Prisoner rights and whether they are excessive

prisoners rights (do they have too many...yes I think they do

Prisoner Rights (and Wrongs) in the American System

In the last ten years, as the after-effects of three decades of serious sentencing are sinking in, there have been two opposing movements building. The one, populated by the liberal writers of fancy papers and the bleeding-heart "civil rights" activists, argues that prisoners are mistreated and need to have more rights and more freedoms. The counter movement, more popular among the law-abiding common folk, is that prisons are not meant to be recreational facilities or experiments in "rehabilitation;" they are meant to be places of punishment. This latter view, though significantly under-represented in academic writings, has the common sense to recognize that if recidivism is the majority response to the current prison system, we are obviously making criminals too comfortable. Prison should be so terrifying and miserable that no one is willing to risk going about - it is meant to put the fear of God into people, so to speak.

The more horrific we can make prisons, the lower the crime rate will be. The common mistake made by liberals who believe in rights for prisoners is that criminals are deserving of civil rights in the same way that free people are. Right-thinking people will realize, however, that criminals are not precisely persons in the same sense that other citizens are persons. They do not deserve the same rights - the moment that they chose to defy the laws of society they surrendered any right to ask that society recognize their personhood and defend it. When they chose to commit murder, or rape, or to do drugs, to be vagrant or to fail to show up for a court date -- or do whatever it was that got them thrown in jail in the first place - they gave society the right to suspend their personal freedoms for as long as it pleased and found fitting to the crime. If one understands prisons and jails in terms of serious punishment, rather than merely in terms of being some location where criminals can be isolated in a grown-up version of "time out," the it is clear that honoring prisoners so-called "right" is a fool's proposition. Prisoners should have fewer rights than the least-enfranchised member of society, so that even those who are severely down on their luck will still have motivation to avoid crime; at the moment, they often have more rights in prison than without.

Though prisoners certainly have things worse than the average upper-middle class individual in terms of physical comfort and recreational options, they may have certain advantages over the very poor of society. As one journal article -which was actually arguing for increased prisoner rights - honestly pointed out: "the standard of care for women on the streets is so low and the rates of violent victimization so high that 'women often are physically and mentally healthier and safer inside prison than they are in the community.'"

Acoca) it is not just the case that prisoners have better healthcare and food and shelter than do free indigents, though that is the central contesion of the remainder of this work, but they also may find that they are guaranteed income and material comforts when others are not. For example, a typical inmate with a good behavioral record in one state was given a computer drafting job in the prison, for which he was paid several dollars a day. Of course, this took a drafting job away from someone outside the prison, which is a great pity since in the free market these sorts of highly-skilled technical jobs generally pay upwards of $15/hour, and might have kept someone out of poverty. That is not, however, the point. The point is that over the course of several months the inmate was allowed to save up his income and purchase a TV which he could watch (relatively) non-stop in his cell. Many people would be thrilled to have nothing to do with their lives other than watch television, and this was not just any grainy tv: "Convicted felon Nicholas Krahmer kicks back on a bunk and enjoys one of the latest perks of prison life: A spanking new flat-screen TV that's still the envy of many viewers on the outside... The tiny 7-inch set resembles flat-screen models installed in cars or on airplane seats." (Courtroom Television)

Even in prisons which do not allow televisions in the cells, the majority of prisons have some recreational facilities, such as exercise equipment or television and game rooms. One prison recently got in trouble, actually, because 35 of their 80 Play-Station 2 games in their rec room portrayed realistic criminal activity. These were removed, leaving 50 science fiction and sports games. Apparently, when prisoners buy snacks and treats at the prison canteen, that cash is used to buy them things they want for their free time. A committee which includes inmates decides how to spend it, and most is used for weightlifting and exercise equipment. However, they also included televisions and advanced playstation systems. (AP News) Most teenagers and young adults would love to have Playstations, and can't afford them - why do prisoners have the right to play games most people can't afford?

