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Feb. 23, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:15
655 Crime and Punishment Part 3: Practice

What sort of person *wants* to become a prison guard? The evidence is clear...

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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph. It is the 23rd of February 2007, and we are going to have a little bit of a chat about the reality of prisons, just so that if there is an aspect of empathy that I can appeal to in terms of how these people who,
while having done wrong, and we're going to assume for the sake of Moral clarity, if not reality, that the people who are undergoing these kinds of situations are guilty, a sin, bad people, and so on, just to make it less of an unclear situation, conceptually or sympathetically.
Let's assume that these are all bad guys, and they are bad guys because they were raised badly and made bad choices and so on, evil choices.
So, and there's going to be some rough language in here.
Not because of me, but...
So here's an article by Deborah Davies called Torture, Inc.
America's Brutal Prisons.
Savaged by dogs, electrocuted with cattle prods, burned by toxic chemicals.
Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?
They're just some of the victims...
Of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4.
It's terrible to watch some of the videos and realize that you're seeing, sorry, you're not only seeing torture in action, but in the most extreme cases you are witnessing young men dying.
The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs.
Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked.
The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering to lie on the ground and crawl.
Crawl, motherfuckers, crawl, they scream.
If a prisoner doesn't drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back.
There's a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.
Another prisoner has a broken ankle.
He can't crawl fast enough, so a guard jabs a stun gun into his buttocks.
The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals.
For hours afterwards, his whole body shakes.
Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cell block while guards stand over them, shouting, prodding, and kicking.
Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards.
The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar.
These were exactly the kinds of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that chucked This is a bit of an older article.
But there is a difference.
These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone.
They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas.
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered recently.
During a four-month investigation for Channel 4 that will be broadcast next week.
Our findings were not based on rumor or suspicion.
They were based on solid evidence, chiefly videotapes that we collected from all over the U.S. In many American states, prison regulations demand that any use-of-force operation, such as searching cells for drugs, must be filmed by a guard.
The theory is that the tapes will show proper procedure was followed and no excessive force was used.
In fact, many of them record the exact opposite.
Each tape provides a shocking insight into the reality of life inside the U.S. prison system, a reality that sits very uncomfortably with President Bush's commitment to the battle for freedom and democracy against the forces of tyranny and oppression.
In fact, the Texas episode outlined above dates from 1996 when Bush was state governor.
Frank Carson was one of the lawyers who fought a compensation battle on behalf of the victims.
I asked him about his reaction when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year and U.S. politicians rushed to express their astonishment and disgust that such abuses could happen at the hands of American guards.
I thought, what hypocrisy, Carlson told me, because they know we do it here every day.
All the lawyers I spoke to during our investigations shared Carlson's belief that Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few rogue individuals, It was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time.
They pointed to the mountains of files stacked on their desks, on the floor, in their office corridors, endless stories of appalling, sadistic treatment inside America's own prisons.
Many of the tapes we've collected are several years old.
That's because they only surface when detourment lawyers prize them out of reluctant state prison departments during protracted lawsuits.
But for every historical tape we collected, we also found a more recent story.
What you see on the tape is still happening daily.
In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being let out of his cell by prison guards.
They strap him into a medieval-looking device called the restraint chair.
His hands and feet are shackled.
There's a strap across his chest.
His head lolls forward. He looks dead.
He's not. Not yet.
The chair is his punishment.
Because God saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head, and he refused to take it off.
The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia.
Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair, and two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment.
All right, we just can...
Here's another example.
The first tape shows a man named Charles Axter dragged in by police, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles.
Axter is mentally disturbed and a drug user.
He was arrested for causing a disturbance in a late night grocery store.
The police hand him over to the sheriff's deputies in the jail.
Axter is a tiny man, weighing no more than nine stone, but he's struggling.
The tape shows nine deputies manhandling him into the restraint chair.
One of them kneels on Agstra's stomach, pushing his head forward to his knees and pulling his arms back to strap his wrists into the chair.
Bending someone double for any length of time is dangerous.
The manuals on the use of the restraint chair warn of the dangers of positional asphyxia.
Fifteen minutes later, a nurse notices Agstra is unconscious.
The cameras show frantic efforts to resuscitate him, but he's already dead.
He's already brain dead. He died three days later in hospital.
