I see this as a racial issue as well. We all know there is a disproportionate number of minorities in prisons compared to their counterparts. I think the US Prisons in general need to be viewed as a racial problem. It is not only racial but also socio-economic. Live and die poor while imprisoned for lack of 'quality of life.'
Governor Perry can tell anyone that aren't that many millionaires and billionaires on death row.
But, this is a topic that needs a dialogue.
Prisons also have employees that need to have a disaster plan in place. For the most part USA Prisons are self contained with kitchens, laundry and the like so there need for emergency plans should be easier to put in place than not.
It could be a 'prison population' project. There are many people within prisons. It would not be a bad idea for prisoners to value their own lives in a way that works as a community in problem solving their emergency needs. I don't know if that is workable, but, if prisoners can be on 'work furlough' they certainly have the capacity to 'act in an emergency' for the best interest of their community.
USA prisons are warehouses for the most part. The populations are left to live according to their own rules rather than that of the society that put them there. The prison population is a community, but, rarely is it seen as a functioning community that is responsible for their own rehabilitation. I would think the greatest asset a prison could provide to the society that needs it would be to translate crime into productive possibilities that lead to rehabilitation.
You know, the contact I have had with former inmates is that their 'work life' is limited after they are released, regardless, of the nature of their crime. They turn to jobs such as truck driving and physical labor and work that doesn't require professional licensing. I don't know why they are trained in firefighting and sanitation or skilled labor that pays well after they are released. Why do they come back into society basically the same as they went in and returned to dysfunctional communities to do it all again?
I would think being trained in emergency services of one kind or another within the prison would elevate their 'self' definition. Why aren't there 'sand bag brigades' in places like Rikers? Sand bags work in such circumstances.
I would think when a prisoner is sentenced there would be a requirement to their release that they have to be skilled in a job that provides them a good income. It would be a reason to do well and improve their lives on all fronts and even coming to the understanding like 'AA' the 'life style' that led them to crime and the people that continue to be a part of that should be abandoned before release. If they have a skill that translates into a job when they exist their prison term I would think that would translate well into reducing recidivism.
The idea that severe flooding could kill prisoners is only one aspect of emergency measures, but, to realize a Cat Five Storm could destroy the very prison that holds them is a completely different reality. I don't know how many times 'the conditions' prisoners face can lead to a worse sentence than they were handed in American courts. Facing death by storm for theft is not what I would call an equitable sentence.
Crimes of violence are the only ones that should receive significantly long prison sentences. and those prisoners should be sequestered into communities that address the fact they depersonalize their life experience into terms of survival that requires violence as a method of living. Prisoners in the USA are there for reasons and they are traceable reasons. There is little done about the reasons so much as warehousing people until they reach 'Three Strikes and They are In."
The American Prison Systems need attention and rarely is that a topic any politician is willing to discuss because they know absolutely nothing about it except what is demanded of them administratively. I am confident Bush and Perry have little to say about the prisons in their Governorships and the people they put to death. To them it is simply paperwork. Nothing more. They don't assign 'breathing' as important to any prisoner. As is true of any topic in the USA it won't be moved to resolve unless it is a national political issue. I would think there would be a movement revolving around the death sentence and how innocent people have actually been killed in this country based on societal standards for no reason at all while the guilty still walk free.
Rehabilitation will work when a prisoner is exposed to the ability to achieve a real life for the first time after incarceration. It will work better if prison populations are dissolved into destroying 'gang power' over the individual. Rehabilitation will work if it is part of their sentencing.
Hardened Criminals become hardened, they aren't born that way.
