Jail is too hot, says Mr. Stanford

[Pottapaug1938]

Here's a link to a story about accused Ponzi-schemer Allen Stanford:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32184566/ns ... _business/

[Mr. Mephistopheles]

Stanford obviously hasn't retained the proper consultants, he should have given Madoff a ring for advice.

Prison consultants help inmates get good digs

As an aside: (from the article):

"Standard advice for all of our clients is to kind of melt into the woodwork, don't single yourself out, don't let yourself be singled out," he said. "Ironically, it's not the inmates who create difficulty for high-profile clients, it's more often the guards who want to be seen as having the capacity to order a former multimillionaire to sweep a floor." (bolding added)

Madoff had better hope none of those guards had investments in his company, else sweeping the floor might seem like a privileged duty.

[Pottapaug1938]

Madoff had better hope none of those guards had investments in his company, else sweeping the floor might seem like a privileged duty.

He'd also better hope that none of his fellow inmates lost money in his scam, or have family that did.

[Mr. Mephistopheles]

Madoff had better hope none of those guards had investments in his company, else sweeping the floor might seem like a privileged duty.

He'd also better hope that none of his fellow inmates lost money in his scam, or have family that did.

Oh yeah.

[fortinbras]

.... should be transferred to another detention facility because there has been no air conditioning in the jail cell where he is being held, his lawyer said in a court filing.

Have him sleep outdoors in a cardboard carton, like so many of his former clients now have to do.

[Demosthenes]

Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? Defendants, such as Stanford, who have not yet been convicted shouldn't be subjected to the same grueling conditions as those who have had their time before the jury.

[Demosthenes]

he is being treated as an ordinary Joe.

And I don't think ordinary Joes should be subjected to grueling conditions before they've been tried and convicted by a jury of their ordinary Joe peers.

[Judge Roy Bean]

he is being treated as an ordinary Joe.

And I don't think ordinary Joes should be subjected to grueling conditions before they've been tried and convicted by a jury of their ordinary Joe peers.

You're out of touch with law enforcement practice. The process is (at least in part) designed to make an impression on the perpetrator or even alleged perpetrators. The system relies on a presumption of guilt - i.e., most sworn officers won't actually arrest someone who didn't do anything wrong, therefore, anyone who is brought in is considered to be guilty of something, hence jail conditions don't have to be anything less than "grueling."

Put it this way, there are places in this country where you simply don't want to be arrested for anything.

[Demosthenes]

he is being treated as an ordinary Joe.

And I don't think ordinary Joes should be subjected to grueling conditions before they've been tried and convicted by a jury of their ordinary Joe peers.

You're out of touch with law enforcement practice. The process is (at least in part) designed to make an impression on the perpetrator or even alleged perpetrators. The system relies on a presumption of guilt - i.e., most sworn officers won't actually arrest someone who didn't do anything wrong, therefore, anyone who is brought in is considered to be guilty of something, hence jail conditions don't have to be anything less than "grueling."

Put it this way, there are places in this country where you simply don't want to be arrested for anything.

There's a great article in a recent New Yorker about Sherrif Joe Arpaio's abuses. It's quite sickening.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... t_finnegan

Some of the stuff that happens under his watch makes waterboarding look quite civilized.

[Doktor Avalanche]

Put it this way, there are places in this country where you simply don't want to be arrested for anything.

Doing time is never fun. It's especially bad if you find yourself in any of these establishments.

Bear in mind that these are county jails, not state prisons.

Sacramento County Jail - Sacramento, CA

Is it really a surprise that Sacramento would have a bad jail to spend time in? The best way to get along with other inmates, reportedly, is to learn enough about the law to be able to give other inmates legal advice - not an option for everybody

Jackson County Jail - Jackson, Michigan

Jackson County Jail is supposed to be pretty rough with a lot of reported gang activity. On the plus side, though, they offer time off for good behavior - apparently being a trustee helps - and you can get work release.

