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London Zoo: Who else is fascinated by the US prison system?

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    • CommentAuthortcatsninfan
    • CommentTimeJun 14th 2009 edited
     (6129.1)
    OK, so I'm curious about this: who else here has some sort of odd fascination/fixation on the US prison system? The culture, the personalities, the gangs, the violence, and so on and so forth.

    I'm a pretty straight-laced kind of guy, never been arrested and never been to jail or prison, but I'm fascinated by the system and how incredibly fucked up it is.

    Also, how much do you guys know about the prison system? Is this something you just know from watching stuff like Law & Order or have you really dived into it, like reading essays and books on it and such?

    I'm working on a project and I'm curious to see how much other people know about it and are interested in it.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSamRiedel
    • CommentTimeJun 14th 2009
     (6129.2)
    I'm pretty much fascinated by all kinds of crime. My bookshelf has a special place for crime fiction, of course, but I also gobble up stuff like "Public Enemies" and Peter Tomasi's book on Salvatore Gravano, taken from hours of interviews with the infamous Mafia turncoat.

    The prison system itself is a different type of interest for me; I'm taken in by criminal culture in general, but once we get into the topic of American prisons, I become uncomfortable due to, as you say, the fucked up nature of the system. It's not something I can look at quiet as clinically, and so I am disturbed by it. (All the more reason I should learn about it, actually.)
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      CommentAuthormister hex
    • CommentTimeJun 14th 2009
     (6129.3)
    VERY INTERESTED. Very much so. I'm also working on a novella set in prison. I can point you towards some good books and such - FISH by T.J. Parsell. A memoir of a boy in a man's prison. YOU GOT NOTHING COMING by ... forgot the author. Because he wore a suit to court, everybody thought he was a well-connected wise-guy. (He wasn't.) He got put in a cell with a white supremacist whom he later taught to read.

    One thing to learn about prison is Never Be Sucked Into The Machine. Once your sleeve gets caught In The Machine, you're fucked. Lawyer slept during your trial? You can appeal. Good luck with that. Happens more often than you think.

    On the other hand, everyone in prison is innocent. Just ask them.

    What's your project, tcats?
    •  
      CommentAuthormister86
    • CommentTimeJun 14th 2009
     (6129.4)
    I do to. When I was studying history, I spent a lot of it on criminality and such. To name off the books would be, well, I don't think I even remember all of them. Some great ones have been Public Enemies, Satan's Circus, and Last Train to Alcatraz. It's a fascinating area of study for me. I honestly don't know why.
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      CommentAuthormister hex
    • CommentTimeJun 14th 2009
     (6129.5)
    What's amazing are the little things ... like the 'no whistling' rule.

    Whistling is bad luck. It's annoying. What're YOU so happy about, songbird? You're in prison with the rest of us. I've read anecdotes (hell, I've heard people TELL me) they couldn't wait for the door to open so they could stab the motherfucker that whistled all night.

    Eddie Bunker, THE ANIMAL FACTORY. Made into a decent film with Williem DaFoe and Edward Furlong.
  6.  (6129.6)
    @Everyone

    Keep the recommended reading coming, I very much appreciate it. I've read some but there's still a lot more I want to read, and it's nice getting recommendations from like-minded people.

    @mister hex

    I've always thought it would be cool to write comics, ever since I was a little kid when I picked up a Swamp Thing comic for the first time. But it wasn't until this prison fascination came along that I started developing this compulsion to write a comic that takes place in prison. I mean I think about it ALL the time, at least a few minutes every single day. So at this point I'm just feeling things out. For instance, I'm trying to determine how much I should assume readers should know about prison and how much I should explain through the comic. And, obviously, it helps to know there are others out there that are just as fascinated as I am.

    I need an artist. I know, I know, Panel and Pixel and all that, but I find myself overwhelmed with it at this point so I keep turning back to the scripts instead. I know eventually I'll have to put my foot down and seriously start looking for someone, but until then I'm just plotting out issues and cultivating dialogue. A part of me is scared, actually, and I don't know if it helps that I recognize that. I've never written a comic before and I'm worried I'll fuck up this prison idea. I've thought about writing other things first, to get experience and all, but honestly this prison thing has my whole attention and I can't bring myself to develop anything else just yet.

    What amazes me is how broken the system is. These people go to prison and, more often than not, they come out much worse than they went in. Most people in prison are forced to join one gang or another...it's quite difficult to survive on your own. But these guys, a lot of them had nothing to do with gangs before prison. So then they get out years later and they end up hooking back up with the gang they were a part of in prison.

    These people stay locked up most of the day, some of them for 23 hours, in a very small concrete, sterile room. The prisons won't let them do all kinds of constructive things, but they'll let them work out all the fucking time. Sure, it's a stress reliever and all, but these guys go in and gain 50 pounds of muscle and then they think they're big shots, going around and smashing people's faces in.

    It's just...I don't know. So incredibly fucked up.
  7.  (6129.7)
    all I know about the prison system I know because of OZ, season 1 of Prison Break, and Azzarello's HARD TIME Hellblazer story.
  8.  (6129.8)
    In one prison, I can't remember which, they decided to paint the walls pink or yellow, some soothing colour, because of the side-effects on the temperament. The inmates started to eat the paint.

