Beat down in Dannemora

Prisons are hotbeds of violence. No argument there. The more I read the news (on-line and in print) the more I find that the violence is of prison guards against the prisoners. And rarely if ever are the guards prosecuted for their crimes against the prisoners.

The Buffalo News has a NY Times article on the abuse, beating, and death of a prisoner that suffered from schizophrenia at the hands of guards and IN SPITE OF all evidence that shows that the guards are lying about what happened, no one was arrested, charged, tried, or sentenced for what happened.

I remember when President (sic) Ronald Reagan closed down the public mental health facilities stating that it would save taxpayers dollars. Instead we wound up with a large population of mentally ill homeless people on the streets and in prisons because they did not have access to the mental health services that they needed. (Reagan lied on this occasion, as he did so many other times. He lacked the leadership qualities to be President.)

Was Leonard Strickland one of those people that would have been better served by a mental health facility than a prison? We'll never know. He's dead at the hands of prison guards that the state refuses to charge.

Drug problems are a social issue that are better served by drug counsellors and social workers. Yet we throw people in prison for buying and using drugs. It would cost society less to give them drug counselling. But then the private prisons make no money. (For the record: Dannemora is a state prison facility. Maximum security.)

The real question is why do we have prisons?

Population control. Capitalism deliberately will not give everyone full time employment because it needs the reserve army of labor (intellectual way of saying “the unemployed) to keep the workers that do have jobs scared and controlled. If they form a union and strike, then the corporate controllers can bring in scab labour and use publicly funded police forces to make sure that the scab workers can get into the plants to overproduce what people can not afford to purchase.

Why do people use drugs and alcohol?

To numb the pain of working in an empty and meaningless capitalist society. Let's face it – most work is mind numbing and people look forward more to the work day ending and the weekend (or days off) than they do to work. The work that they do is meaningless and they are just looking for a way to numb the pain. If they do it the wrong way (use drugs & get caught ; get nailed for DWI, DUI, public intoxication, or other “crime”) they are arrested and thrown into jail or prison. An unnatural environment if there ever was one.

I remember (barely) the Attica uprisings of the 1970s. By all accounts, it was the same situation as at Dannemora and other prisons.

Prisoners are human beings that have made a poor judgement call and are also victims of the capitalist economic system that we are living under.

We need to change how prisons are run and the criminal justice system.

1. Drug and other non-violent offences need to be handled as social issues, not criminal issues. Use social workers and counsellors that are professionally trained to handle these situations rather than police officers and other criminal justice officials that are not.

2. The mentally ill/handicapped need to be put into environments where they can have their conditions managed. They need mental counselling and psychological services, not brutal prison environments.

3. Workers need jobs. 40 hours of work at 30 hours pay, And the appropriate health and retirement benefits that go with full employment, If people could actually work meaningful career positions that used their talents and abilities the crime rate would drop exponentially.

4. For those members of society that actually “deserve” punishment – restorative justice has been shown to reduce recidivism better than the current criminal punishment system that we have. Restitution shows the price of the crime better than the current system.

There are some that deserve confinement because of the actions that they have committed. However, with these reforms in place, those people would be few and far between.

And that's the goal.

How are things in Dannemora?

Don't ask the prison guards.

You won't get the truth.

(Many apologies to the Irish that read this.  For some reason I was singing "How are things in Glocca Morra?"  before I read this article.  I like that song.  Unfortunately the scansion matched Dannemora and the rest is,  well, a sad situation.)

Dec 19 - Reason for the title change.  It was originally "How are things in Dannemora?"  as explained above. Then the flu/cold that I was dealing with got real  bad.  A friend of mine joked that maybe I had upset an Irish spirit.  We both laughed.  And about a minute later both of us because real serious.  Thus the title change and more apologies to the Irish.  It is a beautiful love song and should be left as such.

Thank you.