... but some of their questions might be. Our prison law class today visited the LA Men's Central Jail, described by one of the deputies there as "the largest jail in the free world." (Note to civilians: in the industry, a jail and a prison are different. A jail is a county facility for inmates who are defendants in a current trial, or who have sentences less than one year. A prison is a state or federal facility where you go for a longer sentence, e.g. 25 to life.)
The deputies who worked at the jail were unusually friendly and chipper. Chipper in a way I wouldn't expect if part of my job entailed the daily risk of being stabbed with a homemade knife that had been dipped in human shit infected with god knows what. But the first deputy I met cheerily recounted his stabbing under these exact circumstances, and the year of blood tests that followed.
Sending law students on a jail tour is a good news / bad news deal. The good news is that you're getting off campus to see some real crime & punishment. I'm in favor of field trips, and they are curiously absent from the law school curriculum, considering how many courts, jails, prisons, etc. are happy to have visitors.
The bad news is that the blithe liberalism that plays well on a law campus doesn't really translate to jail. When you meet deputies, you get a different perspective on political conservatism: here are guys (it's all guys) who definitely want their facility to be unpleasant for prisoners.
However, for them it's not about some vague concept of being "tough on crime" in the sense of social agenda; it's about the concrete concept of not wanting to be killed on the job tomorrow. The jail conditions are directly connected to safety. If they're voting for republicans, it's because republicans are more likely to reduce their likelihood of death, and make sure the deputies are paid adequately well for the risk that remains.
Another deputy was explaining to me that there are times when the best response to an aggressive prisoner is to beat him with a maglite. If I had read that in the paper, I'd think "oh, the terrible violations of civil rights." But at the end of a jail tour, I was thinking "This is a really shitty, dangerous job. And I don't want to do it. And I wouldn't want anyone I know to do it. But we need someone to do it. And this guy is willing to do it. Who the hell am I to judge whether he needs to use the maglite or not?"
In a weird way, I trusted this guy to administer an occasional maglite beating responsibly and fairly, but also recognized that letting this guy do it meant letting all the deputies do it, and maybe they're not all going to have the same idea of what offenses are maglite-worthy.
Anyway, here are some of the best questions asked by our class about the inmate population:
Can they call 800 numbers from their phones in their cells?
Why don't you let them have pornography?
Can they get kosher meals?
Where are the women? [It's the Men's Central Jail.]
Do you have juveniles here? [It's the Men's Central Jail.]
How do inmates figure out that someone's a child molester?
Why do you segregate out the homosexual inmates? Isn't that discrimination?
Why do you forbid sex between inmates if there's condoms available?
To those of you planning a visit to LA, I recommend it. It'll make a nice counterpoint to Disneyland and the Warner Bros. studio tour.
31 Jan 07
I wish I could have been there to see the looks on certain law students' faces when they realize that maybe there are some people in jail who actually deserve to be there! Imagine that somebody committed a crime, had a fair trial, and did not have any of his constitutional rights violated. I think it's difficult to get the impact of crime to resonate within students at our school given the background of the majority of us (myself included). Different perspectives are important - they probably should have taken us all down there in school buses the first day of school. My favorite reflection of those who visit LA jails for the first time (and let their privileged upbringing show) - "I can't believe they segregate the inmates racially, that's so wrong!"
Posted by: honor rancho afficionado at February 1, 2007 12:56 AMIt's curious to me that people who think prison guards, cops, etc. are civil-rights-violating pigs will usually not feel that way about, say, U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
As to the soldiers, people seem able to separate out the moral accountability of the individual soldier vs. the US government. We don't hold soldiers personally responsible for immoral war policy. And we see incidents like Abu Ghraib as anomalous individual behavior.
That type of thinking doesn't seem to carry over to prison guards and cops, who often have to endure the presumption that they employ unethical techniques, and the indivduals who don't are the exceptions. Moreover, the role of the government as a moral agent seems to be discounted.
You can say "it's different -- soldiers are at war with an identified enemy, whereas people in this coutry have constitutional rights". Sort of true. Enemies are protected by certain rights during war (Geneva Convention). Do we think soldiers never violate those rights? And civilians are routinely wounded and killed by negligence. Is that any better?
I have to imagine it comes down to something about the perceived power imbalance --- the enemy in a war is a "big guy", a foreign political power who (so we are told) is threatening the nation.
Whereas prison inmates are "little guys" --- they may be endangering certain people or neighborhoods, but that's it.
I don't have an answer, I just find it odd.
Posted by: MB at February 2, 2007 10:49 AM"The deputies who worked at the prison were unusually friendly and chipper."
Was this intentional? It immediately followed the explanation of the difference between a jails and prisons.
Very clever MB.
Whoops. Fixed.
Posted by: MB at February 6, 2007 10:46 AMAn employer made me feel like I'm weird for taking Prison law . . . a small litigation firm (real estate, construction and business) . . . what's up with that?
Posted by: at February 6, 2007 01:38 PMjuveniles are housed separately from adults. They stay in juvenile hall pending a verdict and then are placed in either a secure facility that is not like a typical institution, "camp" which is a locked facility that looks much like jail, or the California Youth Authority which is like a state penitentiary for you.
Posted by: at February 13, 2007 11:39 AM