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Judges Junk Jailcam
theodp writes "With one dissenting opinion, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an AZ sheriff's use of Webcams to broadcast prisoners being booked and held in cells constituted a profoundly undesirable level of humiliation, rejecting the sheriff's argument that the Webcasts deterred crime and showed the public how jails work." The Village Voice has a good article from a few years ago detailing how the jailcams work.
jailBAITcam is still operational...
My friend got arrested for [something :P] and I had a field day watching him sit in his cell downtown.
I asked him later "hey what did that bum want who talked to you?" he was so pissed.
Latewire
How is this going to effect my "lifetime" subscription to www.hornywomenbehindbars.com?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It's Abu Ghraib.
I ever ended up in jail and I knew there was a jail cam. It's like putting a mirror next to an item that's commonly stolen in a store. If a person feels like they're being watched, they're a lot less likely to try anything 'funny'.
Since we have this notion of someone being "innocent until proven guilty," I can see why having a webcam on while someone is being *booked* can be a problem. If (theoretically) everyone in the world can see John Doe getting booked for a crime which he may or may not have committed, how can he ever get a fair jury?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I can see the point that this is no different than celebrities or politicians being booked and the media showing up. How about if it were done after one is proven guilty - sort of as an extra punishment.
Visit Tim's Journal, yes?
When the courts would begin steping on Araipo. It's clear that most of his activities don't meet the "cruel and unusual punishment" constitutional test- even if they do work to deter crime.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
guess the sheriff forgets that small rule in our american society, alot of people goto jail for doing something then get it thrown out or dismissed in court, therfor making them not guilty, and not criminals. (though this is abused sometimes, there really are some innocent people that do goto jail for a night or so)
I don't think Joe Arpaio (the sheriff's name here for those of you who don't live in Maricopa county, Phoenix or points south) has really done much to lower crime with his "tough ways". Sometimes I think he's more of a joke than anything else.
But he's quite powerful in the political sense. And taking down the cams ain't gonna make much difference. The guy needs to go. Well, hopefully this coming election.
It was a typo, but thanks for the correction.
The jail cams in question were for the holding cells of suspects, not of convicted criminals. Thus, the ruling that cameras were not allowed -- it amounts to conviction without a trial.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
whew... thought my friends would see me...
...is one of the most important things in life. Finally some judge who is still respecting life.
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
I read an interesting article today that discussed shame and the law that is right along these lines.
Arpaio never met a reporter he didn't like, nor a PR stunt he wouldn't pull. Local opinion is that he's not a sheriff, he just plays one on TV.
His jailhouse tactics have cost the county millions in legal fees and settlements, and he is accused at the moment of having set up a squad of detectives to harass political opposition (in AZ, a county sheriff is an elected official).
. . . found too much evidence of maltreatment of prisoners.
from the been-there-done-that department
Humilation is one thing. Great, show it to grade school kids and they might think twice in the future. But I for one, do not want my "adventures in the drunk tank" broadcast for all to see. Barfing on the cop at the scene of my accident was enough.
So when is the Hawkeye movie coming out?
Remember that openness, while embarrassing for some, could also help protect those arrested from abuse.
This'll be overturned if appealed, just like most 9th circuit decisions. That court is really pathetic. Maybe they should have read "jurisprudence for dummies."
It seems to me that individuals in jail still have rights, no matter how detestable they are, and I'm pretty sure that having a camera trained on you 24x7 against your will violates those rights.
If I was in prison I would WANT jailcam all over the prison and in my cell.
Ordinary security cameras protect you from your fellow prisoners by alerting guards to misconduct. broadcasting this on the web and archiving images on the same site protects you from misconduct by guards. Trust me... No guard wants his mother to see him beating a prisoner to a bloody pulp and then sodomizing him.
of course to work right you need lots of cameras protected from abuse and positioned so you can see who tampers with them. My only loss as a prisoner in such a facility is that I have to be more cautious in my masturbation.
Prison is about taking away some freedoms of a person convicted of a crime. I prefer to louse my privacy than my religious or sexual preference. Never mind life and limb.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
There is a camera in the cop car that pulls you over. Anyway, a defendant could use the footage to prove mistreatment or abuse.
I think it was a perfectly ACCEPTABLE level of humiliation for prisoners.
It would probably be a perfectly acceptable level of humiliation for convicts. The problem was that the cams were broadcasting from the holding cells for suspects.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
So let's see here. It's ok for national television to display home video footage of police beating the snot out of these people on the street, but as soon as the perp is dragged in to prison, now we must spare them the "humiliation" of broadcasting their incarceration on the Internet?
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Wait a sec... Do you suppose this is a knee-jerk reaction to Abu Ghraib?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Thats the problem with these sherifs, they're mostly redneck hill-billys who have no idea what a human right is! "y'all best be-have your'selves or i'll be givin u both barrels from ol betsy here. hey jimmy, you got that there e-lectric chair ready for fryin us some prision dawwg?"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
We're supposed to be punishing people for being convicted not for being arrested.
