the random musings not worthy of new thread thread

[rjs246]

Judges are appointed by politicians or elected by idiots. There's no performance / promotion process.

It's farged.

[Eagaholic]

As aggravating as it is to see some scumbag get off scott free even though they were obviously guilty, I understand the need for things to be set up to err on the side of not wrongly convicting someone.

I remember years ago some 19 year old kid I knew farged around with a girl 3 or 4 years younger than him, and they had been friends since they were little. I don't remember all the details but he seemed like an otherwise good kid, not especially bright or mature for his age but well liked by others his age and adults. He got sent up for what was supposed to be a fairly short time, maybe a year or two. I passed by him several years later in the local convenience store, didn't even recognize it was him until a few moments after I left. I found out later he had just gotten out. Somehow this 19 year old kid that was put away with a sexual predator label ended up doing hard time, and when I saw him he had this sort of soul-crushed paranoid vibe about him.

I doubt there is anyone on this board who hasn't done something that if things went differently, couldn't have ended up in jail. Catch the wrong judge or wrong cop on a bad day, and once you get inducted into the system there's no end to the domino effect and downward spiral that one can get sucked into, fair or not. That 19 year old kid was supposed to originally get off without doing any time. I don't think he even went all the with the girl but they apparently went far enough. For some reason the original judge couldn't wrap up the case before they had to move on and another one took over the case. Then what was supposed to be several months turned into several years and god only knows what happened to him in there, but I'd be willing to bet the rest of his life was pretty much wrecked. I've corresponded with a couple of prisoners and heard stories about how some malicious inmate will farg with another before they were finally to be released just to keep them in. It is a horrible system and the fact that some of it has been privatized as a business is hideous (I recall the story about the judge who admitted sending people up who he knew were innocent just to receive a kickback from the profiteering business).

[ice grillin you]

on that same level i actually spent an hour or two last week reading the stories of the 95 people obama pardoned....some truly heartbreaking shtein

[Sgt PSN]

I actually have no clue what the fee arrangement is.  I covered it for a partner at the firm who represents him for his divorce. 

I will also say the circumstances reminded me of how farged up our system can be.

Dude is paying child support.  He has an alcohol problem.  He gets a second DUI and is imprisoned  from January to April.  Not a rich guy to start with.  While in jail he's fired, falls behind on his payments obviously.  About 7 weeks after he gets out he goes in front a judge on a contempt hearing for nonpayment.   Gets thrown in jail for 90 more days (yes, great idea to imprison guy again for nonpayment when he fell behind because was in jail).  He gets out end of September and makes three small payments until he checks himself into an in patient rehab center from end of October to December 6th.   Now has a job and brought basically all the money he had to court today for another hearing to determine whether he needs to go to jail...again.   For nonpayment.

So what has been setup is basically debtor's prison.  You get imprisoned for dui but fall behind in payments for that and are therefore punished in perpituity because your bill keeps running while you're in jail so that you can never pay it.  Makes absolutely no sense.

Reminds me of the military. You can be punished for "financial instability/irresponsibility."  It doesn't happen often, but I've seen a few guys get busted for it. It can be for anything from falling behind on child support to bouncing a check. One guy I kind of knew back in the 90s bounced 3 checks in a week at the PX on base. His own fault....iirc  he tried floating the checks until payday (probably for dip and skin mags), but he was reduced in rank (which comes with a pay reduction), and had to forfeit 1/2 month pay for 2 months....so basically docked 1 month pay. Luckily for this dude he didn't have any kind of child support to pay or he'd have been farged.

There were a lot of things that didn't make sense to me at 19 that do make sense to me now. This is not one of those things. 

[PhillyPhreak54]

As aggravating as it is to see some scumbag get off scott free even though they were obviously guilty, I understand the need for things to be set up to err on the side of not wrongly convicting someone.

I remember years ago some 19 year old kid I knew farged around with a girl 3 or 4 years younger than him, and they had been friends since they were little. I don't remember all the details but he seemed like an otherwise good kid, not especially bright or mature for his age but well liked by others his age and adults. He got sent up for what was supposed to be a fairly short time, maybe a year or two. I passed by him several years later in the local convenience store, didn't even recognize it was him until a few moments after I left. I found out later he had just gotten out. Somehow this 19 year old kid that was put away with a sexual predator label ended up doing hard time, and when I saw him he had this sort of soul-crushed paranoid vibe about him.

