Two recommended radio stories to keep your blood boiling through the weekend*:
First: this story by NPR’s John Burnett about a town in Mississippi that is home to Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, the nation’s largest juvenile prison. The prison is a source of profit for the for-profit company that runs the facility (with a ratio of guards to inmates inmates to guards 5 times what would be typical in similar institutions), and for the town itself, which would probably dry up and blow away without the revenue and jobs the prison provides.
Running prisons for private profit has to be one of the most immoral things our country does in our already wildly immoral justice system. It’s sick on it’s face, and indefensible.
If you have a little more time for outrage this weekend, check out this week’s episode of This American Life, in which Ira Glass reports on the drug court in Glynn County Georgia, a program designed to provide a treatment-based alternative to hard time for drug addicts who commit crimes, but instead is run by Superior Court Judge Amanda Williams in a mind-bogglingly punitive way. The story follows Lindsey Dills, a kid who forges two checks on her parents’ checking account at 17, one for $40 and one for $60, and ends up in drug court for five and a half years, including 14 months in prison and some of that time in solitary confinement.
Another girl is sent away for possessing 2 prescription pills, which belonged to her mother. Kafka would be proud.
While Judge Williams has no problem sentencing non-violent drug court rule violators to “indefinite sentences” (seriously!), apparently people who beat puppies to death with sledgehammers deserve more mercy in her eyes.
A 50-year-old Glynn County woman who pleaded guilty to charges she beat two 7-week-old puppies to death with a sledgehammer has been fined $2,000 and sentenced to five years on probation.
Glynn County Chief Superior Court Judge Amanda Williams sentenced Catherine Louise Tyre of Sterling as a first offender under a plea agreement.
Here’s an 80-year-old man somberly alleging that Williams and her son ruined his life:
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” – Dostoevsky
* I don’t know why I always come across these horrible stories on the weekends. Sorry. I’m really a pretty cheerful guy. To make up for it, here’s a video of twin bunny rabbits in cups.
Re: Your Dostoevsky quote:
I remembered reading somewhere about prisons in Scandinavia (apologies if it was here, I am old and forgetful…), and this blog article pretty much covers it:
(no idea who the blog owner is…)
http://tommytoy.typepad.com/tommy-toy-pb…
Boy, am I glad I read Discipline and Punish.
You can add the PA judges who sent teens to jail in order profit from a two privately run youth detention centers. They made millions before they were caught.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13j…
@1 Canuck
“But — but –” ::maintainers of the American penal system sputter:: “That’s not punitive. We just HAVE to punish people. Who cares about recidivism rates. We’re doing it because we like to. And it’s profitable.”
Alas … logic melts in the face of heartlessness and greed.
Helenka, the blog author goes on to say:
“It’ll take a long time (and many liberal presidents) before the United States starts treating prisoners like the Danes do: as a social, not an individual, problem. Until then, wouldn’t it make sense for the U.S. — the incarceration capital of the world — to import some of their design ideas? OK, maybe not flatscreens in every room, but natural light and lots of outdoor space? Those aren’t luxuries; they’re just humane.”
He does mention at the bottom that his initial idea about prisons was that they were supposed to be nasty, so you wouldn’t want to go back, but I guess we don’t prove that theory in North America (given all of our repeat “customers”.) I’ve only spent a short amount of time in Norway, but wow, if you wanted to have a snapshot of the healthiest, coolest people, it’d be hard to find a better one. There’s a term in Norwegian for sticking up above the crowd, meaning, trying to be a superstar, and it’s really looked down on. Everybody wants everyone else to do well, they don’t gripe about their taxes, they’re genuinely proud that their waitresses make a living wage…they just seem to do everything so well, and are so socially enlightened, that even though it may seem counterintuitive (punish! punish!), if that prison model works for them, I’m inclined to think it could work for us. But, many years from now, when greedy pigs like Seattleblues are but a dim memory.
Is it miserable there, too? I am fecking sick of winter.
Again, Republican = Terrorist.
I cannot speak to the drug court in Georgia, but I’ve had some contact with it here in King County.
Here, participation drug court is a voluntary alternative to facing the actual criminal charges. It’s indefinite in the sense that you have to complete certain conditions, including passing X number of drug tests in a row, before you “graduate” the program.
AFAIK, little-to-no imprisonment is involved. I can’t imagine how a treatment-based alternative would involve 14 months incarceration. That’s disgusting.
I heard the This American Life piece and am blown away at how someone like Judge Williams can get away with such blatant abuse of power.
The South is a desert of reason.
