Prison Overcrowding and Reality-Based Thnking

49,993.  That's the number of men and women in Ohio prisons according to Alan Johnson in the Columbus Dispatch.  DRC's latest weekly report put the number at 50,115.  Either way, it's a hell of a lot of people.  And it's somewhere in the vicinity of 30 percent over capacity according to Jim Provance in the Toledo Blade.  And they're also seriously understaffed. 

It is, says a new report from the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA), a recipe for disaster.  We have, OCSEA suggests, been here before.

20 years ago, Easter Sunday 1993, things came to a head at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.  By the time the uprising was over 11 days later, one guard and 9 prisoners were dead.  OCSEA says conditions are ripe for another riot.

Maybe.

The inmates who took over a part of the prison at Lucasville didn't act just because they were overcrowded.  Human psychology and behavior isn't so simplistic.  If it were, prisons around the country would be in constant insurrection.  There was at Lucasville anger and frustration at the inmate's treatment by guards, by officials.  There were issues of race and religion.  There were health issues, gang issues, prisoner mistreatment and abuse by corrections officers.  None of that is justification, but it helps explain.

Still, overcrowding and understaffing were real problems.  They contributed.  And they're trouble today. From The Blade.

The union blames overcrowding and correction-officer cutbacks in recent years for an increase in violence at prisons, as well as rising crime by inmates against staff. A recent state report suggested that one in six inmates in the state prison system is a gang member.
. . .
DRC spokesman JoEllen Smith said recent reforms to crack down on prison violence are beginning to have an effect.
“Calendar 2012 was the first full year of our violence reduction reforms being in place, and the data reflects that because of these initiatives, we are beginning to see positive results,” she said. “We have seen a 7.2 percent reduction in total violent rule infractions, and the number of disturbances also decreased.”
Assaults and harassment rule infractions, however, are up and remain an area of focus, she said.

This is, of course, 21st Century America.  Expertise is to be avoided, actual knowledge ignored.  In particular, nuance is to be relegated to some hidden corner where it can remain out of site.  Simplicity and stupidity reign.

And so The Blade offers its readers a chance to vote on the solution to Prison overcrowding.  it's multiple choice, of course, and you can only vote for one of the options.  You know, the one that will solve the problem.  

Before we examine the choices, we need a moment of focus.  The problem at hand is prison overcrowding.  The specifics of what The Blade puts to its readers:
Prison overcrowding is plaguing Ohio, and America.  What's the solution.
Got that?  Good.  Now, a reminder of the Ohio numbers.  Roughly 50,000 inmates.  30% over capacity.  That means that eliminating overcrowding requires either a massive increase in the number of prison facilities (and guards and whatnot) or a decrease of something like 11,500 prisoners.
OK, ready?  Here are the choices The Blade offers.  Remember, you can only pick one.

• Build more privatized prisons.
• Ending non-violent crime incarceration.
• Stopping the treatment of medical issues, such as addiction, as criminal issues.
• Quicker and more frequent capital punishment.
• Better education and values instilled in upcoming generations.

How'd you vote?
652 of The Blade's readers have voted so far.  There's no majority, but here's how the percentages break down.  And think about what they say.

• Build more privatized prisons - 9%
• Ending non-violent crime incarceration - 14%
• Stopping the treatment of medical issues, such as addiction, as criminal issues - 19%
• Quicker and more frequent capital punishment - 38%
• Better education and values instilled in upcoming generations - 20%

 Let's consider for a moment.  We have this immediate, massive, and incredibly dangerous problem of 11,5000 too many prisoners in Ohio.  What to do?

The least popular solution is to provide more cells for them.  Releasing the folks who aren't dangerous appeals to about 1/7 of the voters.  Just under 1 in 5 thinks we should stop locking up people because they're ill (4 out of 5 favor that?  Don't get sick in Ohio, folks.)  About 1 in 5 think the way to end the overcrowding problem now is to instill good values (I suspect most of that means religious ones, though I don't actually know that) in future generations, however one might do that.

And the plurality vote, by a wide margin?  Kill 11,500 inmates.  Oh, sure, there are only 144 or so folks on death row in Ohio.  And there are constitutional constraints on who we can actually execute.  But really, they're all pond scum or they wouldn't be in prison.

