So that changes things, obviously.

Just wondering.

About those they kill or maim, they're fucking criminals anyway....

In case you didn't realize it, there are many ways to allow people to have social contact while denying them the opportunity for physical contact.

Murderers, and organized criminals....oh, they're not all that bad...maybe you should take some in, I'm sure your superior people skills could win them over....reality vs. Perception...

typical.

How does a person who is in lockup 23 1/2 hours per day in a "supermax" prison in Colorado know with explicit detail happenings in USP Marion IL? How does an inmate in USP Leavenworth KS SHU run and profit from every gambling table in every federal prison in the US? How does an inmate in USP Marion order the hit of a specific person by a specific person at USP Lewisburg PA, and the hit happen within days of the order? All of these scenarios happen, I've seen it with my own eyes. It is unfathomable to most people the complexity of human communication. The only answer is no communication with anyone, and that doesn't always work.

without the silly basement invitation.

No solution is perfect but torture should be out of the question.

Orders for hits come on 1/2 a gum wrapper passed 8 times, told to a visitor who tells another visitor who tells another inmate all in completely innocuous sounding conversation. Conversation only couple people in the chain even know what it means. No...it really isn't that simple.

to choose who they get to communicate with. Cutting off all social contact is draconian and unnecessary and, even if there is some risk with any communication, so what? I risk my life every time I get into a car. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Torture is a terrible solution.

order a hit from choosing who he communicates with? Seems pretty commonsensical to me.

The person in an environment where they have no contact with anyone but prison stafff. That is an administrative maximum security facility...aka admax, aka ADX, aka supermax.

I am speaking of my experience with the federal prison system. Certainly I have been very critical of many aspects of the prison system. I am a card carrying member of the aclu. I am not anyone's advocate for torture and have a long history of pro bono criminal defense work. I also live in the public, have family and friends who I care about, and know many people in prison (and know there are thousands more I don't know) who should never be able to rejoin society for your ssafety and mine...they cannot be trusted..

Most of the people in USP Florence ADX are there because not only can they not be trusted in society, they can't be trusted in prison for the safety of other inmates and staff either. Many of these people are the "shot callers" of gangs responsible for vast amounts of crime within the system. Victimizers of other inmates with vast numbers of people both inside the prisons and in the public (previously in prison) who will do just about anything they are told because if they don't they and their families are in actual danger. They were forced by a corrupt prison system to seek protection from victimization from a gang. When they are granted protection, from that day forward, for the rest of their life, they will do what they are told or be killed or otherwise victimized or their family will be victimized.

These people have been locked up for years. This is a simple concept we all understand. What is harder to understand for someone who hasn't been there or studied it is what actually happens from the lockup. What some people do with their mind during this time. Go into your bathroom and sit for an hour with the door closed and no outside stimulation. Consider what you do to keep your mind occupied. Now sit in your bathroom for 5 years.

Every person these people come in contact with becomes a target to get something, be it cigarettes, drugs, or muling information or messages. These contact might be bought, or they might have their family threatened. If someone who you know has been responsible for ordering other gang members on the inside and outside to kill, rape, and rob people who refuse to do what they are told, this gang member hands you a note and tells you to give it to another person you have access to, you'll probably do what you're told....unless you know that the person telling you to do it is confined with no chance of getting a hit on your children out without your help...this is adx...

Here is an interesting read about one such person..nearly everyone you read about in this is most likely in USP Florence ADX now...
http://m.pitch.com/kansascity/hard-cell/Content?oid=2173099

I appreciate the concerns you raise. In fact, I think that there should be separate facilities for all prisoners who are diagnosed psychopaths. They wreak havoc in prisons.

Nevertheless, I think you might be overlooking the fact that there are various ways to avoid the psychological problems associated with social isolation without risking the sort of dangerous communications you are talking about. Indeed, having contact only with prison staff is fine when the contact is sufficient to meet the basic psychological needs of the inmate. Even playing online games with anonymous players can be useful psychologically. (Of course, you would need to make sure surfing the web is not a possibility.) There is no perfect solution and some prisoners will not adapt well to any situation that severely restricts their communications. But we need to try our best to prevent dangerous communications while meeting the basic psychological needs of the inmates.

But I find myself hoping he gets it.

I don't care how bad a person is; I can't rest easy knowing that we - as a society - are torturing people in 'supermax' prisons.