Blah, blah, blah. So there's another guy.
Drug user arrested for causing a nuisance.
Severely beaten by guards.
Stunned up to 19 times with a taser.
And forced into a chair where, like Charles Axter, he's suffocated.
Um... It says, an authorized use to force operation on another tape, so a guard is videoing what happens.
They're going to taser a prisoner for refusing orders.
The tape shows a prisoner lying on an examination table in the prison hospital.
The guards are instructing him to climb down into a wheelchair.
I can't, I can't, he shouts with increasing desperation.
It hurts. One guard then jabs him on both hips with a taser.
The man jerks, the electricity hits him, and he shrieks, but still won't get into the wheelchair.
Or can't, I guess. The guards grab him and drop him into the chair.
As they try to bend his legs up onto the footrest, he screams in pain.
The man's lawyers told me he has a very limited mental capacity.
He says he has a back injury and can't walk or bend his legs without a man's pain.
The tape becomes even more harrowing.
The guards try to make the prisoner stand up and hold a walking frame.
He falls to the floor, crying in agony.
They taser him again. He runs out of the energy and breath to cry and just lies there moaning.
One of the most recent videotapes was filmed in January last year.
A surveillance camera in a youth institution in California records an argument between staff members and two wards.
They're not called prisoners. One of the youths hits a staff member in the face.
He knocks the ward to the floor and then sits astride him, punching him over and over again in the head.
Watching the tape, you can almost feel each blow.
The second youth is also punched and kicked in the head, even after he's been handcuffed.
Other staff just stand around and watch.
We also collected some truly horrific photographs a few years ago in Florida.
The new warden of the High Security State Prison ordered an end to the videoing of use-of-force operations.
So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners.
But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals.
Photographs taken by the lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his lip.
Sorry, over his head.
Another is covered in an angry ratchet across his neck, back, and arms.
A third has deeper burns in his buttocks.
So, I mean, this stuff can go on and on and on.
Um...
We really don't need to go into all of these details.
And this, of course, is the torture itself.
Let's have a look at some of the facts that are going on.
Tough sentencing laws, a record number of drug offenders, and high crime rates have contributed to the U.S. having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts.
A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30th showed that a record 7 million people, or one in every 32 American adults, were behind bars, on probation, or on parole at the end of last year.
Of that total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, and over the next few years, another 200,000 are going to be added to that number of For a total cost of $28 billion, I think.
According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London, more people are behind bars in the United States than in any other country.
China ranks second with 1.5 million prisoners, followed by Russia with 870,000.
The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 for 100,000 people is the highest, followed by 611 Russia and 547 for St.
Kitts and Nevis. In contrast, the incarceration rates...
Well, yeah.
The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.
We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens, says Ethel Nettleman of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.
We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe, with a much larger population incarcerates for all offences.
We send more people to prison for more different offences for longer periods of time than anyone else.
This is Ryan King. Drug offenders account for about 2 million of the 7 million In prison on probation or parole, adding that other countries often stress treatment instead of incarceration.
That's the Christian thing.
Commenting on what the prison figures show about U.S. society, King said that various social programs, including those dealing with education, poverty, urban development, health care, and child care, have failed.
Well, let's not get into their solutions.
That is just a mess.
Now, the other side, Kent Scheidegger, a legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, The high prison numbers represented a proper response to the crime problem in the US. Locking up more criminals has contributed to lower crime rates, he said.
The hand-wringing over the incarceration rate is missing the mark, he said.
Scheidegger says that the high prison population reflected cultural differences, with the United States having far higher crime rates than European nations or Japan.
We have more crime.
More crime gets you more prisoners.
Julie Stewart, president of the group's Families Against Mandatory Minimums, blah, blah, blah, says, why are so many people in prison blamed mandatory sentencing laws and the record number of nonviolent drug offenders subjected to them?
So, let's have a look at some of the prisoners' voices.
These are based on some interviews that are given to prisoners.
Said here, says MP from Arkansas, On an event, a per se federal civil rights complaint filed 8296.
I had no choice but to submit to being inmate B's prison wife.
Out of fear for my life, I submitted to sucking his dick, being fucked in my ass, and performing other duties as a woman, such as making his bed.
In all reality, I was his slave, as the officials of the Arkansas Department of Corrections under the color of law did nothing.