DeKalb County Jail - DeKalb County, Georgia

Deep in the south inmates report that DeKalb (like most jails) is pretty unpleasant. The worst part? Former inmates report that it just gets too hot.

Leon County Jail - Leon County, Florida

Leon County Jail is actually supposed to be pretty good in terms of the inmate population (as long as you don't do anything stupid), but the jail gets locked down a lot. When there is a lock down you can't call your family or go out to the yard - for this reason I consider it one of the worst jails in the US since being locked up is bad enough without being restricted to just a cell.

Cook County Jail - Cook County, Illinois

The Cook County Jail has the highest inmate population of any county jail in the US - in fact, at one time it was the only county jail which performed lethal injections. It is a rough jail.

How rough? In July 2008, the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice released a report finding that the Eighth Amendment civil rights of the inmates in Cook County have been systematically violated.

Specific violations that have resulted in Federal sanctions and/or class action lawsuits include:

1. Systematic beatings by jail guards.

2. Poor food quality.

3. Inmates forced to sleep on cell floors due to overcrowding and mismanagement (resulting in a $1,000 per inmate class action settlement).

4. Rodent infestation and injury caused to sleeping inmates by rat and mouse bites.

5. Violations of privacy during multiple invasive strip searches.

6. Failure to provide adequate medical care, including failure to dispense medications.

7. Invasive and painful mandatory tests for male STD's (resulting in a $200 per inmate class action settlement).

8. Unnecessarily long waiting time for discharge upon payment of bond, completion of sentence, or charges being dropped. Wait times are currently routinely in excess of 8 hours, nearly all of which is spent with many inmates packed into tiny cells.

And the worst of the worst, the Jail from Hell....

Shelby County Jail, Shelby County, Memphis Tennessee.

A penal facility so plagued by severe gang violence, unsanitary conditions, lax medical service, overcrowding and inadequate supervision that two federal judges have declared it unconstitutional. The jail, the largest in Tennessee, is the focus of more than a dozen ongoing local lawsuits and an active U.S. Department of Justice investigation. Four men have died while being held in the Shelby County Jail; the families of three of those men have filed a $15 million wrongful death suit against the man who runs the jail, Sheriff A.C. Gilless, and other authorities.

At Shelby, most of the prisoners are impoverished, many with drug problems; only a few of those admitted make bail. The rest are forced into a broken system that is supposed to hold only 1,200 inmates, but actually holds 3,800. Shelby has only one computer equipped with classifying software, so many suspects have to wait more than a day to make a phone call.

Most inmates are housed two, sometimes three to a cell the size of a walk-in closet, despite a court order requiring that the jail place inmates in individual cells to keep predatory inmates away from weaker ones.

And far from protecting inmates from jailhouse violence, the poorly trained, badly paid and demoralized guards -- who are themselves at great risk of physical harm -- practice it themselves, according to lawsuits. Last month, two inmates arrested for DUI filed separate suits. One alleges guards broke his jaw for not answering a question correctly. The other accuses the guards of providing poor medical care after other inmates, wanting his diamond ring, broke his ankle and his fingers. (After being caught stealing from inmates, guards are now no longer allowed to confiscate their charges' valuables.)

Perhaps most frightening of all, Shelby County Jail is so plagued by violent, out-of-control gangs that it has been likened by corrections experts to New York's infamous Riker's Island, a prison that in the mid-1990s reported 1,100 gang-related stabbings and assaults in one month. According to Judge McCalla's recent ruling finding the county in contempt, the jail holds more than 250 members of Memphis' most lethal gangs, the Gangster Disciples and the Vice Lords, who outnumber the guards and run the jail with more authority than they do.

Oh, but it gets better!

The gangs maintain systematic control over non-affiliated inmates through what's become known as "Thunderdoming." The style of combat is modeled after the pro-wrestling shows the inmates watch on television: Typically, a non-affiliated inmate is jumped from behind by a group of other inmates, hog-tied with a bed sheet and beaten with heavy rubber shower shoes and filled water bottles.