The cake is a pie
I'm all for freedom of privacy and not humiliating people... but c'mon, what about COPS? They feature criminals kicking, screaming, and drunkenly making themselves look like idiots on national television! Even if they give their consent to have it played on TV, it seems like most of them are too out of it to know what's going on...
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
It seems that phrase has little meaning to anyone involved in law enforcement anymore. Does it really matter if you are innocent when you have already been webcast/broadcast on television as 'arrested for the crime of ______'? The media will print the story of the arrest in the headlines or on the front page and the part where you are found innocent in subscript on page 96.
So all this should be done to people that haven't been convicted of a crime yet? People that may not be guilty of one?
I'm not enthused about poor treatment of convicted criminals. But the idea of doing that to people that may be innocent is really revolting. Especially because I don't ever want to be treated like that, and with people like him around, I can't just make sure that never happens by not committing a crime - because I'm treated like that before the point of being found guilty.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
there's the "treated as innocent until proven guilty" part of US tradition that you seem to be overlooking: if you were booked because you matched the description of a bank robber, would you want your booking to be shown to the world? Especially when your release when your fingerprints didn't match those at the scene took place off-camera?
You're forgetting we are innocent until proven guilty. Not innocent until arrested. The people in those holding cells are not proven to be criminals yet. It is very possible they are innocent.
Hacker Media
Your argument only works if you assume that fully 100% of people who are arrested and in the process of being booked are guilty. What if the police are looking for someone who is accused of a crime and pick up someone who only looks similar. Then, what if that person's boss is sitting at work, watching the jailcam, and sees that person and decides to fire them rather than continuing hiring what appears to be a criminal? Not everyone who is booked for a crime happens to be guilty, and you have to draw a line somewhere to protect those who are innocent yet get arrested wrongly.
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This might be a valid point if we were talking about convicts, but if you read the article, it makes it clear that detainees, that is, people who have been arrested but not convicted of anything, are being filmed. Since they haven't been convicted of anything, it is wrong to punish them or humiliate them. They're innocent until proven guilty.
Next, a realization that prison rape is not "funny", is a violation of basic human rights, and that /. comments about "bubba the love bunny" deserve a -1, flamebait mod, not a +1 funny.
In a civilized society, prisoners are sentenced to time in jail.
They should not be subject to torture at the hands of other inmates, and it is the duty of the State to prevent such abuses.
I enjoyed the lyrics. Is there a CD collection of your remixes?
Remember: Only you can help stop a totalitarian United States
federal government.
Seditiously as always,
K. Trout
Technology has started to be used in one way which helps in the criminal world. When someone is booked, instead of waiting some time for arraignment, they can sit in a booth and meet with a judge via two-way video|audio, should they choose to do so. These are taped (both video|audio) and occasionally played on TV (I have no idea what type of releases have to be signed to permit that to happen). This obviously doesn't help those who "lawyer up" as the tv shows call it; or at least, the local news folks haven't said what happens when that occurs. This is in the county just north of Indianapolis (where there's a bit more bread to spread around for things like this - over the previous ten years, one of the fastest-growing counties in the country.
In Downtown Indianapolis, however, there is so much overcrowding the courts haul in the Chief of Police and Sheriff (they have the same territorial area(s) as Indianapolis and the county are the same thing, known as "UniGov") and these two fine gentlemen are told to "find a way to alleviate the overcrowding or the courts will with the money coming out of their budgets. As a result, people caught smoking some redbud or soliciting a prostitute are taken in, ticketed, and released. All of the Sheriff's candidates campaign under the banner of "I've got a plan for fixing overcrowding" but no one ever says what it is so you just have to trust them at their word and pray they are right.
Anyway, there are ways jailcams can be beneficial. There could be judges serving off-hours on-alert and available when needed for such things.
Yuck. They just advertised the state fair starting next week. They showed deep fat fried Oreos this year (two years ago, it was deep fat fried Milky Way candy bars, last year, it was deep fat fried Twinkies). For each of those, we bought one, went over to the trash can (just in case), took a bite, and had to spit it out. Fortunately, everyone shared the price to get a single bite to find out how bad it was.
Doesn't this also protect the incarcerated person from potential police abuse? (How about webcams that aren't broadcasted but still record everything to a "citizen's committee"?)
Being publicly shown as being arrested is the moral equivalent of rape.
Clear, Dark Skies
So it's okay to fry a man to death but it's not okay to broadcast pictures of people being locked up because it's 'humiliating.' If both of these issues went before the 9th circuit then I'm sure there'd be a bit more consistency.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...instead, you elected a Nazi.
-Page the Village Idiot's song, entitled "Arpaio"
But by all means, let's give the prisoners better accomidations that US army troops,
Blah blah blah blah blah. What year are you in? 1986? Christ, you sound like a commercial for the Reagan reelect campaign. Go watch Hill Street Blues and STFU.
Dated or not, it doesn't make what he said any less true.
Finkployd
I think it was a perfectly ACCEPTABLE level of humiliation for prisoners.
Yes, of course, because no one was ever put in a booking cell by accident. I'm sure everyone who has ever gone into a booking cell was then booked, in due process, and later found guilty of whatever it was they were accused of doing.
