Let 'em breed in prisons all they want. Zyklon-B is much more effective in those environments, anyway.

Mary,
While your comments about prisons being fertile turf for recruiting terrorists are reasonable, I question whether or not reformation of the system would address that problem particularly well.
You seem to be dropping the chicken/egg angle that is inherent in prison society (which is in fact a punitive institution}. Some folks in jail just don't connect with appropriate mechanisms that would allow them to interface harmlessly with the rest of society.
Terrorists are clearly disordered in some manner, whether they don the three piece suits in Washington or the jumpsuit in a penitentiary. Some terrorists are obviously born with silver spoons in their mouths and have ivy league educations. That doesn't seem to help much.
What was your point here exactly?

Prisons have always been grounds for recruiting going back to the Mafia. Al Qaeda is successfully standing up to the U.S., seems strong and organized, and has a place for their particular skill sets. On the other hand I would be far less concerned with our domestic jails on this account than those we have established abroad - in Afganistan, Iraq, and GITMO (does anyone know if we have ever done this before other than the international jail leading up to the Nuremberg trials?) and the jails of our allies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Israel. Never forget that Islamic Jihad was born in the Egyptian prison system, the IRA flourished in the British detention camps, and even Sadam used his time in jail to plot his return!

In today's New York Times, Anthony Lewis recalls in his column, A President Beyond the Law , the scholarly, straight-forward condemnation of U.S. lawlessness at Guantanamo by Britain's Lord Johan van Zyl Steyn, one of the highest judges in England.

The full text of Lord Steyn's lecture, 'Guantanamo Bay: The Legal Black Hole' can be accessed here in .doc format.

An excerpt:

How prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been treated we do not know. But what we do know is not reassuring.

At Camp Delta the minute cells measure 1.8m by 2.4m. Detainees are held in these cells for up to 24 hours a day. Photographs of prisoners being returned to their cells on stretchers after interrogation have been published. The Red Cross described the camp as principally a centre of interrogation rather than detention.

The Washington Post suggested there has been a sweeping change in United States policy on torture since September 11, despite public pronouncements against its use. It quotes Cofer Black, the former director of the CIA’s counter-terrorist branch, as telling a congressional intelligence committee: “All you need to know: there was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11 . . . After 9/11 the gloves came off”,

The United States website records 32 attempted suicides committed by 27 prisoners. A report of Sunday 16 March 2003 reported officials as saying that the techniques of interrogation are “not quite torture, but as close as you can get”.

It appears likely that “stress and duress” tactics of disrupting sleep and forcing prisoners to stand for extended periods, which have been used by United States interrogators in Afghanistan, are also employed at Guantanamo Bay.

The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of the victors. The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess. On the contrary, the rules expressly provide that statements made by a prisoner under physical and mental duress are admissible “if the evidence would have value to a reasonable person”, i.e. military officers trying enemy soldiers.

At present we are not meant to know what is happening at Guantanamo Bay. But history will not be neutered. What takes place there today in the name of the United States will assuredly, in due course, be judged at the bar of informed international opinion.

IMO, A great deal rests on the forthcoming opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Guantanamo detainees case.

animal rights groups? Is there really an Animal Liberation Front?

Just when we think the wheels are about to come completely off the BushWagon, we get the word that 288,000 jobs were created in April (how many of those were part-time jobs I wonder?). While that is good news (lord knows my mom still needs a job), the last thing I know we anti-Bush folk want is for the economy, something the Bushes always seem to screw up anywhere in this world, to be the thing that keeps this president in office.

It's bad enough that these prison pictures and stories are nearly destroying, if it hasn't already, our reputation around the world. Quite frankly, I honestly do not believe that this world will ever forgive us, not a single one of us Americans, if we allow Bush back into office for another 4 years.

Bush has got to go - if he doesn't, the chance for the world, if not just the Muslim world, to declare war on us increases dramatically. For the sake of our safety, our future, our very lives, vote this bastard OUT!

Are jails merely punitutive institutions or can they be tools of reform?

As Sheila said,

Some folks in jail just don't connect with appropriate mechanisms that would allow them to interface harmlessly with the rest of society.

It is equally true however, that some inmates are capable of reform and have the ability to interact with the rest of society given the
proper tools and education.

If prisoners are not viewed as human beings, and are not treated accordingly, we run the risk of turning those individuals, who can function in society, into the type of person Sheila describes above.

As Mary said,

As our prisons become warehouses for society's losers with less access to education or possibility for reform, they produce the helplessness, humiliation and rage that creates extremists of all types.

It is possible to create conditions in prisons such that helplessness, humiliation and rage are alleviated.

Yes, it is true that most individuals who are incaracerated have in fact commited a crime. But, there are degrees of criminality. Some people are beyond reform but that is not true of all of them. An effort must be made to reach out to those individuals who are capable of change.

There are myriad reasons why a crime is committed. To treat all criminals in the same way is a mistake. Offering inmates the chance to earn respect, is monumental. Prisons with programs, such as those that have inmates train working dogs, has had positive effects.

It is not natural for human beings to remain in a cell with no stimulation. In order to cope wiht this atmsphere, some reach out to terrorist organizations. It is a way of surviving in the prison environment. If inmates can be offered an alterrnative, perhaps the need to become involved with such groups will lessen.

Jo:

Yes, it is true that most individuals who are incaracerated have in fact commited a crime. But, there are degrees of criminality. Some people are beyond reform but that is not true of all of them. An effort must be made to reach out to those individuals who are capable of change.

I agree, Jo. I wish John Kerry still took the same approach he did as a prosecutor and basically look the other way on personal usage amounts of marihuana, but he does not. He's just as mindlessly against the legalization of marihuana as any Republican.

The immediate legalization of marihuana and the commutation/exoneration of all convictions and sentences for its cultivation, possession, and use is what we need. This will save us huge amounts of money at every level of government ---money we could better spend on ending the scourge of harder drugs that actually kill people and drive them to violence. Immediate legalization of marihuana will also end the practice of incarcerating young men who are otherwise good and potentially productive citizens. But we radicalize a lot of these kids (a disproportionate number of whom are black and Latino) by locking them up for long stretches of time. It's foolish. We should be fighting the drugs that kill.

Legalize marihuana now.

Only narcs spell it "marihuana," but otherwise, you're dead right. Jeebus, it took us a few weeks, but we found something we agree on.

Now, as a thought exercise: Can you imagine OTHER areas in which America's proclivity toward black-and-white, puritanical approaches to large-scale problems might be doing us more harm than good?

Toby,

I had to read your post twice. I agree with you too.

Lets also do away with minimum sentencing requirements while we're at it.

Matt, I've been spelling marihuana that way for probably 15 years ---and as an homage to the cops of J. Edgar Hoover's generation. See? It's my little wink and a nudge.

None of you hippie bastages is gonna get to the left of me on the issue of marihuana.

Jo:

Lets also do away with minimum sentencing requirements while we're at it.

Sounds good to me, Jo. Do we want judges with discretionary power or PEZ-dispensers? Do we want teachers with the authority to formulate their own curricula or do we want standardized test prep-drillers? Do we want prison guards who commit crimes to be punished as individuals or do we want to politicize their misdeeds and use them to punish others who are taking brave and bold steps for the safety of our country?

Oops! I'm always giving it away.