Imprisoned former Daily Telegraph publisher says US justice and prison systems are flawed
Now that Lord Conrad Black (former Daily Telegraph proprietor) is in prison, he has come to the conclusion that the US justice and prison systems (and the "war on drugs") are flawed.
The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice.From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justiceThe US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.
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The best way to turn a conservative into a liberal is to put them in jail.
Funny how everything that gets privatized ends up screwing us.
Come on token boingboing Republican: give me that counter example! I dare you!
the moment he's out he'll reverse everything he said
Well he would say that, wouldn't he?
The best way to turn a liberal into a conservative is to rob them at gunpoint.
@1: That's funny, because the best way to turn a liberal into a conservative is to wait for him to get mugged. (But sometimes it takes several iterations.)
"I'm in jail and it sucks" is an inherently liberal sentiment?
He sounds like a man who has realized for the first time in his life, that his money can't buy everything. Like innocence.
We in Canada have a special little hate-on for our former citizen Mr. Black.
The House of Lords can't save you now, Conrad!
I'm a liberal but I would still shoot a mugger in the face.
Well, I've been mugged and I've been arrested (mistaken identity).
I'm a liberal. Make of that what you will.
If the US government would acknowledge our right to modify our body chemistry, ninety per cent of the prison population could go home. Now that would be change I could believe in.
Besides, it's already in the Constitution. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
@ UglyCanuck & Geekman: Agreed.
I don't recall Lord Black saying anything against the justice system prior to his arrest and conviction. He sure didn't seem to mind breaking the law when he wasn't getting caught.
(and yes, I'm a Canadian and not a fan of Lord Black. Didn't go over so well here when he decided to give up his Canadian citizenship for a place in the House of Lords, then ask for it back when he got into trouble.)
I think this is proof that you don't have to be pure and saintly to be right occasionally. This guy (Conrad Black) is a total jackhole, but everything in the second paragraph quoted above is true.
From Oscar Wild to Geoffrey Archer - every rich, privileged person who has ever been sent to jail ends up concluding that the system that put them there is awful and needs improving. Conrad Black appears to be just the latest in that long line of tradition. They always seem to compare it to boarding school as well.
Toffs: they didn't get where they are by being original.
Well, all good and true points, and well argued. Now, this would have a lot more credibility if he had had the courage to say any of this BEFORE being thrown in prison.
every rich, privileged person who has ever been sent to jail ends up concluding that the system that put them there is awful and needs improving.
But Martha Stewart said it elegantly and compassionately:
"Some of the women who became my friends while I was incarcerated have visited with me. There are some very interesting women there of great value to society, and I keep in contact with them. We have some broken systems in this country - one is the prison system."
there are current and former law enforcement officials who get it:
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/130336.html
Never been in prison, don't want to. Mainly because of the raping.
And while the entire justice system is not 'fucked', the fact that we put people in prison for personal possession of drugs is. And the prison system as a whole is, in fact, fucked.
And I have been mugged. Still pretty liberal.
Liberals are supposed to oppose jailing muggers now? Crap, I must have missed the memo.
#15 - All the poor, underprivileged people who get sent to prison pretty much feel the same way. Funny that.
He's correct, some people are unnecessarily, even unfairly imprisoned.
But Conrad Black is not one of those people.
"Martha Stewart said it elegantly and compassionately..."
I love Martha.
Martha Stewart for US Secretary of Everything!
The feds can't even keep drugs out of their high security prisons. How do they expect to keep them out of the country?
Here is a free 90 minutes of PBS Frontline journalism on the subject. The Plea
We who worked at the newspapers owned by Mr. Black endured years without salary raises, "hiring freezes" and other indignities while he funneled all the profits into his own pocketbook. For that alone, he deserves imprisonment. It was hollow justice, however. Most of the papers he bought ended up as hollowed out wrecks after he was through with them.
@12, Frank W:
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can be found nowhere in the US Constitution; that's the Declaration of Independence. Besides, that's just a rephrasing of Locke's "life, liberty, and property," as the DoI is heavily Lockean.
I don't know what Conrad's problem is. There's nobody he's likely to meet in the prison system that's scarier than the wife he has waiting at home.
The best way to turn a liberal and a conservative into agreeable people is to (Dalek voice) EXTERMINATE them all.
To #28,worthawholebean:
That's true, but Jefferson DID change it to "the pursuit of happiness." Still, I don't think he was talking about illicit substances. Maybe he was. I don't know. God bless our vague founding fathers. They DID like to get their drink on......
@19: The problem is that prison is fucked as a concept; it's not just the US's particular implementation. Recidivism is absurdly high for a "correctional" system, and it just plain doesn't work as a disincentive for a large category of criminals.
I know people in the UK we're involved in the prison reform movement. I'm sure Lord Black will be writing checks to them any day now.
Any ... day... now...
@ worthawholebean: My bad. I'm an Unamerican living in Amsterdam. Still, there they are: the wonderful words “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. Which was written on hemp paper, by the way.