Did absolutely nothing.
JG from Minnesota, 8896.
Most of the prisoners who rape are spending from five to life and are part of a gang.
They pick a loner, smaller, weaker individual, and make that person into a homosexual, then sell him to other inmates or gangs.
Anywhere from a pack of cigarettes to two cartons, no one cares about you or anything else.
If they show kindness or are trying to be helpful, it's only because they want something.
And if they're offering you protection, you can guarantee that they're going to seek sexual favors.
When an inmate comes in for the first time and doesn't know anyone, I've been sentenced for a DUI offense.
My third one. Have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically.
I have been raped by up to five black men and two white men at a time.
I've had knives at my head and throat.
I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't think I'd ever see straight again.
One time when I refused to enter a cell, I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segregation, though I had only wanted to prevent the same and worse by not locking up with my cellmate.
There is no supervision after lockdown.
I was given a conduct report.
I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was.
He told me that, off the record, he suggests that I find a man who I would or could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening.
I have requested protective custody only to be denied.
It is not available here.
He also said that there was nowhere to run to and it would be best for me to accept things.
I probably have AIDS now.
I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking too hard on all this.
I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomized to prevent so much damage and struggles, ripping and tearing.
Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well.
Something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for.
R.B. Colorado, 9196 If a person is timid or shy, or as a person, or as prison inmates term him, weak, either mentally or physically, he stands to be a victim of physical and or sexual assault.
T.A. Delaware, 9296 I'm giving you a brief description of the incidents I have suffered from while I've been in this institution.
To begin with, on August 1, 1996, approximately 12.30pm, I was housed in E-Building.
I went to the officials on duty about a problem I was having with two inmates, but it was disregarded.
Then, around and about August 16, 1996, I was sexually assaulted by the same two inmates.
I was then taken to the medical department in Christiana Hospital for treatment.
It's a big rumour that one inmate has AIDS. LV Arkansas 9396.
Inmates confined for sexual offenses, especially those against juvenile victims, are at the bottom of the pecking order and consequently most often victimized.
Because of their crime, the general population justifies using their weakness by labeling rape just punishment for their crime.
See, this is the company you keep if you're in this kind of mindset.
Sexual offenders are the number one target group for prisoner rape.
Inmates who come to prison at an early age are the second target group.
Being younger, more physically attractive, and less likely to be infected with HIV, this group needs to learn not to come back to prison a second time.
Obviously, this is a poor justification for rape, but in the prison's social structure, any excuse will do.
TB Texas, 9396.
I hate to say this, but if you weren't racist when you came to prison, more than likely you will be when you leave.
In Texas, prisons, race is the main issue, and until people wake up and realize that, nothing will change.
KS Arkansas. 9496.
I was raped in prison from February 91 through November 91.
From that, it left me HIV positive.
And... JG Florida 9496.
I have been sexually assaulted twice since being incarcerated.
Both times the staff refused to do anything except to lock me up and make accusations that I'm homosexual and that if I pursue legal action, they'd ship me and both times they did.
I think that means move the prisoner.
JS Tennessee 9596.
What is more prevalent at TCIP, which by the way is Medium Security Rural Institution, is best called coercion.
I suppose you have an idea what these engagements entail.
The victim is usually tricked into owing a favour.
Here, this is usually drugs and with the perpetrator seeming to be, to the victim, a really swell fellow in all.
Soon, however, the victim is asked to repay all those joints or licks of dope right away.
Of course, he has no drugs or money and the only alternative is sexual favours.
Once a prisoner is turned out, it's pretty much a done deal.
I guess a good many victims just want to do their time and not risk any trouble, so they submit.
The coercion type abuse has continued because of their covert nature.
From the way such attacks manifest, it can seem to others, administrators and prisoners, that the victims are just homosexual to begin with.
Why else would they allow such a thing to happen, the people might ask?
BL Florida, 9596.
I was young, and yes, I was weak.
My weight was only 120 pounds.
The first few months I was raped and beat up many times.
I would always fight back. I wanted my attackers to know I was not a willing subject for their evilness.
I went to the guards for help and was told there was nothing that could be done, that I would have to stand up like a man and take care of my own troubles.
JJ California, 9696.
Some prison rapists are so ignorant or delusional, they imagine the rape victim to be The homosexual, because he's doing the taking, not dishing it out.