If the gangs are the jail's single worst problem, the guards may be the second. It is, by all accounts, a dreadful job -- made worse by the all-powerful gangs and the lack of support from the sheriff's department. Not only do jailers receive lower pay than sheriff's deputies with street beats, overtime is common. A shift supervisor will often assign a guard two straight eight-hour shifts without telling them far enough in advance to hire a babysitter, tell a spouse or make arrangements for another job, which many guards hold in order to earn enough money. Constant exposure to filth and poor air circulation has spelled high blood pressure and respiratory illness for many jailers.

And getting killed on the job is a constant fear. Four years ago, a guard named Deadrick Taylor placed a Gangster Disciple on lockdown, a type of short-term solitary confinement. Within hours, the angered inmate was released and immediately phoned a hit on Taylor. When his shift was over and he had returned to his suburban home, Taylor was shot dead execution-style in his driveway.

The good Judge is right. There are places you definately don't ever want to get arrested in this country.

[Demosthenes]

You guys seem to think that since it happens to lots of inmates who haven't been tried by a jury yet, it's ok?

[Doktor Avalanche]

You guys seem to think that since it happens to lots of inmates who haven't been tried by a jury yet, it's ok?

No, I don't think it's okay.

It's hard not to pass judgment on someone in a situtation like that, but I do believe in the premise of "innocent until proven guilty". The problem is that, 9 out of 10 times, the person is guilty. It's only when they're not that I'm surprised.

[Judge Roy Bean]

You guys seem to think that since it happens to lots of inmates who haven't been tried by a jury yet, it's ok?

Not what I wanted to imply at all.

It's not OK, it's just that no one wants to do anything about it until they or someone they know is abused by the system.

"Let 'em spend a couple of nights in ________," is not just a TV script line.

[Demosthenes]

It's not OK, it's just that no one wants to do anything about it until they or someone they know is abused by the system.

Hmmm.

[DoingHomework]

Being from Arizona we hear a lot about Joe Arpaio's jail. It is pathetic and an embarrassment to this state. But unfortunately the majority in that county (Maricopa County) seem to like what he is doing because they keep re-electing him. His practices seem to do nothing for deterrence or recidivism. But they do help his ego and help him stay on his power trip. He is a bully and an idiot. A few years ago he read-ended a citizen on a highway in Phoenix. In Arizona the person behind is ALWAYS at fault. Yet his buddies and even some judge let him off and cited the citizen for what he did.

[DoingHomework]

Yeah, well fortunately I live in a different county so I don't really have to worry about Joe. But I do watch my rearview when driving through Phx just in case he is behind me.

[stopbankfraud]

Any updates on him???

I understand he was friends with Al Malnik. Surprised he's not in jail.

[fortinbras]

Arpaio has been very coy about inmate deaths. He claims that no inmate has died "in a tent". But the local weekly has noted more than 19 inmate deaths of various causes, including undisclosed causes, over the years.

Arpaio tent jail is virtually defenseless against triple-degree heat in the Arizona desert. Arpaio has supplied his jail with 'swamp coolers" - essentially fans that spray a mist of water - which, I seriously think, are inadequate to the situation.

Certainly with aged inmates and those with systemic medical conditions, the intense heat can do a lot of damage even if it does not kill them. Although some mossbacks might argue that all the prisoners deserve to suffer in the intense heat, I think penologists feel that climate control is not only more humane but - offering congenial temperatures inside the cells when the outdoors are too hot or too cold - it is one way to discourage the inmates from making trouble or trying to escape.

My own opinion, which almost nobody shares, is that by making his jails notoriously ugly and even dangerous, Arpaio might frighten some villains out of his county, but others might instead figure that his jail is so bad that it's worth trying to avoid arrest by killing police and/or witnesses.