I doubt there is anyone on this board who hasn't done something that if things went differently, couldn't have ended up in jail. Catch the wrong judge or wrong cop on a bad day, and once you get inducted into the system there's no end to the domino effect and downward spiral that one can get sucked into, fair or not. That 19 year old kid was supposed to originally get off without doing any time. I don't think he even went all the with the girl but they apparently went far enough. For some reason the original judge couldn't wrap up the case before they had to move on and another one took over the case. Then what was supposed to be several months turned into several years and god only knows what happened to him in there, but I'd be willing to bet the rest of his life was pretty much wrecked. I've corresponded with a couple of prisoners and heard stories about how some malicious inmate will farg with another before they were finally to be released just to keep them in. It is a horrible system and the fact that some of it has been privatized as a business is hideous (I recall the story about the judge who admitted sending people up who he knew were innocent just to receive a kickback from the profiteering business).

Yeah man - I spent close to five years as a prison guard and saw some wicked shtein. From the standard violence to kind of what you said where a young person gets locked up and then the system just eats them up. It is a vicious cycle that it is nearly impossible to break if they do not come from a well-off family to help support them.

The privatized state jails are a bigger joke. They should be outlawed or at the very least regulated even more than the state run facilities.

When I worked in Austin we took over a unit from Wackenhut that had been basically turned into the wild west. Inmates were getting each other pregnant (mixed facility obviously)...officers were farging inmates...drugs were rampant...fights 10-20x a day.

We shipped all the women out and then spent about a year having to take control back.

[Eagles_Legendz]

As aggravating as it is to see some scumbag get off scott free even though they were obviously guilty, I understand the need for things to be set up to err on the side of not wrongly convicting someone.

I remember years ago some 19 year old kid I knew farged around with a girl 3 or 4 years younger than him, and they had been friends since they were little. I don't remember all the details but he seemed like an otherwise good kid, not especially bright or mature for his age but well liked by others his age and adults. He got sent up for what was supposed to be a fairly short time, maybe a year or two. I passed by him several years later in the local convenience store, didn't even recognize it was him until a few moments after I left. I found out later he had just gotten out. Somehow this 19 year old kid that was put away with a sexual predator label ended up doing hard time, and when I saw him he had this sort of soul-crushed paranoid vibe about him.

I doubt there is anyone on this board who hasn't done something that if things went differently, couldn't have ended up in jail. Catch the wrong judge or wrong cop on a bad day, and once you get inducted into the system there's no end to the domino effect and downward spiral that one can get sucked into, fair or not. That 19 year old kid was supposed to originally get off without doing any time. I don't think he even went all the with the girl but they apparently went far enough. For some reason the original judge couldn't wrap up the case before they had to move on and another one took over the case. Then what was supposed to be several months turned into several years and god only knows what happened to him in there, but I'd be willing to bet the rest of his life was pretty much wrecked. I've corresponded with a couple of prisoners and heard stories about how some malicious inmate will farg with another before they were finally to be released just to keep them in. It is a horrible system and the fact that some of it has been privatized as a business is hideous (I recall the story about the judge who admitted sending people up who he knew were innocent just to receive a kickback from the profiteering business).

Yeah man - I spent close to five years as a prison guard and saw some wicked shtein. From the standard violence to kind of what you said where a young person gets locked up and then the system just eats them up. It is a vicious cycle that it is nearly impossible to break if they do not come from a well-off family to help support them.

The privatized state jails are a bigger joke. They should be outlawed or at the very least regulated even more than the state run facilities.

When I worked in Austin we took over a unit from Wackenhut that had been basically turned into the wild west. Inmates were getting each other pregnant (mixed facility obviously)...officers were farging inmates...drugs were rampant...fights 10-20x a day.

We shipped all the women out and then spent about a year having to take control back.

Yeah I wrote two long papers in law school about the perversion and immorality of the private prison system specifically and the prison industrial complex in general (and how it essentially preys on poor, predominantly black, communities).  It's disgraceful.  Any judge who runs ads about how many people they locked up immediately lose my vote.  Clinton's push for increased incarceration was one of the worst things about his presidency. 

Violent criminals should be in jail.  What should not be happening is our system and private companies basically profiteering off of addiction and people who cannot pay small fees due to poverty.

[Eagles_Legendz]

Judges are appointed by politicians or elected by idiots. There's no performance / promotion process.

It's farged.

Working in the court before this I can say from my experience most attempt to do a legit job and what's right (in their minds).   It is still the best performance-wise of the three branches (doesn't say much).  But like anything else, the quality varies to extreme levels.

[PhillyPhreak54]

As aggravating as it is to see some scumbag get off scott free even though they were obviously guilty, I understand the need for things to be set up to err on the side of not wrongly convicting someone.

I remember years ago some 19 year old kid I knew farged around with a girl 3 or 4 years younger than him, and they had been friends since they were little. I don't remember all the details but he seemed like an otherwise good kid, not especially bright or mature for his age but well liked by others his age and adults. He got sent up for what was supposed to be a fairly short time, maybe a year or two. I passed by him several years later in the local convenience store, didn't even recognize it was him until a few moments after I left. I found out later he had just gotten out. Somehow this 19 year old kid that was put away with a sexual predator label ended up doing hard time, and when I saw him he had this sort of soul-crushed paranoid vibe about him.

