up
prison farms. Each con gets maybe two acres, and he gets his own
one-bedroom house as well. He farms the soil organically and is
responsible for seeing to it that his plot of land thrives. The idea
was, I suppose, that the prisoner would be doing something productive,
would be in an environment probably completely other than the one in
which he'd learned to be a criminal, and would have ample opportunity
for reflection and soul-searching without having to deal with the
constant pressure of living in a dense population of hardened
criminals.
It's probably a seriously fuzzy-headed idea, but there's something
about it that I find appealing as well. Can't say for sure if it would
work or not, but we know there are lots of things we're doing right now
that do *not* work.
What the heck; we aren't really using Kansas or Iowa for much right now
anyway... ;)
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
http://books.nightwares.com/
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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