The Democratic Underground Thread Of The Day: Supermax Prisons Are Torture!

by John Hawkins | December 14, 2006 3:05 pm

It’s impossible to have a reasonable, rational, debate about torture in this country, because liberals tend to call anything and everything torture. We’re talking about people who make no distinction between let’s say wrapping someone in an Israeli flag, refusing to let them sleep, or say pulling out their fingernails with pliers. To liberals, anything short of our interrogators asking terrorists questions while giving them pleasant backrubs is the same as breaking their toes with a hammer.

If you want a perfect example of how far gone liberals are on this subject, take a look at a thread called, “Supermax Prisons Are Torture. Period.[1]” Granted, not everyone at the DU forums agreed with the idea that just having convicts like Eric Rudolph in a Supermax prison constitutes torture, but you’ll be surprised by how many did (On second thought, you won’t be surprised at all).

H2O Man: It’s a shame that citizens are so unfamiliar with the US penal system. While people should have consequences for committing crimes, and that includes incarceration as “punishment,” the brutal nature of the jails and prisons in America is not making our society “safer.”

Octafish: It’s ‘cheaper’ than the alternative: a society where everyone is cherished.

Expense of creating a just society, to the monied class, is unacceptable burden — meaning it would cost them a percentage of their loot.

Fixing society’s ills — from unemployment to education to homelessness to hunger to illness — is expensive.

That’s why they prefer spending money to keep a man incarcerated for year — still more expensive than sending him to Harvard for a year.

It’s important for the Order to demonstrate the pyramid, the hierarchical nature of society with themselves positioned as near the top as possible: it enables them to divide, conquer and control the populace better.

Next thing is they’ll realize it’s too expensive to run the prisons. Then they’ll just do away with them altogether.

Then it’s their war-war-war and a much more habitable, if lonely, world.

Jed Dilligan: I think that for the privilege of being a cop, prosecutor, or judge,

you should have to spend 30 days in a Supermax. Or maybe gen pop. I’m not sure which, but the system ought to be in the hands of people with a view from the inside.

RestoreGore: We Torture in American Prisons
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0712-08.htm

We are no better than a third world country in the tactics used either. And it is WRONG no matter WHO it is or WHERE it takes place. PERIOD.

From the article linked:

The human rights violations, as pointed out in the report, also refer
to the use of electric stun belts, grenades, and guns; tethers; waist
and leg chains; air tasers; and restraint hoods, belts, and beds.

Prisoners, according to the report’s findings, can be held in long-term
solitary confinement and extreme isolation in severely confined spaces
with little or no daily contact for days, weeks, months, or even years.
Sexual assault of female prisoners is common.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prisoners may very well deserve their sentences, and even in some cases there are those who do not which is an entire other outrage…However, we as a people have a MORAL obligation to uphold a higher principle regarding incarceration of prisoners in our prisons. What does it say to what we are as a people when we actually take PLEASURE in seeing this happening? I am appalled, outraged, and disappointed. Our prisons on the whole are no better than Abu Ghraib.

alcibiades_mystery: I completely agree. They’re also useless. The age of the SuperMax is almost over. Give it another 10 years, and they’ll be gone.

mopinko: spend that money on real research into mental health and addiction. find a reliable way to repair a psyche smashed by experiences that no one should have to survive. end this stupid *ss war on drugs. so much in mental health treatment these days is barely a step up form reading chicken entrails. make love not war.

Joanne98: They don’t want them to read….the prisons do everything they can to keep crime UP not down. Religious books but nothing to enlighten. It’s a disgrace.

SlipperySlope: All prisons are torture. Imprisoning somebody against their will is torture.