Prisoners call out to protesters and family members gathered outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on Feb. 3 in Brooklyn. By Spencer J. Weinreich Spencer J. Weinreich is a Ph.D. student in the history of science at Princeton University and an editor for JHIBlog. March 7 at 6:00 AM Brooklyn’s now infamous Metropolitan Detention Center is just the latest prison to spark outrage over conditions testing the Eighth Amendment’s protections against “cruel and unusual punishments.
There have been designated places for confining people, whether to punish, coerce or control, since at least the days of Ancient Greece. But the prison as we know it, as the default form of judicial punishment, emerged in the late 18th century. One of its prophets was the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism. In 1787, Bentham published “Panopticon,” a scheme for a perfect prison organized around inmates’ sense of constant surveillance.
Despite Bentham’s notional respect for prisoners’ interests, and however elaborate his plans, his work also reflects a simpler sentiment, one of lasting influence: that criminals are a different, lesser sort of being than the free citizen. The 19th-century founders of the U.S. penal system, many of them avid readers of Bentham, took this for granted. Within the prison’s gates, the inmate was, to quote one warden, “literally buried from the world.
Even the 13th Amendment excluded inmates from its protection: Involuntary servitude was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” To this day, conviction justifies every bit of Panopticon economizing: spartan meals, extortionate fees, labor so pitifully paid it verges on parody.
If there’s a power outage, the prisoners aren’t the only ones going without heat. The guards and everyone working there had to also suffer without heat. Why is this even news? Prisoners everywhere complain about things, they get medical, 3 meals and other things on our money.
Stop committing crimes.
TL;DR Because corporate fascists don't give a fart from a rat's azz during a hurricane about human life, law, or rights, and never have. They care about profits. Full. Stop.
Are you kidding prisoners treated and live better than majority of middle class do without working.
The DC non capitalists resistance cabal do not want to merely impeach POTUS, the non capitalists and their alleged media they back, want POTUS to be imprisoned. Some of the cabal members did the same thing to James Trafficant, they expelled the guy and had him imprisoned 8 yrs
We are at a point where, in the eyes of many, simply saying someone committed a crime justifies murdering them. In a climate like that, prisoner abuse is bound to happen.
Trumps in the Red House
Lol criminals
Israelidemocracy !! TerroristIsraelis kept 13-year-old Palestinian child in a metal cage for 2 hours just for fun, scaring him, until residents were able to force them to release him. IsraeliCrimes StopArmingIsrael SaveChildren BDS