He's gay. He's performing a homosexual act.
DA Nebraska 9696 The rapes seem to be for two main reasons.
One, they hurt. Someone must pay.
Two, being deprived of consensual sex and self-centered.
Any hole will do. Power, control, revenge seem to top the reasons for rape.
The person assaulted is either seen as weaker or gang-banged if seen as stuck-up, as a stuck-up kind of person.
You know, refuses to swear, actually admits he is guilty, is seeking help, etc.
I have yet to hear of an inmate being charged in court with sexual assault of an inmate.
Have you? If just one was found guilty, got more time, things would change.
J.D. Texas, 9696.
On January 27, 1993, I was forcibly raped.
I was held down while at least three black inmates had anal intercourse using my rectum as a sexual pleasure release.
From that day on, I was classified as a homosexual and was sold from one inmate to the next.
I was sold for a $2.25 bag of coffee.
Blacks tend to rape the white inmates and force themselves on weaker inmates.
I am one of the weaker inmates.
MF Ohio 9696 Most guys raped are guys there for the first time locked up between the ages of 1830.
They look young, not strong, looks lonely, scared.
Guys watch these things. MF Ohio 9696.
A lot of guys don't say anything about what happens to them because they've got to live there.
What if they told? What could happen to them?
I know you think they should tell what happens to them, but until you put yourself in their shoes, you don't know what you would do.
Some prisoners are hot.
Some prisoners are hot. Fights, killings, etc.
every day. One thing guys don't like is guys who tell on others.
What are your chances if you told on someone?
So, I mean, you could go on and on with this kind of stuff, and I think I have to, as much as I can really enjoy or listen to or deal with.
So, let me just take a quick pause and grab a cup of coffee.
So... This is the reality, of course, of what goes on in these kinds of institutions.
This is the life that you are suggesting is just punishment for crime.
And again, as I mentioned yesterday, it's hard for me to understand how the committing of more crimes sort of somehow erases the committing of past crimes.
And I think it's also important to understand that The kinds of people who are going to be drawn towards dealing with these kinds of prisoners are not mentally healthy.
A happy, healthy, positive and rational person does not want to put himself in coercive control over a gang of, let's say, sociopathic, and of course there are some who are sociopathic by nature, There are some who become sociopathic as a result of the extraordinary abuse that they're submitted to, or at least develop sociopathic tendencies.
And there are those who are innocent, of course.
And to be in an environment...
This is something to understand, right?
About human nature and about human motivation.
It's one thing to say, well, you know, these subhuman animals, there's no punishment that's too strong or anything like that.
But... You also, I think, it's important to understand what this does to the gods as well.
It's important to understand what this does to the gods as well.
We talked about the prisoners, of course, yesterday a little bit, and we can talk about them some more, but I think that the more challenging thing to deal with is the problem of what happens to the prison gods, to those who are Directly or even tertially involved in this kind of system.
So you spend your days beating up on prisoners or ignoring their screams and pleas for mercy as they're brutalized and raped in gang situations or settings.
And what does that do to your own humanity, to your own capacity for empathy, for sympathy?
Does it not, in fact, reinforce the most brutal tendencies in both the prisoners and in the guards, and in anybody, really, who comes into any significant kind of contact with the system?
So, if we recognize that ideally, and I think any sane human being would agree with this, that ideally, a couple of principles to understand about crime and punishment.
Ideally, prevention of crime is far better than curing of crime, just as it is in medicine.
Prevention of diabetes is better than curing it.
Prevention of cancer is better than curing it.
Prevention of crime is far better than the cure of crime.
So, if we accept that, and we also accept that trauma has a relationship, I'm not going to attempt to prove anything, but let's just say, That trauma has a relationship to crime,
to criminality. Children who are brutalized, tortured, verbally abused, physically abused, in pretty extreme ways, of course, have a much higher prevalence of becoming criminals.
The prevalence of sexual abuse victims in women's prisons is very, very high.
I can't recall the exact number, but It was either 40 or 60%, but extraordinarily high.
And of course, that's just the self-admitted ones.
There'll be a number of people who can't remember because it happened too early, who have memories they can't access, or who simply don't tell the truth to whoever is asking them the question.
So, we can, I think, understand that the relationship between abuse and criminality is pretty significant.