Because, as everyone knows, law enforcement officials, whether elected, appointed or hired, are human and never make mistakes. Oh, yeah, and witnesses always see everything clearly and never forget any details or confuse one dark-haired, tall male wearing a denim jacket for any other dark-haired, tall male wearing a denim jacket.
MSACRAS
Meow. Now!
That being arrested doesn't mean you committed a crime. It doesn't even mean there is evidence you committed a crime, it just means a police officer had cause to believe you did.
There are plenty of people arrested who are never charged with a crime because the evidence just isn't there. They do not deserve to be treated as criminals. Innocent until proven guilty is codified into the highest law of the land and should be held dear.
In Boston, they have/had "John TV" where arrested Johns would be shown on TV. I thought that was held to be legal.
Fight Spammers!
> Most of these people are in and out of prison so do you think they actually
> give a shit if they're on cam?
Um, yes. Many prisoners don't like certain visitors due to the shame of being seen behind bars.
> I'd subscribe if Michael Jackson goes to jail!
I never found him (or gratuitous violence) all that attractive... but you're entitled to your tastes.
Ever watched 'Cops'? Anyway, I could point a webcam into an alley and call it drug dealer cam. That doesn't mean everyone it shows is a dealer.
I'm not entirely for it, either. It would be a nice way to see whether human rights are being violated, though. You could watch the number of minorities arrested vs. white folk.
Just in case you're interested on what the aforementioned sheriff is up to THESE days, take a look at the latest New Times.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Wasn't that the POINT? Isn't jail supposed to be unfun/annoying/humiliating?
Yep. Once you're convicted I agree. These cameras were in booking areas. Granted most of the on camera "talent" would be guilty, but not all and there's the rub.
I see nothing wrong with what they were doing if they just had cameras so people could see what it was like/what was going on. It's not like they were making the prisoners wear dresses and act out scenes from "The Sound of Music" on camera against their will or anything.
Hah! If Sherrif Joe reads that it'll be next on his agenda. He reinstituted prison "stripes" and makes the men wear pink boxers and revived chain gangs. He also erected "Tent City" where convicted criminals get to live in tents "Just like our boys in Iraq!" year round, and he made them listen to Newt Gingrich tapes over and over again. When someone complained about the green bologna, Sherrif Joe marched the TV crews to Tent City and ate a green bologna sandwich with the prisoners.
I don't have a problem with those things, but some of the other stuff he does bothers me. I think he believes his own press releases (and any positive press or media attention) and will one day go too far. Recently his "civilian posse" and some deputies got their prostitution sting thrown out by the prosecuters when the tapes showed the sherrif's boys droppin' their drawers for the ladies of the evening and engaging in "sexual contact". Arpaio's office said they thought they had the prosecuters blessing on such conduct.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I'm all for freedom of privacy and not humiliating people... but c'mon, what about COPS?
Believe it or not, everyone you have ever seen on COPS has signed a waiver giving the show the right to show their faces on TV. The producers give people $500 to entice them to do so, but ultimately it's their choice. So every drunken crack whore you've seen on that show has signed away their rights, which means COPS says nothing about the case in discussion here.
Wasn't that the POINT? Isn't jail supposed to be unfun/annoying/humiliating?
In short: No.
The purpose of prisons is to keep people from doing wrong. Mindless revenge doesn't fix people - quite the opposite - and you've been looking at diminishing returns concerning the preventive effect already for some time.
I would think all the reality show entities would jump on this to make it their next show.
They could title it "NYPD Jail Cell 24/7" and it could run right after Cops on Fox!
For the most part, jail is for suspects awaiting trial and prison is for convicts convicted of something.
I bet if they left something like that on they'd have to lay off the minorites. In Tulsa, latinos are labeled the same as whites when they get booked. A camera may be more truthful.
... was the video stream available in one of open video formats or only as WMA/RM proprietary junk? I guess it's an important (for /. people) question to ask! ;-)
;-)
Also, where are the LINKS to archived streams?
Paul B.
Arpaio's intentions with his treatment of MC jail inmates has nothing to do with trying to reduce crime. It helps him put up an image of "America's toughest Sheriff", which helps him in his reelection campaigns. I've been wondering how long until he puts up a set of stocks in downtown Phoenix.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
And if you were wrongfully accused and charged with a crime, pending your trial, you'd find all of this humiliation okay? Would "treat as guilty until proven innocent" work better as a principle?
But some of the images are more invasive: strip searches, female prisoners in various stages of undress, and, up until late April, a constant, unobstructed view of the women's toilet and the women using it.
Seriously?!? No wonder he lost the case. Way to hand your detainees tons of county cash, bozo. This type of guy in elected office is why we need strong anti-abuse laws on the books, and stricter supervision of prison operations. More interestingly, why isn't this bigger nationwide news? It would seem to have all of the makings of a major story, and yet I've only heard of it on /.
Of course, though the article states the toilet-cam as fact, the last line in the article has some hapless spokesdrone denying that charge... anyone know if they're just lying to cover up? From the attitude of the sheriff ( and much of law enforcement ), I'm guessing there really was a clear view of the women's toilet...
