Don’t forget the part where your cellmate is laying on his bunk 3 feet away with not a damn thing separating you.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You have no idea the relative luxury you’re currently complaining about. Try a solid stainless steel prison toilet. They’re torturously cold to sit on in the winter, and also shorter with a higher water level.
If you don’t grab ahold of Mr. Winky before sitting down he’s going to be bobbing in the water you’re shitting into. Make sure you grab from the base of the balls, of they’re just going to plié down into the icy water too.
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Like why even make them like that other than punishment. They dont need to be like that.
I get their prisoners and all, but have to hold your dick or it falls in the water seems like its above and beyond.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 1 week ago
No clue. A whole lot of the things they do are pretty crazy. It’s definitely something more people should know more about.
We all hear “innocent until proven guilty” so many times and see things like CSI online where they do super magic science to make sure they got the right person. That isn’t how the US works. You don’t get a CSI team. You don’t even get someone looking for evidence. The only way to get someone investigating the scene all looking for things that prove you didn’t commit a crime or to show someone else was there is if you have the money to pay for a good lawyer and then even more to give them for them to hire someone to do that for you. And if it’s something that could be a big piece of evidence but it would need CSI science stuff done? You have to pay a lab to do that too.
If you can’t afford a lawyer, you get a “public defender.” Their name is a lie. Almost none of them try to actually defend anyone. They’re being paid some base amount and forced to do it. The real reason behind it is so there is someone to push through and file the legal paperwork that needs done on your end. That is all.
If you have a public defender, and you tell them that your cellphone or something from your place has evidence proving you had nothing to do with this crime they are not going to try to find that thing and look. That is not their job. They are not an investigator you are paying to do that. If your lucky they will inform the police. Unless the police hear something big and important, they are just going to brush it off. Everyone insists they’re really innocent. They don’t care.
Sit there for 18 months waiting for this to all somehow get cleared up. You didn’t do anything wrong. Well, not this thing at least. You’re an American. You’re innocent until proven guilty. That’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s not how it works at all. 95%+ of people end up pleaing to a lesser charge. Only 5% of so of cases go to trial. Because they don’t want you to go to trial. They leave in you in jail for months to years threatening you with decades in prison. Then eventually your public defender comes in and says you’re lucky and the Prosecutor is offering you a crazy deal and instead of the 20 years they’ve been threatening you with for almost 2 years now if you plea guilty to some lesser thing they will make it 5 years instead. After a while that sounds like a blessing. Better than 2 years sitting there hearing 20 over and over. A lot of the time if someone denies that they’ll come back and offer 3. Maybe even 2 and time serves counts so you walk out in 18 days.
Pretty much everyone takes the deal. The deal means you’re pleaing guilty. You did nothing wrong, and you’re not a felon for life. Because you were poor. That’s how the system works here. “Innocent until proven guilty” is for the rich. They can hire investigators and lawyers. They can pay for ‘expert witnesses’ to come in and testify how in their expert opinion as a whatever it couldn’t have been them. It’s literally paying people to come testify that they’re innocent. Rich people get to do that and pretty much always make it doubtful enough they get off.
Poor people are targeted. Cops, prosecutes, judges all want great looking arrest and conviction numbers. People who can’t afford to defend themselves are easier. They take a plea deal, and that means they’re saying they’re guilty of something, and that means they’re convicted.
Then there’s the fun of the for-profit prison system where everything from phone calls to boxers to soap to toilet paper can cost you money. If you don’t have someone on the outside providing a whole lot of money, you live in rags. Everything costs money, and lots of money. The for-profit prisons are paif by the govs for each filthy criminal in a bed there, then they make extra contracting with phone companies, and vendors, and anything they can. They sell places the right to sell you overpriced shit.
Oh, and they sell you. Check out the 13th Amendment. If you’ve been convicted of a crime, any crime, it’s legal for them to use you as slave labor. Tons of companies do it. They pay prisoners some insane amount like $1/hr to spend 40 hours/wk boxing up shit at some warehouse they have located inside the prison. If the prison tells you to go do some job and you say no, they can and will punish you for that. You are a slave and you do as told.