OK, I'm being a bit unfair.  A bit.  Still.

Thomas Jefferson said,

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

The slaveholder was referring to slavery.

Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.

And he added,

Establish a law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state and on a general plan.

Whatever our view of God, justice, and slavery.  We remain as a people committed to ignoring the merits of education.  You know reality-based decisionmaking.

The lunatics, as they say, are running the asylum.

Sigh.

Pay No Attention to the Court Behind the Curtain

The image they want us to have, really, they do, is of nine berobed men and women deep in thought, carefully analyzing and parsing, picking apart arguments for logic and coherence, deeply, intensely, completely committed to ensuring that the republic will not only endure but that it will be THE REPUBLIC, the one the framers envisioned.

They have strong views about matters of public policy, but they set them aside every time and decide with dispassion and disinterest.  Getting it right is all that matters, preferences be damned.

Wrapped in their self-importance and power (Newt thinks they should be ignored, but Newt lost; Jackson did ignore them, but Jackson's dead), cadavered in their marbled edifice, these graduates of Harvard and Yale (9 out 9 attended law school at one or the other) probably believe it themselves.

Even when it's an obvious lie.  (See, for instance, Bush v. Gore.)

Oh, it's not unusual for one to call the others out in a dissent.  Scalia does it with some regularity.  Thurgood Marshall did it in memorably and with careful and substantive analysis in Payne v. Tennessee. He began this way.

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decisionmaking. . . . Neither the law nor the facts . . . underwent any change in the last four years. Only the personnel of this Court did.

But even then they all go out for drinks and cigars, smug in their integrity.

They pride themselves in working in a building that has, etched in its facade,

EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW

Surely a noble ideal.

And there it is, expressed right over the main entrance. 

You know, the one they turned into an exit only.  Equal justice under law on the way out.

And now the ultimate admission.  That rich courtroom, surprisingly intimate, filled with lawyers and tourists and those who just want to be in the presence.  

It's a prop.

I'd call it a Hollywood set, but they actually built those things on the studio back lots.

No, this is theater.  Grand guignol.  

The Supreme Court building was constructed in 1935.  Seventy years later, a chunk of the marble facade fell off and crashed into the plaza.  In a burst of humanity, and despite the fact that the Constitution was silent on the subject, nobody was injured.  Still, it was a sign.

The damn thing is crumbling.

So they put up protective netting and hired experts and read briefs and held oral argument examined and considered and concluded that they had to do a massive repair job.

It begins next week and will take about 21 months, they announced in a press release.

The project will require the erection of scaffolding on the west side of the building.  The scaffolding and ongoing conservation work will be concealed by a scrim that will mimic the Court’s architecture.

So they're hanging a curtain. With a painting of the front of the court.  Or maybe a photo.

And don't worry about getting in past the scaffolding and the curtain.  Remember, the front door is a sham anyway.  The public, like all good supplicants, has to use the servant's entrance on the side.

Because EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW is, after all, just a phrase.

At the scotusblog, Lyle Denniston (hat tip for this news, by the way) poses the facetious question.

Which is the real Supreme Court?

The proper question is whether there is such a thing or it's all just a bit of showmanship.  Smoke and mirrors.

Concurring in Brown v. Allen, Justice Jackson explained.

We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.

Pull back the curtain - or hang it - and that becomes especially clear.

Anyone Can Just Make Shit Up

I made passing reference a couple of months ago to the dead rhino ad which, unfortunately, has since been removed from YouTube (though you can read about it here).  It was a plug for Andy Thomas and an attack on Tom Horne, his opponent in the Republican primary for Arizona Attorney General.  The point of the bizarre ad is that Horne is really a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and a closet liberal, which is preposterous, but it's what politicians do in campaigns.

And, of course, I've done plenty of sneering about Andy and his abuses of power as County Attorney in Maricopa.

So it's maybe time to point out that the alternative to Andy, this Tom Horne fellow.  He's Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and, apparently, wholly out of touch with reality.  We can thank the ever intrepid blogger Nick Martin at Heat City for the proof. 

Tom Horne, the head of Arizona’s public school system, drew huge applause from a crowd of tea partiers earlier this month when he said Israel’s war on terror proves that the U.S. needs to build a wall along the Mexican border.
“Israel totally put a stop to terrorism by building their wall,” said Horne, a Republican whose final term as school superintendent ends after this year and who is vying to become the state’s next attorney general.