And I don't apologize for wanting decent treatment for someone who did something so despicable. Seeking and enacting vengeance (as opposed to dispassionate meting of appropriate punishment) just makes us as bad as him and his brother.

They have TV, radio, books, and exercise. They have their own shower and toilet. They have their own bed. The bed may need a better mattress I admit. They get 3 meals a day and the best medical. Granted they don't have conversations a lot, but they have better conditions then our homeless. I am very curious about your vision of jail for hardened criminals.

I read the full article. The BoP literally discontinued new inmates' prescriptions for psychiatric meds, because, and I'm quoting from the warden cited in the article here, "We don't give out feel-good drugs."

So there's a lawsuit against the BoP because taking schizophrenics, severe bi-polar disorder sufferers, PTSD, etc. off meds (let alone so abruptly) is medically Not a Very Good Idea. Those prisoners with mental illness, who should not be there in the first place because they will not receive proper treatment there, turn around and harm themselves (the article has some pretty graphic examples, including someone who used a drill bit to drill a hole through his skull) that then require far more medical attention to treat than if they had just maintained the prisoners' damn prescriptions in the first place.

Now granted the homeless don't get medical either, and a subset of the homeless is so desperate for shelter that they commit petty crimes just to receive a prison sentence. However, rather than tearing down prison conditions to the same level that the homeless face, I'd rather we pursue a Housing First approach so the homeless don't get so desperate they commit petty crimes just for a warm jail cell and food.

It's mental torture.

Incorrectly

You just need to use your imagination and picture the worst.

And then double or triple that.

Sad to say, I have some work experience associated with incarcerated individuals.

It's horrifically easy for abuse to occur, and it's almost hard for a worker to behave in a humane fashion, lest they be suspected of being a plant.

...are a "Who's Who" of the most violent, despicable murderers and terrorists ever to impose their psychotic behavior on innocent victims.


Some of the ADX’s most infamous residents. Clockwise: Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber. Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bomber. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber. Michael Swango, the doctor who may have poisoned up to 60 patients. Larry Hoover, the Gangster Disciples kingpin. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Zacarias Moussaoui, the 9/11 conspirator. Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

I am still against the death penalty. I am not entirely sure what your point is.

I just want people to know exactly what they are advocating for when they say they want him in a supermax:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026475512

43 people advocating for torture on here.

And then there are others who fantasize about torturing other human beings...

But even in this thread, there are people who are advocating for it. I think most of them are aware of exactly what it is. Humanity depresses the hell out of me at times.

Waiting for the prison rape comments.

I need to stay out of GD til they get it out of their system.

For murderers, the special revenge fantasy is mental anguish (bonus points if it's masked as opposition to the death penalty).

Sometimes I forget which website I'm on.

and then turn right around and advocate subjecting convicts to the worst psychological torture and dehumanizing acts known to man.

They're reveling in the thought of their suffering.

You've taken a lot of abuse for posting a perfectly reasonable op.

You were right and I was wrong. I really didn't think there were so many advocates for torture on DU.

Hope tomorrow's better.

Did you see the John Oliver bit on Edward Snowden. Man on the street interviews - people not knowing who he was, people thinking all kinds of wrong about what he did. Normal looking people who don't appear to be living in caves and who were speaking American english, indicating that they are from this country and they do speak the language. It's a clueless world out there.

That is where he is likely going.

What would you like to see happen?

doesn't make it so. Not everyone agrees with you.

The link I provided does. If you don't think what was described there is equivalent to torture, then I'd hate to ask what you think about other aspects of our justice system.

That is brutal, inhumane treatment. It lasts for literally lifetimes, driving people to permanent insanity. That, without exception, is torture. At the very least, it is unconstitutional.

What do you think should be his sentence?

And where should he be sent?

Subjective at best. Diminutive at worse. Reality for sure, and not a dream ...

I, as part of a humane society, will have no part in that.

Did you pay your taxes this year?

There are compromises I make. I am not willing to go to jail over my taxes at this point in my life--I can do more good outside of prison, despite my small part I play in the horrors that our government continues to perpetrate.

or any of a number of things. Unfortunately, as much as I wish we could, that is one thing that is unrealistic. Normally I hate the "pragmatism" found on this site, but I think asking people not to pay their taxes en masse is simply not happening..

I think it would be smarter to work to get rid of the problems rather than blowing everything up by not paying taxes.