    (I loathe the prison system, for it is not about rehabilitation but making money, and the dollar is what governs just about every aspect of it--that and politics. Yes, it is so very broken.)
    •  
      CommentAuthorcelan
    • CommentTimeJun 14th 2009
     (6129.9)
    Interested. Recent articles (in the last year) in the New Yorker have touched on the issues of solitary confinement and also upon brain imaging of psychopaths at some state prisons. Check those out.
    Also, my girlfriend's dad works at San Quentin.
  10.  (6129.10)
    @celan

    Holy shit, San Quentin? I don't suppose he'd be willing to take part in a short interview, would he? It's OK if not but that would definitely give me a different perspective on things.
  11.  (6129.11)
    shining-lion said:
    (I loathe the prison system, for it is not about rehabilitation but making money, and the dollar is what governs just about every aspect of it--that and politics. Yes, it is so very broken.)

    I don't know who is making this money... Prisons are broke, just like everything else. My mom is the warden at a men's minimum security prison in Carson City, NV (she's featured quite a bit on Food Network's Chef Jeff biography special, which is weird to watch...). The state is cutting all of their pay and denying retirement benefits in the next few years, so she's trying to retire before they screw her out of the money she's been earning for 20+ years with the state (although, it's not just prisons... my stepdad does NV state budget stuff, and the same cutbacks are affecting him...).

    Anyway, my mom is not a hard-boiled woman; she does not arrange to have inmates beaten while she watches, and does not put people in solitary confinement for sadistic purposes (or at least, I would be VERY surprised if she did...). She HAS had to watch quite a few executions, though.

    A funny thing that is happening now is that inmates can purchase flatscreen HDTV's and Playstations (my mom isn't into videogames and therefore could not for her life accurately tell me whether they were 2's or 3's... she thought 3's, but 2's seem more likely, given their inexpensiveness and availability... but I'm not sure.) and DVD players for their cells, bearing in mind that she runs a min. security prison... Apparently, inmates get the money from their families sent in to them and can use it at the prison store... She says that the money just goes to the store, though, so I don't know who is getting paid from the profits... She made it sound as though it weren't going to fix up the prison, though.

    It basically just sounds like a lot of pain-in-the-ass bureaucracy, though. She was almost fired for some ex-guard saying that she harrassed him, but it was all bullshit, and it's like every other job where everyone is just trying to cover their own asses and do as little work as possible. The best people get punished while the morons get rewarded (I'm not just saying that because my mom works in prisons... I've see some of the dumbass things that her staff does and it is mind boggling...)

    Also, before my mom was warden, her boss (another woman...) was fired for having a sexual relationship with an inmate, and when he was released, they opened up a (now closed) restaurant in Carson City... Just silly...

    I just always have a hard time watching movies/shows with hard nosed, dirty wardens going around in the middle of the night and having people shivved... It seems like most prison staff are just drone state workers that failed their way into one field or another... In smaller cities/towns, sometimes state work is all you can get to make enough money to live on (with benefits...), and SOMEONE has to work at the prisons... So the evil lady warden in the recent Death Race movie is just so ludicrous.

    That having been said, there are a lot of nuts-jobs that work in prisons; guards or whatever that have anger issues and like to get violent. Those guys generally get fired.
  12.  (6129.12)
    Oh, I do agree that prisons are very much about political issues more than actually trying to help people, though. Honestly, though, sometimes you just need a place to put away some criminals...
  13.  (6129.13)
    If anyone's got them, I would be interested to hear more theories about the money trail.

    I assume what shining_lion is referring to is the fact that prisons get more money for having more prisoners. It costs thousands and thousands of dollars to house each and every inmate, and that's because of everything that goes into it: transportation of the prisoner, the guards they have to employ to watch them, the medical care inmates (are supposed to) receive, upgrades to the facility (not just stronger bars, surprisingly), the workers who run the prison store, and so on and so forth.

    So, in a roundabout sort of way I think prisons actually WANT to have more prisoners than they can handle. They run over capacity and then they go to the government and say, "Look, we've got more inmates so we need more money for X, Y, and Z." I'm sure it's more complicated than that but that's the gist of it.

    On the opposite side of the coin, if one rogue prison were to do things differently and actually educate their prisoners for real and keep them from coming back, it's my assumption that their funding might actually be cut. "Oh, you have 7% less prisoners this year than last year? That means you can run on 7% less budget, right?"
  14.  (6129.14)
    It is fascinating, and more than a little infuriorating. Isn't the current statistic that over half of America's either in jail or has been in jail? Either we're just babboons without so much hair, or there's something wrong with our system of law; and I haven't felt the need to throw shit at anyone lately.