Wait, you say, there are terrorist attacks all the time in Israel.  What's he talking about?

Ah, that's your mistake.  Horne knows better. As he told Nick,

It’s been all over the newspapers.

Oh, sure, the Israeli Security Agency publishes monthly reports on terrorists attacks.  But what do they know?

Asked which newspapers had reported it, Horne could not name one. When told, then, about the number of attacks in just those two months, he was momentarily speechless.

“How do they define a terrorist attack?” Horne said finally.

The education chief insisted he had made the same statement at numerous campaign events and no one questioned him about it before.

But instead of changing his mind after hearing the facts, Horne stuck to his story. He said he remained certain of his claim’s accuracy despite what the Israeli government reported.

“I’ll stand by it,” he said. “I’m talking about something that there is pretty common knowledge about.”

Of course, Horne also believes that 2 + 2 = 47, that the moon is made of cheese, and that the earth is flat.  (Not really, he knows that 2 + 2 = 11.  It's been in all the papers.)

Harvard, no doubt, is proud.  

For those who are wondering, Horne received his law degree from Harvard before Elena Kagan became Dean.

Reality-based thinking

So the House Judiciary Committee released thousands of pages of documents (here and here and here and here) regarding the decisions to fire U.S. Attorneys in 2006. which reveal that Karl Rove in particular and Harriet Miers and the White House generally were far more deeply involved in the decisions to fire U.S. Attorneys in 2006 than they'd previsouly admitted. And, the documents show, at least some of the motivation was purely political.

As Claude Raines might put it, I'm shocked, shocked.

The Justice Department is looking into whether we illegally tortured prisoners at Gitmo or elsewhere. But althogh waterboarding is torture, we're not concerned about that because now-Professor John Yoo said it was legal. Ditto, for extraordinary rendition. Warrantless wiretaps. Indefinite detention. (Oh, wait, we actually endorse that.)

While the Republicans are screaming about how Obama wants to take over health care and decide who gets to live and who must die, the administration is cutting back room deals with the pharmaceutical industry.

The President gets a chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and though the Democrats have the votes in the Senate to confirm anyone they like - including someone who's at least marginally honest - either the candidate herself or her handlers in the administration insist that she present herself as more rigidly conservative in her judicial philosophy than either Bush II appointees - Roberts or Alito.

Meanwhile, only 53% of Virginians agree that Obama was born in the United States and is, therefore, constitutionally qualified to be President. And Virginians are actually pretty trusting for southerners. The polling data shows that only 47% of southerners believe Obama was born here. Of course, some of those are Democrats. Among Republicans, 28% are sure he's not from this country while 30% just don't know.

And don't get me started on creationism.

An old professor of mine, paraphrasing a line attributed to Mark Twain, said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before truth has time to put its britches on. I've noted before that anyone can start a blog and mouth off. The problematic part is that, it seems, just saying it is enough. It's on the internet, so it must be true. Unless you disagree, in which case it's obviously false.

The problem is that reality is a whatever-that-might-be sort of thing.

Science tells us that what we do, our industrialization, burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, polluting the atmosphere, leads to global warming. But if you don't believe in science, if you see the work of scientists as no more reliable than the work of alchemists, then why believe such nonsense? And, more importantly, why act on it?

And why should we believe the scientists? Why not take the Biblical story of creation (or at least one version of it, since there are several) as literal truth? The earth is some 7,000 years old. The evidence to the contrary is either misunderstood or was planted by god to test us. Or something. Why not?

Ohio law includes what's known as the "Physical Facts Rule." The Rule was adopted in 1975 and says that

testimony of a witness which is positively contradicted by the physical facts cannot be given probative value by the court.

That's so obviously correct that you have to wonder why most states reject the rule. Yes, that's right. In most states the witness may be believed when he says that he could see through the brick wall. Or maybe the surprising part is that Ohio has joined the minority of states that accept the rule. Reality reigns.

So, next time you're called for jury duty, try telling the one certain truth and see what happens. Gee, your Honor. Unless what the witness says contradicts the laws of physics, there's no way to tell who's speaking the truth and who isn't. Only the physical facts rule applies. And maybe not even that.

Round up the usual suspects.