Another aircraft carrier for some distant, abstract threat or food for the people for another decade?

I'll wager more people need food assistance than serve on an aircraft carrier so the votes would be on our side.

If society must make the future of those that would kill innocents miserable because they can't refrain on their own, then so be it.

Let's up it a scotch ...

and having to make the agonizing choice to leave him there, to die alone, in order to save your other gravely wounded child?

This little punk filled a pressure cooker with nails and BBs, set it down among children and ran to safety himself before it detonated. As I said on another thread, as far as I'm concerned, so long as he never knows another moment of freedom, I don't care what happens to him.

And not pretty deaths either.

I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Cover each half of his face...you'll see what I mean. The left side of his face was affected by something.

it's indicative of one side of his brain not synching up with the other which indicates that he is incapable or rational thought processes. OR it indicates that hes greatest talent is talking out of both sides of his face simultaneously.

Don't make me be a part of a society that tortures people.

Have to be an uninhabited island or off earth. Everywhere round here has people. People.do bad things to people.

. . . .is that, invariably, we are talking about more than one case or one individual. And regardless of how heinous that one individual's actions may have been, invariably, some not-so-heinous criminals get caught up in it, too. The article mentions one Jack Powers, imprisoned for burglary as a kid, released in 1982. then married and started two businesses, both of which were bankrupt by the end of the decade. He began robbing banks -- BUT WAS NEVER ARMED, he merely passed notes to the teller demanding money. IN prison, a friend of his was murdered by the Aryan Brotherhood. Powers cooperated with prosecutors, believing he could cut a deal to get out of prison earlier, but then had to be placed in protective custody. When he got wind that prison officials were planning on transferring him to the general population, which would have put him at risk for being killed for his role in the convictions of four members of the Aryan Brotherhood, he escaped. So he wound up getting sent to ADX because he was deemed a flight risk, never mind that he was fleeing for his life.

When we talk about the criminal justice and penal systems, the conditions in prisons or the death penalty, it is important to remember that we are NEVER talking about just a single, individual case, and that invariably, people who do not remotely deserve to be kept under such brutal conditions inevitably will be. Any moral or ethical approach to these issues MUST factor in not only the 'easy' cases involving notorious, brutal criminals, but the harder cases, which often involve less violent, or even non-violent such as Powers, prisoners who will inevitably get swept up into the system.

A pity it will fall on many deaf ears.

Simple answers don't work for the meting out of justice. When you're dealing with people, formulas don't work.

Unless all of them get released, there's no reason why this one person shouldn't go just like so many others have.

It's amazing how many people of color end up being treated horribly by the criminal justice system, but as soon as one white person (literally Caucasion in this case) faces that potential, it's unfair for it to happen to him. Pretty young white guy and all of a sudden it should be off the table. Why shouldn't it have been off the table for everyone else?

If it exists, it can exist for him. If it isn't OK for him, it isn't OK for anyone else. Until no one is in a supermax, it isn't fair to exclude him. It hasn't suddenly become a bad place.

(And I agree that prisons should be places that keep society safe but that still treat prisoners like human beings. I just disagree with the timing - complaining now when a white person could go.)

Specifically one involving a terrorist, a type of criminal that typically gets sent to Supermax facilities.

That seems very unlikely. However it is questionable to suddenly complain about how it should be off limits for this particular person when it isn't off limits for a great number of people, disproportionately people of color. They are horrible places and shouln't exist for anyone. It wouldn't be any worse for him than for the other many people already in them.

I was more influenced by a discussion with I had earlier today with my brother. I apologize to the OP for taking out my rage at my brother on him.

Had a knock down drag out in my house today over recent events.

The op's a good guy.

… personally I don't care where he goes. 23 hours a day in solitary is still better than most homeless people have for only being 'guilty' of not having a home.

This guy murdered and maimed hundreds of people. He deserves no place in society. He does't deserve to die. I don't care where he goes.

Comparing it to the plight of homeless people is a non sequitur.

The man killed and maimed people. he was tried in a federal court.

There is ONE super max federal prison (according to the OP link)

He should go way forever. If this is a discussion on the Federal Supermax prison, then the OP should have stated so.

The OP is a red herring.

There are many federal penitentiaries that (while also horrible places) are not the brutal psychological places that a supermax prison is.

I also disagree with life sentences without chance of parole, but that is for another discussion.

There has been no sentence as of tonite.

You are debating something that has not happened.