<story><title>The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate</title><url>https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/24/the-deadly-consequences-of-solitary-with-a-cellmate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>superuser2</author><text>This is also what happens when well-intentioned people are vastly more successful at fighting prison construction than fighting mass incarceration.&lt;p&gt;Our prisons are routinely at 1.5x, 2x, 3x capacity. Being against the prison industrial complex feels good, but in doing so you become directly, personally responsible for the fact that there are now 3 people in a cell meant for one, people living on cots in a gymnasium with no privacy whatsoever, in such close quarters that even the most patient people would be at each other&amp;#x27;s throats.&lt;p&gt;Until the prison population &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; declines, we ought to at least be building prisons fast enough to stay at design capacity.&lt;p&gt;Google your state - you&amp;#x27;ll be amazed. Prisons aren&amp;#x27;t designed to be comfortable, but they sure as hell get a lot less comfortable with too many people in them.</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>People talk about institutional evil. This is an example of it. You can almost trace their thinking &amp;quot;Oh, so solitary is bad now. We&amp;#x27;ll fix it. Put two people in a 10x4 cell. See, not solitary anymore, and we doubled the capacity too. Bonuses for everyone&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Ideally you&amp;#x27;d think those who made those decision would be disciplined, pensions would be cut, etc. But nothing like that is gonna happen. Even if the family wins the lawsuit, it will be taxpayers paying for it.&lt;p&gt;One a deeper level, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if many of those involved in running the prison would be thinking things like &amp;quot;well good, less people less worries. So what if he kills another one&amp;quot;.  Even more perverse, in some countries, prisoners who are known to kill and attack their cellmates are used as a coercion tool. That is effective against political prisoners and other undesirables who need to &amp;quot;confess&amp;quot; or be punished -- &amp;quot;behave or you&amp;#x27;ll end up in Sesson&amp;#x27;s cell &amp;lt;wink-wink&amp;gt;&amp;quot;. On paper it looks completely by the rules and clean.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chishaku</author><text>&amp;gt; Being against the prison industrial complex feels good, but in doing so you become directly, personally responsible for the fact that there are now 3 people in a cell meant for one...&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that people &amp;quot;against the prison industrial complex&amp;quot; are directly responsible for the rate at which new prisons are being constructed?  I&amp;#x27;m not sure but I&amp;#x27;m inclined to think that this would have more to do with strained budgets than any successful activism.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I looked into this a bit with California as an example.&lt;p&gt;In 2011, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that required California to dramatically reduce its prison population.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Justice Kennedy, citing the lower court decision, said there was &amp;#x27;no realistic possibility that California would be able to build itself out of this crisis,&amp;#x27; in light of the state’s financial problems.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;24scotus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;24scotus.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The opinion of the lower court:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Relying on expert testimony, the court ruled that the California prison system, the nation’s largest with more than 150,000 inmates, could reduce its population by shortening sentences, diverting nonviolent felons to county programs, giving inmates good behavior credits toward early release, and reforming parole, which they said would have no adverse impact on public safety.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2009&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;10prison.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2009&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;10prison.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The Deadly Consequences of Solitary with a Cellmate</title><url>https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/24/the-deadly-consequences-of-solitary-with-a-cellmate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>superuser2</author><text>This is also what happens when well-intentioned people are vastly more successful at fighting prison construction than fighting mass incarceration.&lt;p&gt;Our prisons are routinely at 1.5x, 2x, 3x capacity. Being against the prison industrial complex feels good, but in doing so you become directly, personally responsible for the fact that there are now 3 people in a cell meant for one, people living on cots in a gymnasium with no privacy whatsoever, in such close quarters that even the most patient people would be at each other&amp;#x27;s throats.&lt;p&gt;Until the prison population &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; declines, we ought to at least be building prisons fast enough to stay at design capacity.&lt;p&gt;Google your state - you&amp;#x27;ll be amazed. Prisons aren&amp;#x27;t designed to be comfortable, but they sure as hell get a lot less comfortable with too many people in them.</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>People talk about institutional evil. This is an example of it. You can almost trace their thinking &amp;quot;Oh, so solitary is bad now. We&amp;#x27;ll fix it. Put two people in a 10x4 cell. See, not solitary anymore, and we doubled the capacity too. Bonuses for everyone&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Ideally you&amp;#x27;d think those who made those decision would be disciplined, pensions would be cut, etc. But nothing like that is gonna happen. Even if the family wins the lawsuit, it will be taxpayers paying for it.&lt;p&gt;One a deeper level, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if many of those involved in running the prison would be thinking things like &amp;quot;well good, less people less worries. So what if he kills another one&amp;quot;.  Even more perverse, in some countries, prisoners who are known to kill and attack their cellmates are used as a coercion tool. That is effective against political prisoners and other undesirables who need to &amp;quot;confess&amp;quot; or be punished -- &amp;quot;behave or you&amp;#x27;ll end up in Sesson&amp;#x27;s cell &amp;lt;wink-wink&amp;gt;&amp;quot;. On paper it looks completely by the rules and clean.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gnaritas</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a simple solution to that, set people free.  We don&amp;#x27;t need to build more prisons, we already imprison more of our population than any other country in the world, we have too many prisons and too many people in them. We need to imprison less people.  Release all inmates who committed victim-less crimes, if more room is needed, release all inmates who committed non violent crimes-there are better ways to deal with them than prison.  Prison should be for violent criminals only.  Release all drug users, release all drug pushers, none of those people belong in jail.</text></comment>