Why Not Just Waterboard Them?

One of the dirty little tricks American interrogator/torturers adopted during the War on Terror has made it to the homeland.  It is subjecting the prisoner to the prolonged stress of intense cold.   That, according to lawyers, is a method being used against hunger-striking prisoners by California prison guards.

Prison guards are trying to break a hunger strike involving thousands of prisoners in California by blasting cells with cold air, confiscating legal documents and, in one case, banning lawyers, according to legal representatives and relatives.

Authorities have taken the action, it is alleged, in retaliation for a strike which entered its 12th day on Friday, piling pressure on the state's troubled penal system. Lawyers say the health of the men is being put at risk.

An estimated 30,000 inmates in 33 jails launched the hunger strike on 8 June, the biggest in the state's history, to protest against solitary confinement and other conditions they said amounted to torture.

At any one time, California holds about 12,000 inmates in extreme isolation, including some who have been in windowless boxes known as security housing units (SHUs) for decades. Guards say it is a vital tool to tame gang violence.

Make no mistake about it, solitary confinement is psychological torture, plain and simple.  It's a form of torture that's particularly popular with authorities in the United States where an estimated 80,000 inmates are confined in total isolation.   The record, as far as anyone knows, is held by an inmate who has spent 29-years in solitary confinement.

It's so perfect.   When prisoners revolt against torture, introduce them to another type of torture.   What's next - electroshock, waterboarding?

Less Crime, More Inmates - Mission Accomplished, Steve

Only in Conservative Canada. Crime continues to fall but that won't stop the Harpies from slinging more Canadians behind bars. I guess it's all the result of Stevie's "get tough on crime before it's gone" policies. From the Canadian Press:

One analyst suggested judges are growing leery of releasing people on bail in the face of a federal government that's pushing a law-and-order agenda.

"I think, overall, we've seen in recent years concern that's been expressed through the Conservative government about judges supposedly being soft on sentencing," said David MacAlister of the Institute for Studies in Criminal Justice Policy at Simon Fraser University.
"Not that I think they ever were, but I think that's bound to have an impact on judges. They're going to be sentencing people for longer periods of time and holding people they might otherwise have released just because of the pressure."

He said crime rates don't explain the rise: "Crime rates have steadily been coming down. There isn't more crime."

While more adults were in jail, the average number of young people aged 12 to 17 in custody on any given day went down, continuing a decline that began with adoption of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in 2003.

MacAlister said it's "inevitable" that the prison population will rise again if the Tory legislation on minimum sentences passes.

"Once you start instituting mandatory sentencing, your incarceration rate is bound to increase," he said.

Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society, said the government's get-tough agenda is going to require more prisons.

"This is our future," he said of the rising incarceration rate. "I sometimes think this agenda is about building more prisons."