Just finished Reading 'Vernon God Little' by DBC Pierre last week and in that story there is a reality TV show on death row where the public get to vote every week on who gets executed next. While reading it I thought that it was a huge leap into fantasy but obviously it wasn't as huge as I thought. Great book by the way.
Mention the Lord of the Rings one more time and I'll more than likely kill you.
I live here in Phoenix. His own political parties aren't going to sponsor him for this election, and with good reason. He's more likely to call Fox News before he calls backup.
A while back he lost a case about some young kid he said was threatening to bomb him here in phoenix. problem is the kid wasn't, they had no proof, and they called the news to tag along during the bust. it was obviously all just publicity but the kid still spent 2 years in jail.
joe needs to go, he's just another dirty lieing politian.
You like to actually watch how jacko does the lil guy?
When are they getting a webcam installed in Saddam's cell?
I'm not convinced this is a bad idea for convicts (though not for suspects in holding cells, as in this case). Think of how different Abu Ghraib might have been if prisoners and jailers had been on camera the whole time.
Check out "Top Ten Reasons NOT to vote for Joe".
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Now, aside from this, we as a society need to ask ourselves, why is the prison population in the US growing so very rapidly(we are looking at over 50% growth the first few years of the Bush administration)?
Okay as dumb as this sounds, I can't find the jail cam this article talks about, it references 'crime.com' but that doesn't seem to exist either. I did find this Tennessee jailcam however.
'CellBoss 2004'. Not only will we be able to vote over the internet to give rapists and child abusers more time, but we can vote naughty/ugly/unpopular cons straight into segregation! Imagine the possibilities regarding aliances!
Joking aside, as someone who has spent significant time locked up, I find the idea of a webcam monitoring convicts quite disgusting. The simple fact of the matter is (IMHO) that this will do nothing but undermine what little integrity these guys have. Whether or not it might make things 'safer' is silly to me, considering the faulty foundation the Prison Industrial Complex is based on. This alongside of the fact that people in these holding cells are NOT necessarily guilty. The more we trivialize things like prison -- this indirectly relates to the COPS television show (ever seen a white collar criminal arrested?) -- the more people will ignore that America has the highest recorded rate of incarceration in the world and that 80% of those in prison are in for non-violent crimes.
...the aclu watch and archive them privately, rather than broadcasting them to the public.
of course there's nothing to prevent the jail from arranging a "temporary technical outage" (webserver "crashes" / network "problems") while they do something nasty to you.
Q: In addition to the Web cam, what are some other things that are unique about your jail?
A: When I took office, I decided to put tents up, so we have almost 1,500 [inmates housed] in tents in the desert. I've gone down from three meals a day to two meals a day -- I call it brunch. And we have the cheapest meals, probably, in the country: 20 cents a meal.
I'm cracking down on animal cruelty, and when I make an arrest [for that], I have to seize [the animal involved]. I decided to put the dogs in cell blocks [in an unused jail]. I took some heat because that's the only jail we have that's air-conditioned. Also, it costs $1.15 a day to feed the dogs and only 40 cents a day to feed the inmates, but that's the way it goes around here.
I took away [inmates'] coffee; took away their smoking; took away their movies. The only TV they get is the Weather Channel, and they have to hear me do bedtime stories. I introduce the story, and [then play an] audio book. They can go to the library and get a regular copy, but this helps them learn how to read.
I put them in pink underwear. I decided to do that six years ago. I put them in striped uniforms several years ago, and I have male and female chain gangs. We do things different here since I became the sheriff. I just got reelected to a third term, and now everybody thinks I'm running for governor. All the polls show me leading for governor, but I haven't decided whether I'm running next year.
Q: It's been reported that you've had at least 800 lawsuits filed against you.
A: It doesn't mean nothing. It's how many you lose. Everybody sues me for the cockroaches, the food.
Q: Have you had to change some of your policies as a result?
A: I haven't changed anything.
it will further show how cops torture inmates and put more cops in jail, where they belong.
You can shorten the logic in your sig and achieve the same outcome
If he=jerk then print Do it, else print You're an idiot
Humiliation makes others feel better, but the target tends to feel pissed off, c.f. Columbine shootings. If you assume from the start they can't be rehab'd, you might as well kill them, quickly. Putting them in jail doesn't solve anything.
Prison should not provide anything remotely beneficial beyond educational, occupational, or psychological support. There should be light at the end of the tunnel for those who want to travel that route and the rest can rot in a 4x6 cell.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
I can't wait to see the video tape of you being gang-raped after being falsely arrested for DUI because the cop who stopped you needed to fill a quota.
I agree with your premise, but good luck getting anything done about it.
Enforcing rules of consentual interaction in a prison is extremely expensive because the inmates quickly develop a culture for working around any enforcement scheme. For example, an inmate is welcome to complain about abuse from other inmates, and will probably be transferred to another prison in that event. They will be no better off at the new prison, and their 'tattling' will probably be 'leaked' at the new prison, where the inmate in question will be 'punished' for complaining.