So, clearly the best way to deal with crime, if we accept these two premises, the best way to deal with crime is to figure out situations in which children can be treated better.
Sort of number one.
And the second way to positively, I think, deal with issues of criminality Is to refrain from exactly more violence and torture on criminals.
So, if you find ways or find motivations for parents to treat their children better, then you will be preventing crime.
Because children will not grow up to be criminals, they're less likely to grow up to be criminals.
Similarly, if you...
Can find ways of reducing the amount of violent trauma that is experienced by prisoners or people who've committed crimes.
And this is not to say that there should be no consequences to their actions.
I'm not talking about that. But if we can find ways to not continue the cycle of violence, then I think that's pretty important.
The other thing, of course, is that we need to have a definition of crime That is widened to encompass issues such as being a soldier, such as being a prison guard, such as being a policeman, such as being a political leader who orders a war.
If we can expand our definition of crime to include these categories, then it's obviously very clear to see that it would not be a rational situation to say that we should give a monopoly of violence To a group of individuals in order that they should be able to positively deal with the problems of violence.
That doesn't really help.
Giving power to the government to solve a problem is like putting your head into a guillotine to solve a headache.
Actually, no, because the guillotine does at least solve the problem of the headache.
So it's like shooting off your toe to solve a headache.
Maybe it distracts you for a bit, but the cure is far worse than the illness.
So if we can sort of understand that, and if we can also understand that the idly standing by While crimes are being committed and while people are sort of under your jurisdiction in sort of the prison situation,
and this would occur in a private prison situation, this would occur any prison situation that you come up with, is going to be faced with the same problem because there is always going to be the issue which cannot be surrounded and cannot be wished away.
Which is, who the hell wants to become a prison guard?
Well, a sadist. I say this to somebody who's not very intelligent, somebody who's not wise, somebody who's not moral, somebody who's not decent.
So, you simply cannot get healthy people to become prison guards.
You can't get healthy people to run prisons.
It just would never be fathomable.
So, and sorry, this is different from being a cop and it's different from being a soldier.
Being a soldier, at least people have the capacity to fight back.
With a cop, at least people have the capacity to evade you.
But a prison guard is the ultimate slave owner, right?
I mean, they're locked up. They're dependent on you for everything.
There is no external third party to mediate disputes.
There is nothing but brutality.
It is the sickest kind of sadist who's going to become a prison guard, and the sickness spreads to his family or her family.
To his or her children and spreads out.
It's not that the violence and the sadism is not contained within the prison, even if the prisoners were never released.
The violence and the sadism is not contained within the prison because people come and go to and from the prison all the time and the sickness spreads.
The prison is a ground zero for irradiating waves of sadism and masochism and horror and torture and abuse that radiates that one.
You cannot Live in an environment where people are getting raped and beaten and screaming for help and you don't do anything because that's the system and then go home and have a positive and productive loving relationship with your wife and children.
It simply can't happen.
And the infection that spreads out from prisons is truly, truly, it's like a Metastasizing cancer, the vileness that spreads out from prisons, the polarization of the population that spreads out from prisons into the hawks and the doves, right? The rehabilitation versus the punishment group.
Prisons polarize a society.
Prisons spread sickness because you cannot have a neutral relationship to a system of rape-based slavery.
It's worse. I would rather be a slave than I would be in prison.
Because the slave owner at least has economic incentive to keep you relatively healthy.
But no such incentive occurs in a prison.
So I would strongly recommend that you look at the costs of this kind of perspective on prisons.
If you're sort of pro-punishment and nothing too bad can happen to these evil people and so on.
I think it's important to look at the hidden costs of it.
The reinfliction of violence upon people who became evil largely due to the original infliction of violence.
It doesn't really make any sense.
The spread of crime that occurs both within the prisons and to whoever guards the prisoners.
That spread of crime is important to understand, I would say.
The issue of the infection of crime control, violence, degradation, torture, murder, rape, that sort of pustulous environment, the effect that it has to have people come and go from that environment and to take that sickness and sadism to others outside in the community, to their friends, to their family.
The polarization and dehumanization of society that occurs With the prison situation, with the prison problem, let's say.
Jesus Christ, it's cold.
All of these sorts of things are far too high a price to pay for a system that does nothing to prevent and solve the problems of crime anyway.
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