    I also live in Arizona, which, in case you don't know, is the home of Tent City, which is at least technically ingenius for it's budget-cutting and fear-producing it can raise here.
    •  
      CommentAuthorcelan
    • CommentTimeJun 15th 2009
     (6129.15)
    @tcatsninfan
    Sorry, it's doubtful. If I knew you or him (father of my newish girlfriend) better I might try to set it up.
    He's an electrician at SQ but has been a Sheriff and was 82nd Airborne before that. So he's kind of a tough guy and a bit laconic.
    He did mention jokingly the other day about how he thought there might be a "riot" since they were having problems with the TV's and the NBA finals were on.
    •  
      CommentAuthorcelan
    • CommentTimeJun 15th 2009
     (6129.16)
    @tcatsninfan
    Also, I knew a guy from Susanville, the town that is featured in the PBS documentary "Prison Town, USA"...that's a mainstream sort of picture of the Prison-Economy angle.
  17.  (6129.17)
    takes a deep breath, apologising for the length that may occur

    The Prison System and the Money Trail

    As more criminals (many of them minorities, many of them non-violent offenders, see the Three Strike rule, etc.) are incarcerated, more prisons need to be built. As the current economic climate has shown, construction industries are being hit hard by the housing issues. Building prisons, in any climate means businesses are making money. Lots of bricks, mortar, steel, carpenters, electricians, etc. YAY! Not only can you lock people up, effectively engaging in slave labour, but the public won't care 'cause you're locking up the "thugs" AND keeping legitimate jobs flowing. If you think the prison industry doesn't have lobbying groups to help ensure they are spared during budget cuts, while colleges lose out, well...

    In the 1990's, many states committed to expensive prison construction plans, which must be completed.


    Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/weekinreview/no-hard-time-for-prison-budgets.html

    And about the boom in new prisons:

    Other states are trying to repeal or revise tough sentencing laws like mandatory minimums, so-called truth-in-sentencing laws, three-strikes provisions and cutbacks in parole. The laws, which states began to adopt in the 1970's, resulted in a nearly sixfold increase in prison populations over the last three decades.


    I have a lot to say, cite and whatnot, so I'm going to spread this out over more than one post, so I hope that helps some.
  18.  (6129.18)
    @sgrsickness azarello's hard time is one of my favorite hellblazer story arcs, also the samurai story arc he did in 100 bullets was great. i always felt like he should have done a ongoing series set in a prison, he does so well with crime. probably would've made a great vertigo title.
  19.  (6129.19)
    We have placed one in 100 adults 18 and over behind bars, a nationwide prisoner total of 2.3 million. Probation and parole swell the total to 7.2 million Americans under some form of criminal justice system supervision.

    Why should we be incarcerating more people than do such regimes as China or Russia? The costs are eye-popping — $50 billion a year to state and local governments, and $5 billion to the federal prison system.

    And what does it say about our priorities (and our future) when at least five states — Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Oregon and Vermont — spend as much or more on corrections as they do on higher education?


    Source: http://thinkoutsidethecage2.blogspot.com/2009/02/spiraling-prison-budgets.html

    I have a feeling those who are interested will read the article anyway, but this touches on a couple points in my earlier post:

    In Nevada, increased spending was attributed to a sharp increase in the number of inmates. As Nevada's own prison population grew, overcrowding forced the state to return inmates it had contracted to house for other states, which meant lost revenue for the prison system, according to the report.

    Idaho attributed spending increases to turnover among correctional officers and state efforts to improve staff recruitment and retention through increased salaries, overtime and benefit packages.

    Staff retention and recruitment has become an increasingly expensive problem for corrections officials nationwide as states are pressured into increasing starting salaries, offering higher-than-average raises and augmenting overtime hours and rates.


    In Minnesota (where I am), inmates have to pay room and board. In some cases, in some states, the moment an inmate walks out to freedom, they're already in debt. They learned how to be a better criminal while incarcerated, so they often return to a life of crime to pay off their debt, which often winds up with them BACK in prison, where the cycle starts again. Is it no wonder that it's often in the states best interest to have as many people incarcerated as possible? Especially when they can reduce the quality of food/care and yet charge the inmates the same?

    Onto the next post. (I am sincerely not trying to annoy anyone--Ariana and Warren, especially you two. This just happened to hit on one of the few subjects I am this passionate/interested about. I appreciate having the space and the people to engage in these sorts of discussions, so I thank you.)

    edited, because when I thank people, I prefer to use proper spelling and grammar.
  20.  (6129.20)
    Source:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=PUr07P0Vi3QC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=%22prison+budgets%22&source=bl&ots=XwJxxThj_M&sig=XxqA0C6xK9WQ1zAVTTyFwneTWYw&hl=en&ei=qvQ1SpLCDqKqNeqf6YkK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPA62,M1

    There's a lot of good info in that little sample, but the one that stuck out for me was the bit about Clinton, a "liberal" president approved $8billion for new state prison construction. And, damn, you sure need to fill those prisons in order to get your money's worth, no?

    Oh, and here's an interesting (and disheartening) illustration:



    The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate, and total documented prison population in the world. As of year-end 2007, a record 7.2 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total, 2.3 million were incarcerated. More than 1 in 100 American adults were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million, while having four times the population, thus having only about 18% per the US incarceration rate.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Rehabilitation

    also has some handy information about the chances of re-offenses, etc.

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