To counter this, the prisons and procedures would have to be re-designed to not just keep prisoners in, but to keep them from getting at each other. Cells would have to have their own bathing facilities, and would have to not be shared. It would also be a huge hassle for the already stressed out staff.
I agree that it's a worthy goal, but you're going to have a hard time convincing the masses that 'guilty' prisoners deserve the expense of protection.
Musta hit the 'any key' earlier when I posted as AC. Sorry. I'm gonna repost and face the wrath of moderation, considering how strongly I feel about this :
My new reality TV show.
'CellBoss 2004'. Not only will we be able to vote over the internet to give rapists and child abusers more time, but we can vote naughty/ugly/unpopular cons straight into segregation! Imagine the possibilities regarding aliances!
Joking aside, as someone who has spent significant time locked up, I find the idea of a webcam monitoring convicts quite disgusting. The simple fact of the matter is (IMHO) that this will do nothing but undermine what little integrity these guys have. Whether or not it might make things 'safer' is silly to me, considering the faulty foundation the Prison Industrial Complex is based on. This alongside of the fact that people in these holding cells are NOT necessarily guilty. The more we trivialize things like prison -- this indirectly relates to the COPS television show (ever seen a white collar criminal arrested?) -- the more people will ignore that America has the highest recorded rate of incarceration in the world and that 80% of those in prison are in for non-violent crimes.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
I wonder if any of the judges of the 9th Circuit have read Foucault. Discipline and Punish is one of the best original sociological works on prison surveillance. (although the Panopticon is a little less high-tech.)
I recognize the judges are required to base their decisions upon the laws of the United States, and not the sociological or psychological issues involved, but I still like to hope they are well-informed on all aspects of the topic when weighing these issues.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
the us army being a professional army it doesn't make that much of sense to bitch about it's accomidations, especially when if there's crappy accomidation for troops it's because of necessity.
this particular sheriff OTOH is making life intentionally crappy and humiliationg for the captives beyond the spirit of the law - at a high cost to boot, just to make everyone believe that he isn't a softie(to get re-elected..) and is doing 'something' for the crime problem.
and really, how crappy are the US troop accomidations outside of the time when they're crappy because being knee deep in shit is essential part of training?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Please these repsonses act like our judicial system actually works. What a joke and i can't believe some of the stuff I've read in response to my parent here. Do the names OJ SImpson or Jack Kervorkian mean anything? One who was obviously guilty of murder but bought his way out and the other helped ease the dying patients pain and put away.
Oh yea it's really a great system and cannot be bought or corrupted. Enron, Tyco CEO's...where are they at? Oh yea free and the people they fucked out of their pensions? Destitute and dependent on the system for the most part but once again the judicial system is unflawed and fair! Not! Our judicial system is starting to borrow the ideology from India's caste system in terms of the have's getting preferential treatment and the have not's being treated as peasants.
Our judicial system is the best that money can buy.
As for myself enjoying mwatching MJ getting porked no I'm not into that but I'd love for that freak to get a reality check in this lifetime. Maybe he can get with the Crips, get accepted, and then get his ass jumped-in, Compton style:)
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
"Wasn't that the POINT? Isn't jail supposed to be unfun/annoying/humiliating?"
There are several schools of thought on this, many being simultaneously applied. Also, there are different types of crime, though prison really only offers one punishment. So the guy who got busted for a pot seed in his car in 1994 is subjected to the same punishment, on a day-to-day basis, as the guy who raped his cousin and then killed her in 1972. The difference is that one of these will probably leave the prison at some point. I'm not going to put any money on which one.
Some believe the whole idea of prison is to punish, others believe it is to rehabilitate.
As long as the situation remains that fully half of the people in the prison system are there because of simple marijuana posession, it will always be difficult to justify harsher punishment for violent offenders.
During that same weekend in incarceration, my friend witnessed the brutal beating of a suspect by three armed guards. The suspect had not assaulted anyone, but was being verbally abusive to the guards. The suspect lost consciousness, a lot of blood from a nasty head wound, and had to be carted to the infirmary.
Where did all this happen? Good ole NYC.
All of this happened in front of multiple surveillance cameras. I would surely like to review those tapes myself, but the general public is not allowed access to them.
What do you all suggest we do? Perhaps a public oversight committee that reviews the prison/jail surveillance tapes? This committe might be comprised of responsible citizens, selected via a process similar to jury duty selection.
Didn't mean to be pedantic, but I guess I was born that way... :)
Idiots like Sherriff Arpaio know that deterrence does not work. They do it because they want to mete out further punishment, beyond the convict's actual sentence. They feel, quite incorrectly, that they have the right and/or duty to make prisons and jails living hells for the inmates.
We need to do something to stop this. Most people are indifferent because they have no family members or loved ones behind bars. But take it from me: it can happen to you; it can happen to anyone. When you least expect it, someone you know will screw up and get thrown in prison. You won't feel so indifferent then.
In Puritan New England, public stocks filled on the judgement of the local cult leader prevented crime through intimidation, at the cost of Justice. But that's OK with AZ Sheriff Arpaio, and CA Judge Bea:
"Judge Carlos Bea wrote that using jailhouse Webcams to post images over the Internet did not violate the constitutional rights of detainees."