Even when prisoners complain about their living accommodations, the problems they list seem rather luxurious compared to eating out of garbage dumpsters, as when prison advocate Lynn Klement, complains: "Private prisons save money by cutting corners. Evidence shows that what inmates got for lunch every day was two slabs of bread with peanut butter or bologna." (Smalley)

There are three important rights listed by the ACLU and other organizations as being endangered in the prison system today:

the right to medical care, the right to be free from prisoner and guard violence and sexual abuse, and the right to legal representation. However, a closer examination of the state of prisons and of the world at large clearly reveals that medical care, safety from assault and abuse, and access to legal representation are all rights which are not functionally had by most poor people outside of prison, and therefore do not need to be had by people in prison. After all, no one wants prison to be preferable to life on the streets, for such an approach would only fuel vagrancy and crime.

According to the courts, deliberate refusal of medical treatment to prisoners is legally unacceptable. (HRW, 3) as the ACLU puts the matter, "Prison officials are obligated under the Eighth Amendment to provide prisoners with adequate medical care." (ACLU, 2) So, in essence, prisoners have medical insurance, and are covered for health problems both catastrophic and minor. Female prisoners can even wait in the "sick call" line to get aspirin for premenstrual cramps! Yet homeless individuals, and those whose work does not provide medical insurance, do not have the same luxury of care. Medical care is not a right in America. At least 41 million people in America do not have health insurance, and many more are under-insured or would lose their insurance if a serious illness made it so they could not work. These numbers include one third of all people living in poverty. Additionally, "people experiencing homelessness are far more likely to suffer from...Conditions which require regular, uninterrupted treatment, such as tuberculosis, HIV / AIDS, diabetes, hypertension, addictive disorders, and mental disorders, are extremely difficult to treat or control among those without adequate housing." (NCH) Aroca, in her article on women in prison, says that female prisoners are more likely to have, and not to be properly treated for, HIV / AIDS, mental and addiction disorder, and tuberculosis... this sounds a lot like the case of homeless people. However, legally prisons are required to treat their prisoners -- no one, not even emergency rooms, is required to treat homeless or uninsured people with nonemergency complaints. (for example, a diabetic cannot necessarily get free insulin, though if they went into insulin shock the emergency room would have to treat them and try to collect its exorbitant fees later) Why should criminals, including murderers and pot-smokers and prostitutes, be treated better than working Americans who cannot afford health care?

There is a new move today towards requiring female prisoners to pay for their own health care - this seems only fair, for everyone else is required to support their own illnesses or die in the gutter.

According to the ACLU, prisoners also have the right to be protected from assault. "Prison officials have a legal duty to protect prisoners from assault by other inmates and to refrain from using excessive force themselves." (ACLU, 2) of course, any humanitarian would say that everyone has the right not to be raped, and no one is arguing that rape should be added to the list of sanctioned punishments, as the judge appears to be defending against in the 1994 decision in which the court said specifically, "that being sexually abused in prison is 'not part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses.'" (HRW) However, it is unreasonable to expect the prison officials to go out of their way to prevent rape, as the Human Rights Watch report seems to suggest. Only about one quarter of prison inmates are raped during their sentence, and the majority of these have some trait which provokes the victimization, such as being intellectual, white, young, effeminate, or a child-molestor. (HRW, 2) One cannot expect the guards to prevent all hatred and abuse in a system where violent criminals are all locked in together, and it seems inevitable that a certain brutal Darwinism will emerge. One rape victim, who tried to commit suicide after having been repeatedly brutalized over a six-month period, wrote about the system guards, "The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it's indifference." (Hrw, 1) This is precisely true, however the difference between the HRW or ACLU standpoint and that of a rational person is that no rational person would suggest having compassion for criminals. Prisoners do not deserve compassion, even though ideally the prison system would refrain from outright brutality and hatred, indifference seems to be a perfectly valid approach. After all, many of these criminals are there because they raped women or children - the government did not have an obligation to take preventative measures to stop those rapes, nor does it have an obligation to prevent prison rapes (though it should probably prosecute them and apply the death penalty for repeat offenders).