You should really get interested in the history of hemp in America. It and tobacco have always been America's two biggest cash crops. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. And then, there's this propaganda movie from 1942.
World gone wrong.
Conrad Black is agreeing with me.
there's no place like home there's no place like home there's no place like home there's no place like home there's no place like home there's no place like home there's no place like home
I'm not sure that 'carceral state' means what he thinks it does.
I just wanted to repeat that. It feels good.
I can't believe I read the whole thing... I did though, and while agree with part of his article, bringing up the financial crisis going on now makes absolutely no sense. Its as if he can't bring himself to criticize big money and markets in any way, even when making the point that he's in jail unfairly because jailing people has become a marketable process influenced by big money.
note it's "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"... you don't have a right to "Life, Liberty and Happiness"... so you aren't actually allowed to achieve it...
His points are true.
- A HUGE number of people in prison wouldn't be there if they hadn't been steamrollered. If you were there, your original talk with the prosecutor goes something like this:
Prosecutor: Guess what, you need a million dollar lawyer. You don't have one, and you aren't clever enough to help such a lawyer anyway. We, however, process people like you three times an hour. We are VERY clever. We get lots of practice doing this.
You: I'll tell it to the judge. You can't suppress the truth.
Prosecutor: Guess what? Juries and judges believe us, not you. The presumption is guilt. Too bad. And we don't have to produce truth, or evidence, son. We just have to tell a story that they'll believe.
Here's the thing: you go to prison, where, I guarantee you, you will be raped and will almost certainly get HPV, herpes, syphillis, gonorrhea, and HIV and hell yeah, full blown AIDS. No guard will help you. Maybe you can cut a deal with a big guy or a gang, keep yourself cleaner than just being the toy for the whole cell block.
OR: this is where you simply plead guilty to a lesser charge. We may jack it up to a greater charge later, if we feel like it, but as of right now, this is your deal: plead guilty, we don't have to take it to trial, and you only do two or three years tops.
If you fight it, if we have to take it to trial, we will prosecute you on a bigger charge, and you will be taking it for at least a decade. Kiss your wife, kids, family, your money, your friends, your apartment, your dogs, goodbye. And you don't get to vote anymore, but that's a done deal, so forget it. Job's too, career, that's over. But take it or leave it.
Hell, you might get probation! You get to keep your cats or whatever. But not if you fight us - then we take it all away.
And oh, yeah: your cellmate will testify that you confessed to the bigger charge. Yeah, we can't tell you, and you can't tell the judge or jury, that he's getting a few years taken off his sentence for being so cooperative with the DA's office in giving us this information.
So, I'd advise you, sign the confession. This is your first and only offer. And we don't care either way.
--
And that is what happens tens of thousands of times a year in the USA. And that is Black is talking about. We don't have justice, we have law, and law has all the tools and you have none. And almost all the "crimes" involve possession of a plant.
Here's a thing: the US prison population is a source of labor for manufacturing businesses. They now have the ultimate dream: free labor. And the supply is practically endless. And no OSHA inspectors needed.
I'm a little confused as to his point about Corrections officers' unions. I mean, because if there's ANYTHING corrections officers are going to agitate for, it's going to be MORE PRISON CROWDING. After all, what union *WOULDN'T* want more work and fewer positions for its members?
Prison guards sure as hell don't want crowding. But they DO want more prisons. More career opportunity. It's like a pilot being for more airlines.
@ #42: Yes, but more prisons != prison crowding. Quite the opposite, in fact. Corrections unions' interests lie in decreasing prison crowding while increasing the number of corrections positions.
I mean, I'm not saying that the whole prison-industrial complex system doesn't contain an awful lot of moral hazard, I'm just saying that the link he drew, corrections officers' unions => more prison crowding is rather incoherent at best, and seems to be, as #37 suggested with , a case of this guy trying to bend over backwards to blame everyone except the market itself.
Sorry. There's no such thing as a conservative in the US, with the possible exception of Ron Paul.
The goal of these so-called conservatives is to create enough laws so that everyone is breaking some law at all times. This gives the police the right to arrest anyone they want, at any time, on trumped-up charges (look what happened around the RNC this last year).
Of course, the "conservative"/Red States being filled with hillbillies who don't know how to innovate, they need private prisons and defense contractors (in conjunction with PLENTY of blue state money) in order to maintain their standard of living despite living in a world that is increasingly competitive.
You want conservative? How about not trying to legislate what two consenting adults do on private property? How about not legislating what someone else puts into their body? How about not taking money from blue states to pump into your moribund economies? How about avoiding foreign entanglements?
No, there are no conservatives in the US.
No, there are no conservatives in the US.
I want to conserve wildlife and natural resources. I want to conserve art and culture. I even want to conserve the Constitution. Doesn't that make me really, really conservative?
Conservationist?
Antinous; No, that makes you one of them lefty-pinko, mushroom pickin', pot smokin', sex-enjoyin' hippies.
Sadly, only the first one really applies.
To misquote Meatloaf, "One out of four ain't bad."