These "detainees" are merely arrested, not found guilty of any crime. The public defamation, now global across the Internet, is an obvious destruction of the rights of the accused. That's consistent with the new class of subhuman "detainees" everywhere, no longer protected by laws administered by fascist judges like Bea, and executed by fascist cops like Arpaio.
--
make install -not war
I don't ppl watching me getting fisted.
I wouldn't consider Kevorkian a saint, but he didn't buy his way out of anything, he's in prison. Helping someone suffering a terminal disease to die dignity and mercy is also just a wee bit different than slicing up your ex and her boyfriend in a psychotic rage.
Until convicted, like when arrested, booked and held, people are innocent of the crime of which they are accused. Any treatment of them other than obtaining their presence in the justice system, which could prove their guilt, is unacceptable, and threatens us all.
--
make install -not war
To avoid police misbehavior...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
...is seen as funny by society at large. Why is this? Its because a) they are criminals b) they are men If there was any place where women knowingly got raped there would be an outcry, investigation etc etc. But as it is, it is an accepted, and even condoned by society. After all, these are criminals, they should pay their debt. Rape is rape, no matter who it happens to.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
Shows like cops give the suspect a chance to have his face blurred. These were real-time of recognizable individuals. As set up, there simple wasn't a chance for anyone to ensure anonymity... too much footage.
I'm a Arizona native, and I kinda figured this would happen to Arpaio. He was always kindof a wildcard, and knew he'd do something to get himself in trouble. Besides the jailcam thing, his deputies were involved in a sex-scandal. What really did him in, though, was his support of Janet Napolitano (a democrat) for governer.
B) No, we don't sentence people to be humiliated, or mistreated, or raped (which it much worse, but along the same lines). Well, maybe we should have a system set up. how much is a person's freedom and dignity worth? How much time should we take off someone's sentence for being broadcast to the world? How about 1 month off for every time they're raped. Say, why don't we just gang-rape prisoners for a while, get their punishment out of the way all at once. Would save a lot of money. Sure hope you're never wrongly convicted. Lord knows THAT never happens.
Hello,
Amnesty International takes a somewhat dim view of this Sheriff's methods, and note that there was at least one suspicious death in custody among other things.
Your best bet is to get HIV while getting bang for the buck since after getting free you're really really free - to injure the fucking shithat beyond what is describable, that is.
Getting more serious, this might be an unpopular view but I think people ought to realize that the society is really held up by something like karma, but which is in fact enforced by other people. This means basically that when you're being a prick, there's some x% chance that it's going to have less than nice repercussions independent on whether it's lawful or not. Now, going too severe with penaties or making them to favor the big guy interferes with this process and allows people to be shitheads. Unless, of course the laws were perfect which they never are. I feel this is basically why the whole US is so damn screwed.
wtf is a dot-CORN job? :-)
"Arpaio never met a reporter he didn't like..."
And the 9th Circuit never found a right-of-center solution it liked. It's by far the most leftist of all US Courts. If there's a controversial issue, you can be sure the 9th will rule against any right-leaning law or practice, and endorse left-leaning ones.
Of course, that makes some of the Marxists here just shoot their wad. For what are supposedly mostly Libertarian readers, Slashdot sure seems to have a lot of people more sympathetic to criminals than the police. And go ahead and mod me troll, flaimbait, fucktard, whatever. I've got plenty of Karma, and I just say that the truth hurts.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
...you are a man that has never known pain.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
How is this going to effect my "lifetime" subscription to www.hornywomenbehindbars.com?!
Isn't "horny women behind bars", the movie, on the Lifetime cable TV network every week?
I think it stars Meredith Baxter.
I used to be an officer in the jail system this article is talking about. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a total media whore. He is a semi-decent lawman but is way overrated. He spends most of his day trying to find some reason to get in front of a camera. Almost anyone I asked who worked at MCSO before he was the sheriff said that he is much worse than the previous guy. MCSO has great officers (both Deputies and Detention Officers- jail gaurds) but the sheriff makes it a horrible place to work.