Stories like this are proof in my eyes that our economic might is about the only thing separating us from third world countries.
@11 I’m thinkin’ it’s all those nukeular weapons…
I heard that report this morning and was sickened. But you know the “justice” system in the South has always been little more than an extension of slavery by other means. Note that the usual sentence there includes time on the work farms, where you pick strawberries all day every day. It has nothing to do with crime and punishment and everything to do with providing low-cost labor that can’t argue or leave.
@8 – I’m not Goldy, but thanks for the guards:inmates correction. Fixed.
@7 – Yeah, the report includes interviews with people involved in the national drug court program, and they make it clear that this judge’s sentences are WAY out of step with the way the program is supposed to run. Lawyers told about the sentences and punishment being meted out literally say things like, “Are you kidding?”
Those “indefinite sentences” were for actual time in jail for violating the programs rules, not time in the program itself, which is by indefinite by design, as you point out.
This is the faschistic, puritan streak that runs strong and deep in the American psyche. The witch burning, lynching America.
It’s a pressure cooker with no safety valve.
Think about the lives that this woman has destroyed. Can you imagine what solitary confinement for an extended time can do to a young mind? This story made me sob.
@5 (Canuck)
Oh, now you’re going to make me cry, with all the other engaging details of Norwegian life (definitely the disinclination to be a show-off – because isn’t that one of the prime motivators in N.A. – and a comfortable spirit of altruism).
Of course, then you sweeten the description by mentioning earning a living wage, no matter how menial the position, and I’m almost wailing. As a regular reader of SLOG, I’m sure you’re aware of how much loathing there is of the unions south of the border. Yet it makes me feel wistful to think that, if it weren’t for the unions in Europe, women there would not have the status and earnings that they do … something that I fear they will never achieve in the U.S.
Getting back to the warehousing of inmates, it’s a pity the U.S won’t even accept studies in animal behaviour showing that locking animals up in overcrowded cages leads to rage and violence and that it’s not far-fetched to expect human beings to not react in a similar fashion.
And my own point is that too many prisoners in the U.S have treatable mental problems but will never be given the chance to improve.
Oh, great. Now I’ve depressed myself. Must put lovely Norwegian thoughts into my mind. As an alternative, smoked salmon might do, too. In any case, always lovely to chat with you halfway across the country.
Helenka, a quickie story, as this thread is winding down: When we visited our friends at their summerhouse, the kids spent most of each day naked, swimming in the ocean. Their youngest, who was about 6, wanted to walk to the candy shop nearby. His mum said he couldn’t go “without something on,” so he marched off, and returned a few minutes later, still naked, but now wearing rubber boots. 🙂
14 months in jail and 5 1/2 years probation seems a bit long for a 17 year old minor, but would it be much more or different for an 18 year old adult? Would she do much maturing in those months to justify a shorter sentence?
For forging two of her Dad’s checks for a combined $100 and smoking pot?! Really? This girl was put in solitary confinment for three months at a time, no communication with her parents or legal representation…no idea when she’d get out, and that’s just a portuon of the torture that that woman heaped upon her. The other people on the show were treated equally unjustly.
This Amanda Williams thing is a monster and honestly, people ahould be rallying to end her access to power. She is destroying many people’s lives.
Gina Score was literally run to death in a similar camp run by then-governor of South Dakota Bill Janklow.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2000/11/…
Please help us! We have been suffering since this woman took office in 1990! Now that her power-mad corruption has finally reached national attention we have a chance to finally get rid of her. Don’t believe there’s real corruption in Brunswick? Our local paper has still yet to print one word about this. Listen to the podcast. Google her name. This doesn’t even address her conduct in civil and criminal court! No matter where you are, write and express your outrage!! http://impeachjudgewilliams.com/what-you…
EDIT
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/201…
Not the only town/state that has corrupt judges and lawyers….. MS should be added to the list for judges that send young and first time offenders to prison…maximum minimum sentence’s as well…. so that Walnut Grove Youth Correctional, the Wardens, employees, as well as the town of Walnut Grove itself receives and reaps all the rewards…the kids get nothing in return except for inhumane conditions, solitary confinement and beatings….The judge’s in Neshoba County should also be investigated as they make deals with the lawyers and prosecutors to ensure that everyone is sent to prison…..
Brunswick News finally printed something on this yesterday,but as usual, small town corruption had to put its spin on things. She received death threats, likely from her own camp to discredit those trying to oust her. The article comes out six days after the national radio broadcast, six days not a word, then this, corruption in Brunswick? You decide. The “news” article: http://www.impeachjudgewilliams.com/bwkn…