I doubt there is anyone on this board who hasn't done something that if things went differently, couldn't have ended up in jail. Catch the wrong judge or wrong cop on a bad day, and once you get inducted into the system there's no end to the domino effect and downward spiral that one can get sucked into, fair or not. That 19 year old kid was supposed to originally get off without doing any time. I don't think he even went all the with the girl but they apparently went far enough. For some reason the original judge couldn't wrap up the case before they had to move on and another one took over the case. Then what was supposed to be several months turned into several years and god only knows what happened to him in there, but I'd be willing to bet the rest of his life was pretty much wrecked. I've corresponded with a couple of prisoners and heard stories about how some malicious inmate will farg with another before they were finally to be released just to keep them in. It is a horrible system and the fact that some of it has been privatized as a business is hideous (I recall the story about the judge who admitted sending people up who he knew were innocent just to receive a kickback from the profiteering business).

Yeah man - I spent close to five years as a prison guard and saw some wicked shtein. From the standard violence to kind of what you said where a young person gets locked up and then the system just eats them up. It is a vicious cycle that it is nearly impossible to break if they do not come from a well-off family to help support them.

The privatized state jails are a bigger joke. They should be outlawed or at the very least regulated even more than the state run facilities.

When I worked in Austin we took over a unit from Wackenhut that had been basically turned into the wild west. Inmates were getting each other pregnant (mixed facility obviously)...officers were farging inmates...drugs were rampant...fights 10-20x a day.

We shipped all the women out and then spent about a year having to take control back.

Yeah I wrote two long papers in law school about the perversion and immorality of the private prison system specifically and the prison industrial complex in general (and how it essentially preys on poor, predominantly black, communities).  It's disgraceful.  Any judge who runs ads about how many people they locked up immediately lose my vote.  Clinton's push for increased incarceration was one of the worst things about his presidency. 

Violent criminals should be in jail.  What should not be happening is our system and private companies basically profiteering off of addiction and people who cannot pay small fees due to poverty.

Agreed completely on everything - good post. Especially the rogue judges who do nothing but lock people up.

Working in there changed my views on a lot of things too. I started when I was 19 and I am thankful I had a good training officer who taught me how to deal with convicts and how to deal with inmates. There were a ton of officers who did nothing but farg with guys. They were the ones who got themselves on hit lists (saw one get stabbed on death row) or could not go out in Austin because of fear they would run into ex-inmates and they'd get their asses kicked.

Most guys are there to do their time and that is it. There are problem inmates and ones who you have to get down with but most of them will respect you if you are consistent, firm and fair.

So when you have this never ending cycle of recidivism the last thing you do is push a dude to his limit....but people would do it. Guy gets popped for some bullshtein and may even be innocent but yet he catches a real world case inside because of a fight with an officer where the officer is the one who instigated it.

The US prison system needs some serious adjustments and unfortunately it will never happen.

[ice grillin you]

i actually have hope that it will become changed...mostly because its a rare issue that has some level of suuport from all angles....from hippies on the left to libertarians to some of the rightiest righties

[Diomedes]

...o some of the rightiest righties

Who are fine with it so long as it's poor people, and especially poor darkies, getting farged, but for the money.  For them, it's the cost and cost alone.

[PhillyPhreak54]

i actually have hope that it will become changed...mostly because its a rare issue that has some level of suuport from all angles....from hippies on the left to libertarians to some of the rightiest righties

You're more optimistic than I am on that.

Changing it means not locking people up for stupid shtein. Bogus traffic tickets that compound interest and fees? No way they should be locked up and then exposed to the system. Weed? Nope.

Privatization sucks because those people ain't getting paid unless someone is locked up. CCA and Wackenhut need to be shut down.

When cells are housing three people it's inhumane. When dorms have triple bunks it's stupid.

[rjs246]

The fact that anyone is even talking about this is astonishing. Coming up in the Bush/Clinton indescriminant tough on crime era, the very idea of reform as a topic of discussion is amazing.

[Yeti]

Take it to No Hippos

[PhillyPhreak54]

My flight from PHL leaves at 530am. I was supposed to leave the same time a couple days ago but it was canceled when the weather in the south and Midwest was bad. So I decided to stay until Saturday. I took the same flight back to Houston over the summer and it sucked you'd think I learned my lesson. I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight. I don't sleep on planes well so I'll power thru a movie or two and then crash when I get home.

I need to win the powerball so I can retire and not have to work. I love off time too much. I'm dreading Monday already.

[Don Ho]

Damn, red eye and early morning flights are just awful.  All basically unavoidable out of Hawaii.  I can't sleep on planes either.  Load up that ipad with my latest binge fit or hopefully grab a good book.  Those 12+ hour days of travel to Chicago are a real hoot.