A great website about Sheriff Joe- http://www.arpaio.com/
While the webcam has been down for a while... you can still see booking photos (mug shots) for many people who were recently arrested on MCSO's website- http://www.mcso.org/submenu.asp?file=MugIndex
Public not exposed?! Like hell they are not exposed. They are exposed like the recent case in Florida when a con that spent the last 15 years in some slam induced three others with weak minds to beat six innocent people to death because they would'nt let him and his druggy friends squat in a house they did not own, use electricity they did not pay for, and make life hell for all around them. It was originally thought it was all about a fight over a damn 'x-box' (gee, maybe ole Bill Gate$$$ ought to be investigated for distributing violence inducing electronic devices and prostituted for terririzm and sent to gitmo with the other Americans), then it turned out to be about a man who should have never been out of prison in the first place. Damn x-box was probably stolen to boot. Story is all over the web. We certainly ARE exposed to the situations we create in our prison system. Almost ALL of those AIDS and HepC and syphillis and gonorrhea infested professional horses asses WILL hit the bricks eventually. They will be far more dangerous when they get OUT than when they went IN. They know how to work the system now. They know how to feign contrition and religion to gain temporary advantage with weak minded people who substitute their faith for good judgement and their defective 'moral code' for wisdom. This incident resulted in the firing of three probation officers evidently involved in the fatefull decision to let that particular asshole to his the bricks. No matter, he would have gotten out sometime anyway. They all will. Then YOU WILL BE EXPOSED....SOME OF YOU.....BUT WHO? When a physically weak prisoner gets AIDS just because he does'nt want to or is unable to fight off his prison rapist, the incident does not end there. When the cost of his treatment gets high enough, the prison system will find a way to 'commute his sentence', or 'give him a compassionate release', or whatever. The bottom line is the bottom line in that business, and when the costs go over budget for those self righteous slimeballs that are probably more evil than the prisoners they jailed and administer, then those prisoners will be unleashed on society for the time they have left. These show up at public hospitals and contaminate bathrooms, waiting rooms, the air in emergency rooms, everything they touch, etc. These become germ bombs for the time they have left and leave a trail of sorrow and disease in their wake. We have no national health care in this country. If a terrorist wanted to do us in, I could find no other more effected nor more fearsom vector of death than one of these abandoned ones. Having no stake in society, their society has no stake in them. It was said that Jack the Ripper, infected by a prostiture with syphillis in an age when it was not curable, sought to kill as many other prostitutes as he could find...out of 'revenge'. How much more terrible a revenge if terrorists that hate us plant the biological instruments of our destruction on so hatefull and fertile a ground as those prisoners and others that we as a society cast off as not having value. Take a drive in your city. Go downtown. Go just outside downtown. If in Washington D.C., go northeast from the Capitol center and up Rhode Island Avenue...for about 30 miles. Go past the blocks of empty looking brownstones and the empty eyes of slackjawed and listless pedestrians and hungry prostitutes and garulous beggars. Drive by the thousands of abandoned cars in the sidestreets that no law wants to touch for fear of overloading every dump in the surrounding states. Do not get out of your car! For the empty houses are not, and a gruesome fate awaits the foolhardy there.
We are exposed every day to the products of our correctional system; we just do not realize it.
Until the shoplifter who got AIDS in prison goes home on early release becaues of 'overcrowding'. He does not know he acquired AIDS because the correctionsl system thought it too expensive to do periodic checks...and they quietly figured that if they DID find new cases, the
Would definitely be the line from "Liar, Liar" : STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLE!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Ah yeah.... If you caught the Penn & Teller TV series "Bullshit!" (occasionally airing on Showtime), they did an episode about the "war on drugs", complete with an interview with Joe Arpaio.
We were shocked at what a narrow-minded moron that guy comes off as when he speaks. As a defense attorney said on the show, Arpaio even thought it would be a good idea to stake out Arizona state troopers all over, to randomly stop people and screen them for drugs. They had to SLOWLY explain to him that doing such a thing wasn't constitutional.
Arpaio has always been nothing more than a grandstanding blowhard. It makes you wonder just what kind of people inhabit Maricopa County. It's beyond belief that they would choose this worthless piece of shit to be so much as their elected dogcatcher let alone sheriff. Maybe they're all just crazy from the heat.
That's a nice rant. If I had mod points right now, I'd bump it up.
All it takes for someone to lose their freedom in the "Land of the Free" is being laid off at precisely the same time that a parking ticket comes due - Pay the government before you feed your family, or else there will be no family.
Anyone remember why the citizens of the United States were guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms by the revolutionaries that founded our country? The first revolution was started over taxes on tea...will the next revolution be more like the one started at the Bastille?
With large portions of our population imprisoned either wrongly or for silly reasons (like parking tickets), we have an unhappy powder-keg on our hands, and the population continues to ignorantly re-elect animals like this Arizona Sheriff. Criminals they may be, but do you really want them to be angry, humiliated, and desperate criminals?
Most people don't care, they just want "justice". Someone once arrogantly said "Let them eat cake", and that person ended up in two pieces at the hands of criminals with a burning desire for blood. What will happen to this Sheriff if a lot of angry people catch him alone? Will his voters save him? I doubt it. They'll probably just watch it happen on TV. Would we have had Adolf Hitler if the Allies had been more empathetic with post WWI Germany? Maybe...then again, if Germany hadn't been so angry and humiliated, they might have just continued to make the world's best children's toys, just like before. Instead, they killed millions.
What can 1 out of 75 American men do? What can one 1 of 12 black American men do? What can 50 million ex-cons do? Do you really want to make that many people desperate and angry? Do you really want to publically humilate them? Do you really want to keep them unemployed and homeless? Do you really want the ruthless Sheriff of Nottingham doling out "punishment" to the mob that may kill you one day?
The French Aristocracy had an army of Swiss mercenaries armed with state-of-the-art muskets. The prisoners killed them all with sticks and shovels. Can a haggard bunch of desperate criminals wreak havoc on the smooth operation of the USA? A dozen or so foreigners managed to cripple the US economy on September 11th, 2001. What can 50 million of our own home-made suicidal killers do? These are valid questions...ones that are probably going to be answered in the most unfortunate way possible. Maybe our new criminal leaders will be wiser than our democratically elected ones.
