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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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I’m curious what that standard should be (not as a matter of law but policy)

The obvious starting point is constitutionally defined with a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. From there, we need to determine what qualifies as cruel and unusual, but the core of it should amount to it being fine for prison to suck, but treatment of prisoners shouldn't be deliberately weird or sadistic. Put in the form of sandwiches:

  • Unreasonably demand, too nice: Not providing my selection of cheese for a ham sandwich is a violation of my rights, I should be able to select cheddar, Swiss, or gruyere as I would at a decent deli.

  • Standard and reasonable level of suck: I have access to a ham and cheese sandwich. It's not very good, it's white bread with cheap ham and American cheese. It is, however, a normal sandwich.

  • Cruel: The same sandwich as above, but moldy and disgusting.

  • Unusual: I have a sandwich, but it is peanut butter, pickled herring, pureed bologna, and like 9 packets of aspartame.

Insert appropriate equivalents for bedding, clothing, exercise space, and so on. It should suck, but it shouldn't be mean just for the sake of mean.

I think the standard for prison should be reasonably comfortable but cheap/spartan. The punishment is the confinement, it doesn't really save all that much money to have much worse than school lunch quality food, access to books and cheap sports equipment like basketballs and soccer balls and otherwise sanitary facilities. The standards for jail should be a step up, these are people who are still innocent until proven guilty.

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