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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.
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.
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.
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).
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
Not to mention that his never-ending stream of publicity stunts cause tons of lawsuits, many of which the county has to settle with cash. Regardless of the morality of his prisoner treatment practices, he's costing the taxpayers in AZ a lot of money and ignoring problems (like understaffing of prisons) which have a real impact on things.
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.
This guy was recently profiled on "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!", specifically their episode about the War on Drugs. Apparently he used to station cops at the county border to do random stops and searches for contraband. Towards the end of the episode he snorts with derision at the suggestion that we should have freedom to choose our destinies, and declares that the government must enforce social norms. The existence of people like that is the best argument I've yet seen in favor of drug legalization.
Actually, that's an especially good time for it. Arrests must be public. Yes, it's horribly embarrassing to be arrested, and I will feel ashamed if I am ever arrested, but secret arrests are tyrannical.
Your signature reads "The cure for 1984 is 1776." Well, why does the fourth amendment to the US constitution prohibit unreasonable seizures? It's because the british used arbitrary and secret arrests to lock up troublemakers (arguably they did so as well against the IRA). How can you have habeas corpus (or look here -- warning pdf) if you don't know who was arrested? (sorry, another pdf)
Once you've been convicted (or even once you're booked) it seems unreasonable though I agree with the poster who said he'd like it for his own protection!
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