Considering the number and type of people he does things like this to, and that many of them likely get released eventually, I'm suprised nobody has tried to kill him yet.
I would be hard to have sympathy for him if it happens, any more than someone who provokes an angry dog and gets bitten.
..use of Webcams to broadcast prisoners being booked and held in cells constituted a profoundly undesirable level of humiliation
amazingly unfortunate that, in this day an age, the commission of the crime doesn't constitute a profoundly undesirable level of humiliation.
maybe it's just me.
It seems the US is about the worst place for knee-jerk publicity seeking tough on crime laws & law 'n order auctions every election campaign.
In regards knee jerkism, look at the way many state & local authorities banned GHB within days of sensationalist reports of body builders abusing this vetinary anasthetic (to aid testosterone production from deep sleep) & gays getting off on thershold dose recreational use. The end result was the new illegal status attracted publicity way out of proportion to the recreational reality of the drug itself & pharmacuetical supplies were replaced by underground chemist supplies, which of course leads to dangerous quantity/quality irregularities, which is the very thing that makes GHB dangerous.
So the chief effect of politicians taking a opportunity to knee-jerk over the American public's anger over people daring to get off on things they shouldn't get off on, are law 'n order bills which have made the drug much more attractive to use & inherently much many more dangerous to use too. The end result being a logrithmic increase in overdoses from virtually none before hand (relative to the US population)
Now in regards the law 'n oder auctions every elections, the end result has been the US having both incarceration & policing rates that are logrithmically higher than anywhere else in the world (there's that big L word again).
This has led to a significant proportion of a significant American minority being totally disenfranchised & huge costs to the American tax-payers that get sucked in by all this law 'n order fear mongering. To the point that many US states now spend more on jails than education (which definitly doesn't bode well for the future), the maning, building & servicing of jails has become the biggest growth industry in the US & if US incarceration levels continue to grow at the same rate they have over the last 15 years, then by 2037 every American will be either employed by the 'jail industry' or incarcerated themselves.
This has been devastating to America's underclass - just look at those snitch snowballs in Tulia, Texas & Union, Alabama caused by knee-jerk & law 'n order election year 'auction' bills for mandatory minimums & forfeiture legislation. In both cases we had cops arresting people based on the uncorroberated testimony of a paid snitch & then threatened with mandatory minimums if they didn't snitch on any of their mates that were poor but had property (via such things as inheritances, redundency payouts, divorce settlements or people that had done well in the past but are now down on their luck). Meaning they were good forfeiture material as they were worth persecuting but didn't have the incomes to stand up for themselves in the justice system.
This leads to a snowballing effect as people are threatened with the mandatory minimum to plead out on lesser chargse (meaning they still get convicted & all their property forfeited) on the condition they snitch on any aquaintence, relative or mate that the cops want them to snitch on. Meaning a huge snowballing tragedy of justice in which the evidence is rarely tested in court & when it is tested, it's tested in some hick court where the judge & jury automatically take the cops side, with the legal aid lawyer is hung-over & nodding off in court all day (leading to situations where jurors refuse to admit their mistake & are still convinced that certain defendents are guilty, even though they won appeals due to ironclad alibies, simply because their adament that 'cops are good & don't lie').
Or look at the many Americans that feel the need to keeped a loaded firearm within axcess of the bed to protect the family from home intruders. Nevermind the fact that if one isn't a drug dealer or a Asian business man/woman with a reputation of keeping large quantities of cash at home, the chances of one's family falling victim to a home invasion if one's a member of the suburban middle class, is probabl
& have been to the US twice.
The last time spending a few months slowly Amtraking across from San Fransisco to Miami, stopping over & spending many days in places like Oakland, LA, San Antonio, New Orleans, Birmingham, & Orlando on the way.
Of course I'm generalising & of course other places also have knee-jerk polies & law 'n order auctions at election time, but rarely at anything like close to similar levels, & when it does occure it's useally via local polies who look to the US for political inspiration (like Bob Carr in New South Wales who did a PHD on American political history & shamelessly plays American style Knee-jerk politics whenever his administration stagnates.
Just so you know, I live in Arizona and our Sheriff is renowned for believing that due process is for wimps and once people are in his "possession" that they have no rights to be treated as humans. He is one of the few in the United States that actually has had Amnesty International and other aid organizations investigate his "Tent City".
-- America's Toughest Sheriff: Joe Arpaio
However, what is fascinating here is that this was about the treatment of people being *arrested*, not *convicted*. Joe doesn't brook much difference between the two: he is a true "out west Sheriff" and believes that he *is* the law, not just its arm.
KPHO Item on Joe
From that article you can see a pretty balanced view of the guy... for all the things he does, he isn't really all that much more effective than anyone else. Surely not enough so that he shouldn't have to respect people's rights *before* they are convicted of anything.
Sig under construction since 1998.
This article gives soem citations on the growth of the US prison.population
i think the grandparent is trying to make a point about guys in general :-p